Season Review: Looney Tunes Cartoons Season Two

Our favorite Looney Tunes characters had made a significant comeback last year thanks to HBO Max. Some of their episodes from season one were far from classics and toned down the violence a bit. Nevertheless, the show managed to retain the vibrant and cartoonish spirit that made the classic Looney Tunes cartoons special in our hearts. As someone who grew up with these insane characters, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

With the first season being a success, which ran from May 2020 to April 2021, we now have its second season, which offers more looney episodes than you can shake a carrot at. The release of its second season was coincidentally well-timed because we’re getting a long-awaited Space Jam sequel next weekend. Heck, it even has an episode of Bugs playing basketball. So I guess we can now call July the “Looniest Month of 2021”.  

Like season one, the second season of Looney Tunes Cartoons consists of 10 episodes released in a single day. Each episode contains two primary shorts and a brief gag that appears in-between those shorts, except episodes five, six, and nine. Now I’m not going to break these episodes down one by one because that would be looney. But I will say that everything that worked in season one was as effective as ever in season two.  

As always, not every episode explodes with perfection like Wile E. Coyote’s TNT crates, but they remain consistent with its entertainment value and chuckle-a-minute gags. The voice cast was once again fantastic in recapturing the spirit and personality of the characters for a new generation of fans, especially Eric Bauza as Bugs Bunny and Bob Bergen as Porky Pig. The animation also worked wonders in providing non-stop visual slapstick and vibrant environments for the Looney Tunes to endure. As for the humor itself, it’s what you would expect from something that involves the Looney Tunes: crazy, energetic, and highly amusing. Ranging from its visual gags to its clever dialogue, the jokes in Looney Tunes Cartoons will surely tickle your funny bones, even though most of them were more silly than risqué.

If I were to pick my favorite shorts in season two, I would probably go with “Mummy Dummy” with Bugs Bunny, “Adopt Me” with Charlie Dog, and “Hog Wash” with Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. With “Mummy Dummy”, it offered a genuinely humorous scenario of Bugs unintentionally foiling a mummy’s curse when he mistakes a pyramid for a Las Vegas hotel. “Adopt Me” saw Charlie Dog attempting and failing to get adopted like he was a business person. Finally, “Hog Wash” has Porky getting caught in a car wash predicament, while Daffy thinks Porky’s scenario is part of a drive-in theater. Out of those three shorts, I happened to enjoy “Hog Wash” the most. Sure, it has Daffy acting more of a nitwit compared to him in the earlier Looney Tunes cartoons, but I couldn’t resist its jokes involving different movie genres. The only gags that I thought were pretty tame were the “End of the Leash” gags involving Foghorn Leghorn and Barnyard Dawg in episodes three and eight. While they’re not entirely awful, the humor in these gags couldn’t quite hold a candle to the ones involving Sylvester’s telephone pole mishap and Marvin the Martian’s flag.

Overall, the second season of Looney Tunes Cartoons continues its wacky and colorful shenanigans in an exemplary fashion. The “End of the Leash” gags weren’t as hilarious as the others, and there were a couple of episodes that fell a bit flat when it comes to their storylines. However, it’s still a joyful and looney series of shorts that should please fans young and old regarding its voice cast, animation, and humor.