The Wild Thornberrys ranks quite lowly when it comes to shows I grew up with, only ones lower than this are Fairly Odd Parents and Danny Phantom. The most I got from it was revisiting episodes I saw as a kid to see if they were how I remembered them, spoiler alert, nothing has changed.
The last I remember seeing this show was on a countdown aired on Nicktoons Network, admittedly the one episode I recall making it on was actually good. I saw some of the episodes from the newer seasons, and it's a rule of thumb when it comes to Klasky-Csupo's shows, the decline is obvious (though I can say with confidence The Wild Thornberries' last season isn't as bad as As Told by Ginger's, especially since that fell into the same web as Teen Titans who had a great finale that didn't become the finale, and ATbG had worse episodes after.)
But back on the countdown, I believe I saw one certain episode also make the list, I don't remember catching it anywhere else, unless my memory is that selective. My mind kept going back to this episode for some reason, I'd say it haunts me but that'd knock me down several notches. I guess I just wanted to find reasons to talk about this episode, and thinking of it, here we are.
Bluh
One thing that escapes me when it comes to The Wild Thornberries is that they go to real world locations (hence every intro ending with a zoom-in on a map), but luckily the episode descriptions on Wikipedia will prevent me from mixing the Galapagos with the Amazon.
This episode has the Thornberrys travel to the... African plains. That's all I got. The location name is inconsequential, just know the episode takes place in somewhere that's hot and dry, and in the midst of a drought.
My biggest issue with the episode is it having a number of missed opportunities, with the opportunities they do take being ill-executed. What occurred in the episode felt so poorly handled that it wound up pissing me off.
So the Thornberrys chill in the Comvee and Eliza is against them taking up indulgences after witnessing the effects the drought had on the animals outside. Does she strike out to make a statement on potential human negligence? Sorta, this leads to the main premise of the episode, more on that later.
I question why Nigel isn't filming, isn't that the whole reason for the show's existence? If they wrapped wouldn't they be on the way out by now? I mean I understand if Nigel would let everyone go look around, but they're in the more barren region of Africa.
While Eliza strikes out, the family kicks back in the Comvee and Debbie burns out the air conditioner. Firs up, how long have you had the comvee? It can do a lot of things but can't handle high pressure on the AC if nothing that requires high power is also running? If this led to something interesting then I'd excuse it.
So what do you think happens? The short affects the rest of the power to the comvee, and they wind up going through the same thing the animals outside are? Hence allowing them to see what Eliza was going for in how they're tone deaf to what's going on outside? Nope, it's just a minor inconvenience at best, and they set out to find Eliza as she goes through her plot.
Oh yeah, her plot.
Eliza attempts to find the mother of a cheetah cub, Tano, who had been separated from her, somehow. I'd say the hyenas, I'm guessing, had something to do with it, I don't know if hyenas rank higher than cheetahs, the former are essentially scavengers. This is all amounting to something that'll really come together later on.
The letdowns persist in the form of travel drama. The highlight to the entire episode is Darwin, as I like the smart ass in any show, but it doesn't save it. Tano acts implacably selfish and vicious, biting the hand that feeds him, literally I may add, and busting their one water bottle. I'm not mad at him for doing something selfish, I'm just mad at how downplayed the drought aspect is.
Perhaps as a statement, Eliza would go without supplies to put herself on the same level as the animals (okay maybe she should bring one water bottle for the sake of emergency.) The desperation had by Tano would also be had by Eliza and Darwin as they struggle to survive, and drive home the impact the drought has. But neh, this isn't the kind of episode that'd show such sophistication.
Things come crumbling down further when Tano's mother returns, and this was my worst takeaway from it. Once more, I'm not pinning selfishness on it (same goes for mean-spirited because that's meaningless.), but because how everything is carried out here, and frankly, it makes the mother look no better.
She views Eliza as food out of desperation, and I gotta ask, what happened to you? I get you may have been looking for food, but you abandoned your own son? Were you afraid you would have to eat him? I wanted so bad for all four to devolve to savagery to, again, show the desperation all would have in a drought, but I guess they thought it'd be better for us to hate cheetahs. If Legend of the Titanic was pro whales, this is anti-cheetah.
Instinctively, you'd assume Tano would at least stick up for Eliza as she had helped get him to his mother, if it wasn't he'd literally be left for dead. But no, he who follows perishes, and now he wants to eat her too, this is so clunky you'd think the writers had a panic attack.
So how does Eliza get out of this jam? It rains enough to build a river, Tano's mother falls from a tree branch and plummets to her death, Tano learns the hard way on how a lack of food and water brought out the worst in the both of them and made him lose sight on those who'd try to help him, he'd regret everything and as he drinks from the now replenished river, he doesn't look up toward Eliza, feeling she's better off without him.
Actually I wish how that would've happened, they showed an elephant dying of old age and made it clear Donnie's biological parents were killed in cold blood by poachers, I'm sure they can imply the mother was trampled to death as by then she wasn't an established character and was a tragic antagonist so it wouldn't be as traumatizing to the viewer and give the episode a greater impact.
No, Eliza makes it back to her parents, she had been forgiven for leaving them for that bogus journey and is sent to clean up the comvee which had been messed up while it was seaborne. And Tano's mother somehow survived and the family goes on like none of that shit ever happened, and now this episode lingers in my head, as with a bulk of Klasky-Csupo's worst strike-outs in my opinion.
Overall
It's one thing if this was me covering an episode of a show I liked, but The Wild Thornberrys was a show I hardly cared about. This episode is the epitome of missed opportunities and bad execution, and the sad thing is, this show is capable of more sophistication than this episode squeezed out. To add insult to injury, a scene in Origin of Donnie had a mirror representation of Tano and his mother, where Eliza helped a young gorilla reunite with her mother and both were more cooperative. Maybe apes are kinder than cheetahs, maybe the jungle had more resources to go off of? Donnie was raised by apes before Nigel found him. Hell, even with another encounter Eliza had with a jungle cat he apologized for the trouble.
This episode is part of a trend prevalent with many Klasky-Csupo shows, where one episode of each sticks in my head for some strange reason (Rocket Power is excluded somehow, someway.), whether it be because it's a bad episode that's otherwise glanced over, one that has poor execution or is memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Aside from this, As Told by Ginger's stickout was a bulk of the last season episodes with the other Ms. Zorski, each episode felt painful even if she didn't play as major of a role. For All Grown Up, it's mainly Coup De Ville in that it was the first episode and people seemed to ignore the seeds for Lil's degredation. For Rugrats, it's Pickles Vs. Pickles, in that it unintentionally paints a dark picture for why Drew bends over backwards for Angelica, who was in for her own gain that episode too ironically enough.
Of all the episodes I've seen of the show, this is the worst I've seen of it, and I don't even like the show very much.
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