Read All About Ed: Ed, Edd, n' Eddy Episode Nine Review
Foreword
Ed, Edd N Eddy for the longest time has been my favorite cartoon. Recently, HBOMax has picked up several cartoons from the late 90s and early 2000s. Unsurprisingly, I went on an immediate nostalgia bender and watched the entire series with my lady love. And what better way to celebrate several of my favorite cartoons than by systematically reviewing each episode, starting with the dorks of Peach Creek.For all of my new readers – Hey, welcome to Patchwork! - Each episode will be reviewed on a 10 point rating scale. I'll be focusing on four aspects of the show and pulling the average to get a final tally. The four categories we'll be measuring are:
The Story – The Plot of the episode, as well as the characters themselves.
The Visuals – Whether they be character, backgrounds or accessories.
The Comedy - This is a “haha” funny show, so it needs decent comedy.
The Scam – The Ploy the Eds concoct to weasel the allowances of the other kids.
With the formalities out of the way, let's dive into episode nine of Ed, Edd N' Eddy:
Read All About Ed
It's time for more Nightmare Fuel! The title card gives us a red background with yellow, sun-like spots sparsely placed about. The more noticeable thing is the three pairs of floating eyeballs, each missing the face, head and body they belong to. Each organ is placed behind a pair of glasses – which I will note the coloring on the eyes themselves is kind of pleasant – and they seem to all be reading some kind of paper. The nightmarish thought of disembodied eyeballs staring at you from a blood red background is... unsettling. Being an Ed, Edd N Eddy savant – I won't pretend I don't know this is the infamous newspaper episode.
Moving on, the show opens up to a long shot of Eddy's house. It is still early morning and we zoom in to find that the short Ed-boy is still in bed sleeping. He makes an odd... kissing / snoring sound while mumbling about accept some kind of reward on behalf of himself. Not that we needed to subtly but this does give some insight into how vain Eddy is.
Just then what appears to be an earthquake rolls through the cal-de-sac as all the furniture and items within Eddy's room begin to shake and wiggle. After a few moments, Eddy is finally shaken awake. After a little slap stick and Eddy struggling to get to the window, we see that Rolf is outside driving a tractor. He appears to be cutting the grass in Eddy's yard – which is a little odd. I guess we're made to assume that Rolf does this as a part time job? It's not out of the ordinary for kids to mow someone's lawn for them. Regardless, Rolf waves high to Eddy, who is shouting out some undecipherable mumbling before we get a scene transition.
We visit the lovable oaf, Ed, and find him also sleeping in on a beautiful morning. Ed, sleeping with nary a thing but his underwear, shivers briefly before folding his mattress in half to serve as his blanket. Which, I admit, gets a chuckle out of me every time. The boy continues snoring and we get another scene transition. This... is an oddly pointless scene. I guess we see that Ed is sleeping as well, but we could have also assumed that. We get a quick comedy bit but other than that this scene really doesn't serve a purpose.
Cut to Eddward sleeping in his bed until he is naturally awoken, though it's animated to look rather sudden. The neat boy immediately gets to work making his bed, which I am jealous of. Being a nearly 27 year old man, I don't have nearly that kind of dedication to making the bed. He folds his sheets neatly before producing a giant clothes iron from his bag of holding. He irons the bed (I suppose ironing sheets makes sense but I feel the boy is gonna start a fire this way) before surveying his work. Satisfied, he moves on to his other duties.
We fade away to Eddy walking on the sidewalk, still wearing his night clothes. He has a pillow gripped under his arm and firmly placed against his head. He eventually mutters that “this will do” before laying on the sidewalk and sleeping some more. Double D stumbles upon Eddy, whistling the intro song with a bag full of papers strapped across his torso. He bids Eddy a “Good morning” but receives no reply. He wakes up the tired Ed-boy, who orders the sock head out of his room. Edd corrects his buddy and explains that he has a paper route. Eddy, not one to understand hard work, questions his friend. Double D explains that he is saving up for a electron microscope that he is short by just 19,472.18.
And, since I am that kind of nerd, I of course fact checked Double D. Which – unless inflation is heck of a lot worse than I imagine – Double D is either buying a really beat up used one (which can start at around 2,500 USD) or is getting that microscope for a steal. They typically cost between 75,000 USD – 10,000,000 USD. So... yeah.
Eddy, thinking Double D is making that kind of dough in a timely fashion, wants to expand his route massively. The smarter boy tries to explain the logistics but greedy folks usually don't care about that sort of thing. We cut to Double D returning home, happy to have made “another nickel”. Which – MatPat eat your heart out – if we take at face value to mean he literally makes a nickel a day for his route, it would take him over A THOUSAND YEARS to afford the microscope. Trying to relax, Double D goes to open his curtain to survey the beautiful morning. Instead of a nice outside view, he sees a literal mountain of newspapers bulging against his window. The glass pane can't hold back the shear quantity of papers and they all begin tumbling in. Sock head is buried underneath the pile and calls out for Eddy.
A cut away shows Ed running through the streets, giggling to himself. He runs up on the pile of newspapers, sliding into the pile. A long shot gives a Grinch looking mountain of paper, nearly double the height of Edd's house. Double D crawls his way through the mountain and informs Ed that Eddy ordered too many papers. Ed, enjoying himself like always, swims through the papers while listening to Edd. The smarter boy asks where their third compadre was. Ed relays that he is still sleeping before being tasked with retrieving Eddy so that he can help deliver the papers.
We fade to black before cutting to Ed struggling to pull the mountain of papers. All are stacked high into a single, red wagon. The camera pans up the stack to where Eddy is sleeping, bed and all. The boy has huge fuzzy dice shoved through his ears. Eddy wakes up once more, disoriented and not aware of his surroundings yet. He steps out of bed and immediately plummets to the bottom. He face plants, startling his friends. His eyes see green and is excited to make some serious cash out of the stack. He encourages Ed to work faster before noticing Double D climbing down from the stack. The neat and tidy boy scolds Eddy for not making his bed.
A cut brings us to Edd delivering a paper in a clean and respectable manner. He wipes the door mat before perfectly lining up the folded up news. Ed, of course, is less meticulous. He runs off with a huge pile of papers and begins shoving them into a single mailbox, forcing the papers through the other end and into a pile on the front lawn. We then check on Eddy, who happens to be sunbathing and not contributing at all. It doesn't appear that his friends are too concerned about it, as Edd cautions him that he could burn.
After a few more scenes of the boys working, Ed gets stuck on a fence gate – his pants being hooked on the top of it. Double D, being the good friend that he is, rushes to assist. Once on the other side of the gate, he misses Ed completely and is distracted by a small, white dog. The dog chomps on Edd's socks and the boy cries in horror while Ed struggles to get off of the fence gate.
A cut away shows that Eddy is reading the funny pages when his friends show up to ask for assistance. Eddy, acting as confident as ever, attempts to deliver a paper. He throws the stack, only to have it exploded into loose sheets. Eddy, having worked up quite a sweat, looks to a bruised and battered Double D for a solution. The boy sarcastically agrees to fix the problem.
The episode moves to Edd's garage, where the boys are hanging out while Edd finishes his work. He informs Eddy that he's happy with it, to which Ed responses “I'm happy with Eddy, too” - which made me chuckle. We then see that Double D invented a newspaper canon, one of the more famous creations the show gives us. They give it a test run by feeding a paper into a funnel, to which it successfully launches against a front door. The only drawback being the horrifying, breath swallowing noise it makes once something is fed through it, but that might just be me. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
Ed shovels the papers off the stack and into the funnel while Ed dreams about the jawbreakers they can afford. Double D proceeds to calculate their progress... using an... etch-a-sketch. Everything seems to be going smoothly until Ed foolishly tosses Eddy's bed into the cannon. The machine struggles to swallow the mattress as Eddy cries out “my bed”. Ed informs him that “it's too early for bed,” before noticing the machine struggling. A few jumps on the bed forces it through, but causes the cannon to lose control, firing numerous papers indiscriminately. Ed rides the machine as it takes off through the neighborhood. The other Eds both cower underneath Double D's hat.
The rampage the machine goes on is brutal. A stray bundle of papers knocks Kevin clear off his bike and into the sky. The machine finally breaks down at the end of the cal-de-sac. With it's final breath, the paper shoots out harmlessly and rolls, ever so slowly, into the back of Sarah's leg. Sarah, having been mortally wounded, screams out for Ed and declares that he hit her. She threatens to tell mom but Ed cleverly destroys the evidence by shoving the roll of news into his mouth, declaring that the paper is “All gone.”
Eddy instructs the kind, older brother to ignore the brat and think about their profits instead. Double D throws a wrench into the fantasy by informing them that if they leave the papers in the horrendous state they are in, they will not receive any kind of payment.
The boys painstakingly hand fold each and every newspaper so they can resume a neat delivery. Eddy, complaining that it can;'t get much worse, summons a fierce rain storm. After fighting over the ink that was now staining their bodies, the rains suddenly stop, leaving Double D to say the famous line of “Summer rains, you can never predict them.” And not a second later, thunder strikes and the storm resumes. The scene repeats a few times before the boys are buried beneath a new shipment of newspapers. Ed calls out that he sees his new horoscope reading. Stating that “New enterprise fails to meet expectations.” I am... embarrassed to say that I only now get that joke, having watch this episode numerous times and giving a third rewatch since I started this review. Yikes. The episode closes as Ed asks for clarification on his fortune.
The Story
This episode has a simplistic premise. The Eds find a way to make money and, as is the usual story, Eddy's greed and impatience leads to their downfall. While I can't say I have many complaints – well, I still have some significant gripes.
One of the major downfalls being the rather numerous, pointless scenes. The intro with Rolf mowing Eddy's front lawn doesn't go anywhere. Sure, it serves the purpose of telling us how Eddy's morning is going and forces him out of bed and into the streets where Edd finds him, but if you were to watch the intro of all the Eds getting up in the morning your first impression would be that it is a sleep related episode.
Speaking of the other Eds, seeing Ed's morning also adds nothing to the episode. It's about a eight second clip or so that serves no purpose other than a little bit of visual comedy. I feel that the episode could have opened with Double D simply delivering the newspapers and the Eds just naturally run into him. Sure, Eddy being sleepless leads to his bed being on top of the newspaper stack and jamming the invention, but I feel it wouldn't be difficult to replace the bed with any other silly thing Ed could shove into the funnel.
Outside of the intro scenes, the simplistic nature of the episode, while not bad in any way, does nothing to really stick with me. All of that leads me to giving the story a -
6/10
Hard Enjoy
The Visuals
No complaints for this category. Episode Nine keeps up with the same visual excellence this series will continue provide. We also get the addition of one of the more memorable inventions – the newspaper cannon. The cannon is as shoddy and homemade as all the other Double D creations and I wouldn't have it any other way. Simple funnel, cardboard tubing and some kind of metal cylinder – this is one of the most iconic inventions the show will offer. All of that combines into a score of -
8/10
Pretty Great
The Comedy
A healthy mix of visual jokes and a quick lines, episode nine provides some decent funnies. A strong opening with the nonsensical nature of Rolf operating a house size tractor in front of Eddy's home. Ed folding his mattress in half to use as a blanket is another strong visual gag. Double D's comments of making Eddy's bed and the quick line from Ed about “liking Eddy” also make really strong jokes. And, of course, who could forget the “summer rains” line. This episode managed to make me chuckle a couple of times, earning itself a solid -
7/10
Pretty Good
The Scam
A difficult category for me to properly score. I love the newspaper shooter invention and the paper trail is a classic source of money revenue for a young lad. My main issue is that there really isn't much of a scam to speak of. Newspapers are a legitimate product that the Eds are selling, albeit in bulk. How they deliver the newspapers and how many they deliver aren't tricking anyone of out their hard earned quarters. There is no nefarious business venture or wacky, TV Guide style product for the Eds to shell. That being said... I do enjoy this episode and the idea of it, alongside the newspaper launcher earns a -
6/10
Hard Enjoy
The Final Tally
7/10
Pretty Good
While I know I was harsh on the story elements, I do genuinely like this episode. As I said, the newspaper shooter and the summer rains line are some of the most iconic components of the series as a whole. Any long time fans would be able to finish the summer rains line or explain the events of the episode to you, I am sure. I would recommend giving it a watch, even if the episode doesn't win any rewards from myself overall.
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