Blue Monday

The Captain, fed up with what he considers slovenly housekeeping on the part of Mama, takes over the housekeeping on a washday, with the usual predictable results.

This is the strongest of the Captain & the Kids Series from MGM that I have seen, and the result can be laid squarely at the feet of its director -- or 'supervisor' as he is titled here, William Hanna. Within a couple of years he and Joseph Barbera would team up to invent Tom and Jerry and you can see what would happen here: bone-breaking slapstick comedy squarely within the bounds of character, here the Captain's mad temper and Billy Bletcher's on-the-spot voice work. But the other characters are also spot on, the Kids -- who make a brief appearance, contemptuously eating pancakes off the Captains head; Mama, losing her temper and stalking out; the voiceless Inspector, silent, cowardly and zany; and a malevolent vacuum cleaner.

This was not an enjoyable series for anyone to work on. It drove Friz Freleng back to the arms of Leon Schlesinger, but you can see it is just Hanna's meat. He would build his entire reputation and Barbera's, too, on this form.

Der Captain is not satisfied with Mama's housekeeping, so, true to comic convention, she challenges him to do better. If you can't predict the course that follows you will easily flunk "Sitcoms 101". The boys appear only briefly at the beginning. Hardly the pinnacle of this series, although Der Inspector's run-in with a vacuum cleaner with an attitude brings a smile, the animation and music are flawless as always, and since seeing this cartoon, I can't seem to get "No buttons on der ding-busted pants" out of my head. That's gotta count for something!