123: Sportacus Who? (prod 123)

Filming in September 2004. Even superheroes take care of their hair!!

Original airdate: August 2, 2005

Story by Magnus Scheving

Written by Noah Zachary, Cole Louie, Magnus Scheving

Directed by Jonathan Judge, Magnus Scheving

Executive producers - Magnus Scheving, Ragnheidur Melsted, Raymond P. Le Gue, Mark Read, Brown Johnson, Kay Wilson Stallings

Starring Magnus Scheving, Stefan Karl Steffanson, Julianna Rose Mauriello

Puppeteers - Ronald Binion, Gudmondor Thor Karason, Jodi Eichelberger, David Matthew Feldman, Julie Westwood, Sarah Burgess

Sportacus who who? I don’t have much memories of watching this episode..

The episode begins with a new not recycled cold open (shocker!!) where Sportacus writes a letter. Once he sends it via airmail, he realizes he made a mistake. So he runs into his door, yelling.. DOOR. 

But the door doesn’t open so he has to turn the knob next to it a bit. XD! Once it finally opens, Sportacus connects his feet to a rope like he did in the Laziest Town and catches the letter. By this time the letter would’ve already been in someone’s goddamn hair. It turns out he forgot to sign his name.. THEN he throws the letter away again. The letter flies into Pixel’s house and Stephanie reads it out loud - ‘Dear Pixel, you wanted me to remind you to remember to remind yourself to remember something.’ It turns out the thing is to make a backup copy of his hard drive files, but the computer starts smoking once he tries to restore a restart point. Sportacus’ crystal beeps and he runs into the house and unplugs the wire out of the seven there are and he looks confused when only one wire turns off one device.

He eventually unplugs them all, but Pixel’s computers are gone. He manages to save one device but it has melted. Whatever it was, it probably needed some battery or computer to run, so I wouldn’t be as sad as Pixel.

Now Pixel’s devices, games, photos and Stephanie shrines are all memories as he says.. while Robbie is eavesdropping. He wishes Sportacus himself could have a memory meltdown so he didn’t save anyone. Then he makes his own wish come true, setting up a trap. His plan is for Sportacus to jump over the hurdles and land straight into the Memory Sucker 3000, knowing he can’t resist. A smart plan, and (spoiler alert), it somehow is foiled in the end. Plot armor! So, Sportacus jumps over the hurdles and straight into the sucker.

Now Sportacus doesn’t remember what he was doing, or who he is. The memory sucker should’ve sucked every single thing he knew out of his brain like a similar gadget did in 'Henry Danger’, and this time I can’t say 'eh, Nickelodeon’ because both shows were produced by Nickelodeon. Then Robbie jumps in and says he was Sportacus’ best friend.

He advises Sportacus to listen to him and to never ever save anyone and Sportacus wasn’t planning to. Meanwhile, the kids are talking about how Pixel’s computer lost all it’s memory and with no memory there’s no you. Now, Sportacus is an ice-cream man. Ironic, heh? So, when he offers the two ice-cream, Ziggy is super happy, and Stephanie is super confused. So Sportacus scoops up a pentable-scooped (five) ice cream cone. No matter HOW hot it is, I am not eating that.

It turns out that all the convincing Robbie did with the 'stop-saving’ nonsense actually didn’t work very well. As you might guess, Ziggy can’t hold a five-scooped ice cream very well (why’d he even order that??) so he nearly trips, then Sportacus dives on the floor with his ice-cream cone. So now Ziggy has a cone on the top and the bottom! Lucky duck. Anyways, Stephanie the smartie skirt knows that something is up, but Ziggy is too blinded by the multi-coloured cone he’s holding to realize it - the superhero who recommends eating Sportscandy and has meltdowns when he eats any type of sugar is serving one of the sweetest deserts ever.

It turns out Sporty hasn’t completely had his memory sucked, because he’s working out on the bench near, doing pushups. Robbie goes up and down trying to talk to him while he moves. Fast for the laziest guy in town.

It’s a pretty funny sequence. XD!! Eventually, Robbie gives up and allows him to exercise as long as he doesn’t save anyone. Meanwhile, Pixel is trying to get his computer to work and Stephanie talks about how weird Sportacus is being. He is still serving ice-cream and Pixel realises something is off while Ziggy wants more. XD! They go to say hi to him but Ziggy gets hyper when Sportacus offers him more until Stephanie stops him. XD! This show is kinda funny. Stephanie tells him to stop serving ice-cream because he’s a superhero and Ziggy asks if he remembers that he is one and he says he doesn’t remember anything. DUN DUN DAAAAHHHH!!

They make up a plan to remind him of everything by making him play sports and performing a reprise of 'Have You Never’. At the end he claims to have almost remembered remembering until he just didn’t. All that good stuff might’ve not been the good stuff he wanted to eat. Then Stephanie the stupid skirt tells Pixel to put up a bunch of videos and photos of Sportacus on his dead computer. So they go back to his house to try and get it to work. Sportacus talks about how nice those kids are while sitting on a bench, and Robbie pops up out of nowhere FNAF style. XD. He scares the superhero who lives thousands of feet in the air so much that he somersaults of the bench.

Robbie tells him a bunch of lies about how mean they are to him. And they keep on standing up and sitting down over and over and it’s hilarious!! Robbie wants to tell him the worst nickname of them all, but it’s too funny- uh, I mean, too awful for him to spit it out until Sportacus grabs his shirt.

He tells him to write it down, but he doesn’t know how to spell it! That’s surprising considering in Dear Diary he wrote an entire page. But he decides to whisper it to him. He says they call him 'The Blue Elf’ which is a throwback to the 1990s Icelandic plays when Sportacus’ name translated to the Sports Elf. And he advises Sportacus to go.. home!

He points to the airship and says to go up there he needs to do some moves (the signature move), and he needs to say a word that starts with L. His first guess? Lettuce. XD! Second? Letters. Third is a charm! Ladder! Robbie tells him to go up and do what he does best.

Knitting. XD!! So, meanwhile, Pixel is trying to launch a new circuit pathway on his Linux distro computer, and it works. Now he copies some Sportacus movie files (better be MP4 or wmv files.) to his laptop, while Robbie is scheming something. He plans to pop the airship like a balloon to Sportacus never finds his way back to town. I think that’s overkill. Just in time, the kids come back.

He comes up with a pretty smart trap for them so that they can’t get away. Ziggy spots a lollipop on the floor, and when he tries to pick it up, a magic jail cell falls from the air and traps the three. HOW DID THAT GET THERE???

Robbie uses his very low level of strength to push his cannon on wheels (or for the Jacky Chan/Samo Hung/Bio Yuen fans, wheels on cannons) that we see again in the last episode of Season 2 and in the first episode of Season 3. That cannon has been a part of LazyTown for years. If we’re lucky it’s in the museum.

Robbie says it looks like a lovely day to do some flying. Meanwhile, in the flying airship, Sportacus has knitted the longest blue-and-white scarf I think anyone has ever seen in their lives. XD!!

Robbie puts on his helmet (looks like something a magician’d wear) and climbs into the cannon. While the kids are still in the cell (Ziggy has pressed his face against the free space, lol!) the cannon fires while Robbie is in it, which should’ve burnt him.

Robbie’s shoe falls off. Meanwhile, Milford is having a nice meal with five cakes (that ain’t sports candy) in the nice weather, and then Robbie’s shoe lands on the spoon that is holding a cupcake and it goes flying onto Milford’s bald head.

How doesn’t any of the frosting or the cake move when he shakes his head?? Something to think about. Milford picks up Robbie’s shoe and is very confused about what’s happening. It’s raining shoes, from outta the sky. XD! Sportacus puts the scarf back in his bed cupboard, then the crystal beeps. Cue that epic moment where he remembers everything.

Is that how powerful this crystal is? Wow-ee. Meanwhile, Robbie’s helmet (has a spike in the top) pokes the airship with such force it starts shaking and turning like in Rottenstein. Cue classic cartoon moment where character in air looks down then falls. Sportacus flips into the skutla and looks down. Robbie is falling, and for some reason he has an umbrella out of nowhere that he uses as a parachute. Where did he get that from?.. Maybe I don’t wanna know..

Like TWO EPISODES AGO (Play Day) he uses his scarf to rescue him, grasping it and jumping out the ship. Like I said in my last review - THIS AIN’T WHAT THEY MEANT BY REDUCING, REUSING, OR RECYCLING!! Hopefully, now Magnus owns the show again, if he does make a new movie or season that he doesn’t reuse a bunch of shots and songs. While Sportacus is swinging, the kids say his name in happiness and he stops on a wall and asks 'Who?’. The kids are sad that he doesn’t have his memory back, then he winks and smiles at them.

I know somewhere, somehow, sometime, there was a woman in her 40s blushing at this scene. Mark. My. Words. Robbie loses his hold of the umbrella, and Sportacus swings in to help him. He falls onto a tree and lands on his groin. I never found that funny.

So, the helmet falls off his head and Sportacus comes to the rescue. Robbie asks him to help but Sportacus reminds him what he said - never never never save anyone, but Robbie says he meant everyone except him. XD!! The tree branch becomes weak, and Robbie falls down (reused shot from Super Hero for a Day).

Sportacus offers to still be friends with him, but he says with friends like Sportacus he doesn’t need any. Then he realizes his shoe is missing and walks off the screen, calling it’s name like it has ears. XD! He gets the kids out of the cell and he tells them now he remembers what he likes doing best - doing random backflips. They perform Bing Bang. During the dance Ziggy wraps himself in the scarf. I love the humor in this show.

Robbie goes back in the cannon to look for the shoe, and Milford comes to tell him he’s found it. He tries telling Milford he is in the cannon but he pulls the lever and Robbie goes flying again. Funny scene after funny scene!

Pretty good episode. Decent plot and amazing execution of jokes. 8/10