Excellent.....Or Just Plain Bogus?

By 1990, I began to feel that it was the beginning of the end for Hanna-Barbera. "Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventures," from my perspective, was my first inkling that the studio was going downhill.

The only episode I saw of the H-B version had them looking after a rare bird that was quickly devoured by the owner's cat. They time-travelled to find a replacement. I thought, "If that's the best H-B can do with these boys, then I don't want to see any more." I did, however, see both live action movies.

Apparently, even H-B felt the same way, for a year later, the series moved to DIC, but fared no better. So either way, there was nothing excellent about these adventures.

Trivia Question 7: What baseball legend did the boys meet in one episode?

Answer: Babe Ruth.

The characters Bill and Ted follow the "Those Two Fools" mechanic for comedy, which can work when it's done well. However, such characters tend to need a grounding agent: someone sensible to contrast / compliment / counteract their foolishness. Often, this screwy + sensible mechanism is built-in: Blue Falcon and Dynomutt for one, Don Coyote and Sancho Panda for an inversion, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck for another. Even Disney Television's Talespin series would pass the Idiot Ball between principal characters Baloo and Rebecca, simply because this mechanism has proven to work so very well. Granted, it stands to reason that since one fool as a principal character is a comedy gold mine, two cuckoos should double the comedy. Unfortunately, comedy isn't algebraic. It has a Physics of Ridiculous all its own, so an Only Sane Man on staff is almost a necessity.

I must compliment Hanna-Barbera on using the original actors to voice these characters. It's likely they also had a say on the scripting as well, though that would be a limited say. And Hanna-Barbera would try their hand at the Two Fools concept with original characters: Two Stupid Dogs. It's difficult for me to pinpoint the fault here: is it that the novelty material was exhausted, or that Hanna-Barbera, even with expert consultants on board, couldn't adequately grasp the mechanics involved? Ultimately, Bill and Ted didn't go far as animated characters. Still, Hanna-Barbera, true to form, gave the concept a fair shot. Good on them.

Ah, I see. That would be a starring goofball surrounded by competent underlings. A figurehead fool, so to speak. I can't think of a Hanna-Barbera series that used this mechanism, but there is one by DiC Productions: Inspector Gadget. Penny, Brain and the Chief among others can cover for most of Gadget's shortcomings, leaving him one chance to get it right, or so far wrong that it comes out right by insane circumstance. In the case of Captain Tylor, though he commands a crew of "misfits," I'd conjecture the crew are competent enough to deal with shipboard life and with capital ship battles. Their "misfit" status is likely due to not adhering rigidly to military regulations, the way Colonel Kit Coyote does.