Last time…
The teenager has found the Warners, and learns that they have not been so trapped after all. Find out what happens in this back-story of
The Warners That Time Forgot:
Episode 11: Phone Home (or The Ballad of Doug Wellner)
Sitting in the Warners' home theatre, the teenager begins to watch a movie projected onto a screen, which explains more about why the Warners surrendered to Doug Wellner.
The movie starts with a shot of a production building. Below is the caption, "Amblin Entertainment: 1997"
Inside, the Warners are walking down a corridor, with movie posters of Spielberg's movies lined on both sides.
"Why do you think Mr Spielberg is calling this big conference? Are going to be congratulated for winning more Emmys?" Wakko asked
"I don't know Wakko, this conference is pretty secret. It must be his latest project announcement," Dot answered
"Whatever it is, it better not be a Flintstones sequel. The guy's talented, but he can't make everything work for him," Yakko added.
The Warners entered a door to a large conference room, kind of like the one Apple uses nowadays for their product launches. Inside, all of the cartoons produced by Amblin Entertainment were inside, the entire casts of Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid and even Tiny Toons (despite being cancelled 5 years ago).
Suddenly, the title song to ET played. Out from the back and top of the stage, Steven Spielberg was riding a bike attached to a zip line. "Typical Spielberg entrance routine," Brain said annoyed.
Steven arrived on stage to the cheering of the crowd. He then signalled for quiet. He started off the conference by announcing Amblin's latest project, explaining that the network pushed the idea. The show, Hysteria was an educational show for a younger audience that made world history fun and excitable. He then showed a working concept trailer.
Then he moved on to the main reason why he wanted this conference to be a secret, "Now, I also have some important news for you. For 5 years, my current showpiece show, Animaniacs, has been winning the hearts of millions and the respect of the wider TV community. The same goes for Pinky and the Brain. And I know we have a quality show in Freakazoid. But, now it seems the network wants to go in a different direction and the head of the network has decided to wind down episode orders for all of our current shows. I'm sorry, but our shows are getting cancelled"
A large gasp emitted from the room, as it seemed the success of Spielberg's shows would guarantee its future beyond 2000. Wakko immediately reached inside his bag grabbed his mallet and started marching out of his seat.
Steven immediately seeing this called Wakko, "Now now now, Wakko, I forbid you or any of your siblings to make the new network head your 'special friend'. You are not supposed to know about this at all, but you are like family to me and I couldn't sit by and watch you enjoying making your cartoons knowing your fate."
Steven then called Yakko, Wakko & Dot out to the stage. "You guys have been my greatest success in this industry and I want you to go out in style. We're still making the movie. And you know what? I'm not saying he can't be your 'special friend' after all this is over." He then winks his eyes at the Warners.
Skippy, with his mouth wide open for the past few minutes, finally closes his mouth and turns to Slappy, "Why aren't you getting angry about this?"
"Skippy, I've been taken off stage more times then Milton Berle. You know he never liked Yakko…"
"I know Aunt Slappy, everybody knows that."
Freakazoid and Buster Bunny are sitting next to each other.
"Ahh, Buster, why am I only a cameo in this flashback? My show's getting cancelled too."
"Listen Freakazoid, the writer has never watched your show, he hasn't watched my show either. How can he write about characters he knows nothing about?" Buster replied truthfully
Freakazoid simply gives an "Oh," and then whimpers to himself
"What about our show Mr Spielberg? We are just as successful as those three!" Brain yelled from the audience
"As far as I know, your show's been cancelled and that's that," Steven said
"Well this stinks. Narf!" Pinky said
After the conference, the Warners are discussing their future.
"Gee Yakko, I'm not feeling well, and I don't think is was the tuna salad I ate on the way here," Wakko said sadly
"Well, that's a bigger downer then when we went to see Cutthroat Island, but siblings, there's only one thing we can do."
"What's that?" Dot asked
"Go into retirement," Yakko responded
"Your not serious about retiring, are you Doc?" Out of nowhere, Bugs Bunny appears, "People love your schtick."
"Bugs Bunny? What are you doing here?" Wakko wondered.
"Ehh, Steven's looking at making sequel to Space Jam with this great basketball child star… Lebron something or other." Bugs said
"Oh, we aren't really retiring, we're just going back to how we lived before our series begun." Yakko then turns to face the audience, almost like he is directly talking to the teenager
"You see, before we started making this show we were never really trapped in the water tower, we always escape once every couple of days. Mr Plotz was nice to us, so we didn't have to sneak out and make sure no one noticed like we usually did."
Inside the home theatre where the movie was playing the teenager turned his head to the left, "So you guys never are trapped. Very cunning," But he discovered that the only person in the room was him.
On the movie screen the Warners were virtually staring straight at the teenager and said, "Thank you." This startled the teenager a little.
"So whatever happened to Doug Wellner?"
"Well, he replaced every cartoon on Kids WB with Pokémon. We thought we'd give him a taste of his own medicine."
"The movie screen then fades to a scene of Doug Wellner driving a car while having a Meowth in his lap, given to him for free by Nintendo. A caption reads, '3 YEARS LATER'"
In his car, Doug says to himself, "I love this show, and not only is this show a cash cow, but they also gave me one of their creatures that actually makes more money for me!"
Suddenly, from a manhole cover underneath the road, 3 cartoon hands throw spikes into the path where Doug Wellner unknowingly drives over them. "Grrr, how can all four of my tyres blow out at once?" He pulls over to inspect the damage.
He notices the spikes on the tyres and mumbles to himself, "Stupid pranksters." He's been getting a lot of hate lately from fans of the shows he cancelled. Doug yells, "You pranksters aren't going to change my mind! Wait until you earn a collage degree in business and then you'll understand!"
He then grabs his mobile phone to start making calls to the network insurance agency to order a tow truck to pick him up.
During the call, from behind the bushes, a series of Pokéballs started rolling towards him. "Pokéballs? Here? Oh well, more cash cows for me!" The Pokéballs then released Voltorbs and Electrodes. For those who don't follow the series, they have a very big tendency to explode. Of course, that's exactly what happened.
But the misery wasn't over yet. One Pokéball was still unopened. Doug Wellner picked it up. Unfortunately for him it was a Snorlax. The large body then fell, landing on its belly and flattening Doug.
A voice then called Snorlax back into its Pokéball, "Return!" Doug scrambled to his feet, but before he could start to run away the three Warner siblings along with Freakazoid surrounded him.
"Is this a good enough cameo in the story for you Freakazoid?" Yakko asked.
Freakazoid gave a thumbs up. Then an over the top semi-parody of the commands given to Pokémon in the anime begun.
"Bulbasaur! I choose you!" Wakko shouted throwing a Pokéball
"Squirtle! I choose you!" Dot yelled doing the same thing
"Charmander! I choose you!" Yakko cried out doing… well you know by now
"Pikachu! Release from your ball!" Freakazoid yelled, but nothing happened.
Wakko started to try and discreetly help Freakazoid. "Psst. Freakazoid, you're supposed to throw the ball, and the line is 'I choose you', remember?"
"Oh, right, my bad," Freakazoid gave a cheesy grin. "Pikachu! I choose you!" He yelled throwing the Pokéball.
All four Pokémon now surrounded Doug Wellner. "Oh, I see, you're trying to get revenge through the use of irony, real original," Doug said while rolling his eyes.
"Oh don't by silly Doug. This isn't revenge, we don't do that kind of thing."
"We don't?" Freakazoid said puzzled.
"No. We just try and make people less selfish," Wakko continued, answering Freakazoid's question while addressing Mr Wellner.
"I'm not selfish. I told you guys before, I'm running a profitable business that works," Doug said defending his decision
'If only you knew the horror that would beset Warner Bros. during the AOL Time Warner era in 2001, maybe you would be less selfish' I said to myself (and I guess to you guys reading)
"We don't care what you think Doug. You provoked us by cancelling our show under unreasonable circumstances, so we have every right to do what we are about to do," Yakko said with a grin.
"And what's that?" Doug replied
"You haven't seen the Pokémon cartoon you so love? Then I guess you won't see this coming," Freakazoid said, starting the inevitable.
"Pikachu, use thundershock!" Freakazoid yelled to another over-the-top Japanese anime battle cry sequence
"Squirtle, use water gun!" Dot commanded
"Bulbasaur, use razor leaf!" Wakko cried out
"Charmander, use flamethrower!" Yakko yelled
All four attacks hit Doug at once, causing an explosion. Doug then started to fly high in the air. While flying in the air Doug started to yell. "Ohhh, those Warners make me so mad, in fact, I hate Steven Spielberg. YOU HEAR THAT SPEILBERG! I HATE, HATE, HATE YOU!" The noise started to drown out, the last audible thing to be heard being, "Doug Wellner's blasting off and I'm mad about it!"
Meanwhile, in that same moment in New York, at the offices of News Corporation and the CEO Bupert Smernoch, on the phone to his British affiliate, "I don't care if phone tapping is illegal, I want that story now!"
He then turned to his next order of business and sighed, "Where the hell am I going to find an extremist conservative biased tightwad who will lead my perfectly unbalanced news network!" Suddenly, Doug Wellner crashed through the ceiling, still yelling extremist conservative and biased things about how he tried to maximise the profit-making ability of the WB Network."
Smernoch grinned, "Whoever you are, you're hired!"
The movie then finishes as a credit sequence rolled across the screen.
The teenager turned to the Warners, who were back in the movie theatre room. "So with Kellner gone and I presume Plotz reinstated as CEO, why not plan a comeback with Steven?
"We were, but then 9/11 happened," Wakko said. He then took off his hat as everyone, including the teenager, paused for a moment's remembrance. Yakko continued, "Everything with a smidgen of senseless violence in it got censored or removed."
"Damn," the teenager said.
The chapter may be ending but the story isn't over yet. There's more to come in the final chapter of The Warners That Time Forgot!