The Flashback Afterschool Specials
It's time to look at another ABC Afterschool Special, this time we go back to the early days of AAS (I'm glad the acronym wasn't something else) back to 1973, which is the part of the first "season" of the anthology. Our look is a live-action and animated hybrid, more on that soon, called "The Incredible, Indelible, Magical Physical, Mystery Trip". The special was written by Guy Fraumeni, who worked in children's television before this as a writer for NBC's Experiment in Television and NBC's Children's Theatre, he also worked in graphic arts. The other writer was Larry Spiegel who did the teleplay writing and worked a couple other AAS.
Like I said this is an animation and live-action hybrid special the special starts with live-action and two kids named Missey and Joey. Missey is played by Kim Richards whom you might know from many things, but I'm going to mention she was on James at 15/16 as Sandy Hunter. Joey is played by Michael Link who will also 2 more specials later on, and he's done a few things but we'll mention he was on the sitcom "Julia". They are laying on the floor looking at a book, and an old man is sleeping in a chair. (He might be 30 so, "old")
Looks like fun, that rug though.
Then the book starts to wink at them and they are more just amazed instead of going AHHHHHHHHHH oh noooo ahhhh! Then they hear a voice and instead of going (we did this joke) they see a small cartoon guy, they mention he's a cartoon. This is a character named Timer, voiced by Len Maxwell, This character will actually show up later in ABC history when he was apart of some PSA interstitial called "Time for Timer" that ran in 1975, with a different voice provided.
What was in that cup?
Back to IMPMT, the kids are not shocked that a cartoon character is in their house, and he introduces himself that he's the keeper of body time, so he's like the reason you're hungry. He says he's on vacation, he tells the kids if they smile he'll make them smaller for some reason. The kids don't believe this for a second, because that's an odd thing here. So he sings and makes them smaller and into cartoon characters.
That Time I woke up as a cartoon character
Joey and Missey's animated characters are not voiced by their live-action actors. Instead, Joey is voiced by Peter Broderick and Missey is Kathy Buch. I forgot to mention the sleeping man, that's their uncle Carl he's played by Hal Smith, who's listings are long and long. He did some ABC Weekend Specials, provided voices on countless projects, like the voice of John Whittaker in the Adventures in Odyssey. He was in "The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" , voiced Goofy. Just long list of stuff.
Here is in live-action and he drinks his niece and nephew who were small and on the cup. (oops) The special was produced by David H. DePati and Friz Freleng so we're getting everything here.
The kids are in uncle Carl's mouth...(ummm no) which is animated because that'd be disturbing if it it wasn't. They meet mouth general who is there to protect the teeth and there's decay germ who is going after the teeth. Joey is not very impressed and wants to get out, but he doesn't know there's like 32 more minutes, so yeah they are going down instead. (So they get digested and died)
You can say I won't stomach this adventure !
They end up in Carl's lungs, which I like how they are animated and wish our lungs were this much fun. (This is in odd thing to say) Not everything in the lungs are good times, we meet "Sad Sack" who sad because Uncle Carl is a smoker. This is like the really early time of now we're saying smoking is bad... cigarette ads were banned just about 3 years before this aired. Since this is an Afterschool special they making the kids learn. Odd to get this as a song, and odd close ups of man smoking is something. The part where the air sacks are crying help us is kind of horrifying. (Don't smoke!)
The Lungs, or Los Angles , 1972?
Now they kids finds out that Uncle Carl has fatty blockage near his arteries. Oh my, anyway they meet the heart, and the heart looks like the Valentine heart so accuracy destroyed! Timer doesn't want the brain to find out that they are there because the brain has tough policies. Back to the heart, it doesn't look good, so this is the horrify the kids and tell them their uncle is about to die special. (dark)
This would make a great Valentine's Day card
Uncle Carl is carrying a television set, because he wants to watch Football game in bed. (With the TV in bed? That'd be silly) This is kind the fun trippy 70's animation that existed and it very creative on how it's showing the human body, and having things act like a country, is creative.
To the spine which is being portrayed as a contemporary style computing system, because it's the central network of the body, get it? The kids later end up at Carl's stomach and since it's 1973, there's a hippy. The kids are being told that their uncle eats too much. If you don't like close ups of guy eating then you might need a little break here.
Now Missey gets a song at the ribs because sure. She's sad that she's on her uncle's ribs and not outside back home. Which I mean, does make sense. We do have like 17 minutes left so no going home yet.
Joey ended up at the uncle's left hand, which guess what? It's infected! This man is a mess. Missey and Timer are going to look for Joey before the infection gets him. I'm concerned that Uncle Carl hasn't noticed his niece and nephew aren't anywhere. It looks like Carl is going down.
Ooh good, he's stopped from dying by the power of water, and Missey has found Joey. There's a battle between Carl's immune system versus forces of infection, and Carl doesn't have the best immune system since well look at his bottle. It does mention death too... so wow.
I'm Joey, the killer of infection, pray to me!
Joey decides to all start fighting infection because that's a power move and so does Missey for a second. (This is the least strange episode of Magic School Bus I've seen) Timer says that Uncle Carl needs to change his bad habits and to make sure his body can fight. There's one more place to go and that's the Brain. Joey and Missey meet the brain the tell him that they are tired and want to go home, which he knows, because brain. Timer tells them this was all his plan because of course, he wanted them to help Carl. The brain says that Carl has to help himself as well. The brain song because cool.
Come together!
Eventually, they get to go home after some more 1970's happens. Finally, they are outside of their uncle's body and they decide to tell their uncle they were inside his body. (I'm just glad they didn't go out the bad way) Uncle Carl is like "that's nice" and keeps eating. Will Uncle Carl live? Nobody knows.
This is a fun outing, and I liked it. It has the right mixture of 70's oddness and cheese while being creative and fun. It's a fun special showing the kids traveling through the body, and I like how the body was shown as a country and how creative it was. The characters are kind fun, though the children are kind of flat (literally) but they are kind of like our self insert inside the body. The special gives an interesting look at the idea of taking care of your body, and even mentioning death is big. The songs are there, but aren't too bad, they maybe don't stick out as memorable.
The character designs are simple but a nice classic simple you see in older cartoons, I like the aesthetic. So it's a fun one. Give it a look. That's our look, tune in next time when we venture enter a body to see if we can find a signing heart.
