I kind of wonder how Disney XD will be seen in the future, it was Disney's attempt at making a male focused network, because of Disney Channel ending up on female skew, then they changed things to focus on animation, then gave up. I liked the network; it was always
more interesting than its sister Disney branded Channel to me.
more interesting than its sister Disney branded Channel to me.
With all that, it might be remembered for Gravity Falls, which is where that show was moved and had sucess with it. It was the home of a many of 2010's Disney Television animated shows that weren't for preschoolers that is.
I'm going to talk about a gem of a show for our One-Shot Posts this "Future-Worm!"
"Future-Worm!" was a Disney XD original animated series that premiered as shorts in 2015, then the full series started on August 1, 2016. Which is important for the fact that the show was running at peak Disney XD is your Disney Channel for animation (and still boys getting a spot too).
"Future-Worm!" was created by Ryan Quincy who worked on South Park and later crated a show for IFC called "Out There" (not be confused with any non 2013 non IFC series of the same name). Like this show, Out There was also animated, but that was going for more an adult audience, whilst I will say this was for a younger/child audience that doesn't mean it feels limited by that.
The basic premise of the show is a boy named Danny Douglas, has invited a time traveling lunch box and meets worm named Future Worm (very easy name) with great titanium reinforced abs (which we have to mention by law) and they go on adventures.
Danny is voiced by Andy Milonakis which is the most interesting and yet perfect casting choice for a character. Future-Worm or Fyootch is voiced by James Adomian who brings a great voice that makes the worm sound like a gruff action character, which is great for our titanium abs, with bullet proof beard and a photo receptor visor. They are our main characters.
This show has 21 episodes as half hours (with ads) and most of the episodes are broken up into 3 segments , instead of the traditional 11 minute segments or a full 22 minute thing. This allows the show to vary the lengths of segments usually at 11 minutes, 7 minutes and 3 minutes. Minus the final episode which does a full 22 minute single story.
Most of the time the segments are un related to each other and do their own different stories. That doesn't mean the show is fully self contained stories, it does reward you for watching episodes and remembering things when you watch a different episode, calling back to certain things and details. This also pays off in the finale, as a reward for watching the series.
The first segment, "Long Live Captain Cakerz!" introduces some stuff that appears in the show like seeing the stake-based superhero show. (That's one of the weirdest thing I've mentioned.) We also meet Danny's parents for a bit, they aren't big in this yet. We (because they already know) also meet a girl named Bug (voiced by Jessica DiCicco, which is ironic, she once voiced an actual bug in a cartoon). Bug's interesting it seems they are friends but not close and she wanted to go with them in the lunchbox, but they leave her. The plot is about Danny wanting his favorite cereal, and wondering where all the boxes went. This is simple premise, but the fun part of the show is to see how it accelerates into madness.
There are some other hallmarks and long running gags, I'm not going to mention them all, but they are fun. Anyway, madness, gloop aliens have taken over the world apparently, so the simple plot of using time travel to get cereal turned into aliens taking over the world, they shot the cereal into the sun. Then Neil deGrasse Tyson shows up (voiced by Neil deGrasse Tyson) that's also something that will be said more than once for this show. Neil knows Future-Worm because sure, and he explains the aliens are made of sour milk and good thing Danny has hidden the cereal in the backyard to fight them. I love how this escalated.
The 2nd segment , "Healin' Touch with Dr. D" is shorter story where Danny has brain freeze and Fyootch brings him to a TV doctor in the year 3000 and the doctor happens to be a T-rex. That all I'm going to say, because I do want you to watch the show. I will say, it uses it shorter time to give a story without feeling to bogged down.
The final segment, of episode 1 is "Terrible Tuber Trouble". Fun fact: this episode has Justin Roiland voicing a character, ironic to those who call this a "Rick and Morty" for kids or family or whatever. The show takes a simple idea, having to make the parents dinner to cash in a coupon, and having something accurate in a strange way.
More after the Jump