Review: Mickey Mouse – “Doggone Biscuits”

Mickey_Mouse

Spoilers Below

In “Doggone Biscuits,” Mickey is leaving Pluto with Minnie for a whole month. He drops off a food dish, a leash, and a huge bag of treats. Pluto loves the treats but they are very fattening so he isn’t allowed to have too many.

Mickey calls Minnie a mere two days later. She feeds Pluto the last biscuit while she is on the phone with her beloved mouse. It isn’t until Mickey decides that he misses Pluto (but not Minnie, by the way) so much that he has to come home early. This is when Minnie realizes that Pluto is now the size of a doghouse.

Desperately, our girl tries to figure out a way to get Pluto to shed the pounds. She tries putting a slimming sweater on him but it just squishes the fat into his feet and head until he bursts out of the garment. She tries sticking him in the sauna on full heat but it just dehydrates him so he gets even bigger when he drinks water. She tries getting him to take a walk but Pluto has zero interest in exercising.

At least until the mailman walks by.

Realizing the Pluto needs motivation, Minnie puts on a mail carrier uniform. Pluto starts slowly crawling across the yard. Minnie unveils a hydrant under her hat. Pluto starts crawling faster. Minnie reveals a cluster of kittens in her mailbag. Pluto starts moving even faster. When they reach the street, a fire engine roars past. Minnie pops some roller skates out of her shoes and grabs a hold of the rear ladder. Pluto has now lost enough weight that he can kinda hop-jog after her.

Suddenly, the fire engine takes a sharp turn, flinging Minnie off the back of the vehicle. She crashes into a dog catcher van, releasing all of the caged mutts. Once the dogs see the kittens in Minnie’s bag, they go crazy and chase her down the street. Loyal Pluto tries to come to her rescue but he isn’t fast enough. Minnie is chased into a hammock, which flings both her and her pursuers across town. Pluto switches directions but gets caught up in the leftover hammock. The hammock starts wrapping around a variety of items in the street – a mailbox, a car, a tree, even a boat. Until Pluto can no longer carry the load.

By this time Mickey has arrived at Minnie’s house. (Hey, when did Minnie get a house? She had an apartment in all of the previous episodes!) Minnie and the pack fall on top of the unsuspecting mouse. Once again, the dogs start attacking. Mickey and Minnie call for Pluto to save them. Somehow, Pluto gathers enough strength to drag pretty much the entire town back to Minnie’s house. He barrels into the fray, tossing all of the dogs off his owners.

When the dust settles, Mickey sees that Pluto is now super muscular. This surprises him, since he expected Minnie to feed Pluto all of the treats, leaving him with a fat dog. Minnie giggles uncomfortably as the episode ends.

I have to admit that this is one of my favorite episodes. Lately, the writers have, for some reason, decided to make all of the side characters stupid and unattractive. In many of the episodes, Minnie is so dumb that she needs Mickey to do extremely simple things for her. In the previous episode, we saw them turn Goofy into a dim-witted hobo. In the episodes featuring Donald, he rarely does more than be grumpy. So, while there is a (rather unfunny) joke in this episode about Minnie being fat before she slimmed down in the sauna, Minnie does hold onto her usual naïveté and innocence. She isn’t stupid and she doesn’t rely on someone else to fix her problems. Minnie knows she did something wrong and she tries to fix it. If only they would return the rest of the side characters to the former glory. At least we have these shining examples to hold onto until then.

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