Hello & welcome back to A Look at Disney and after having looked at an unproduced Little Mermaid TV show earlier in the week, we now move onto an episode from the TV show that did make it to air as we look at the episode, Metal Fish. With that outta the way, let's begin.
The Plot
The plot for this one can be summed up in one sentence. Ariel meets Hans Christian Anderson. There is more to it that, yes. But that is the main gist of this episode. Now, there are other plots going on here but that is the main hook of this episode. We actually start out with Ariel and Flounder meeting with a mermaid that studies anthropology and unlike Scuttle, he actually knows the names of human objects. The human (he's not referred to as Hans Chrisitan Anderson until the very end of the episode) and wants go to exploring the underwater life and is especially fascinated by merpeople, who the rest of the humans think is myth and legend. But the audience knows better, so we follow the human in his submariner and explore the deep sea. There's also a subplot about Sebastian taking his Crab Scouts on a camping trip and it doesn't really add a whole lot to the episode.
The plots converge when the submariner enters the world of the sea and goes exploring and is spotted by the characters, first being spotted by Ariel and her friends and she wants to follow it as she is so fascinated by humans. Sebastian sees it and goes to warn King Triton about the human being there.
The human soon runs into trouble as there is a leak in the submariner and wants to help the human but she can't figure out how. After having been told by Sebastian of the issue, Triton shows up to the location of the human and shows up furious but Ariel and her merman friend, Archimedes are able to convince Triton just this once that not all humans are bad and he begrudgingly helps save the human and lifts him back to the surface.
The episode ends with Mr. Anderson reading his story of The Little Mermaid to the children of the village as Ariel looks on.
This pose is such a great tribute as this is based on the real-life Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen, Denmark.
It's a small touch but it is such a great way to work in a great part of the history of this classic story. Kids watching it may not have picked up this when they first saw it but I think that things such as the reference to the statue and the inclusion of Hans Christian Anderson show a great deal of respect to the work that the original movie was based on. Some might argue that this is a lazy idea but the metanarrative of authors meeting their characters is nothing new. It just depends on the execution, I think it's handled well here. It can be done poorly, cough *To Boldly Flee* cough.
The people working on this show paid a great deal of respect to Anderson and it never felt awkward with him in the episode.
Characters
There isn't a whole lot to say about the characters, so I'm not going to waste much time talking about them here except for two. Let me just go over my thoughts on the characters that I won't be going into great detail about there, Ariel is her great adventurous self, Sebastian is like some Scout leaders I've seen in the past and Triton seems softer on humans here than he was in the movie but I chalk that up to this being made after the movie, even if it takes place before the movie.
Archimedes voiced by Rod McKuen
Archimedes was such a great and knowledgeable character. It makes sense that the other merpeople would shun him for his fascination with the human world but I actually liked his knowledge there and I feel like he would have made a great mentor to Ariel,. It would've been cool to see Ariel go to him over other things from the human world.
Hans Christian Anderson voiced by Mark Hamil
I liked Hans Christan Anderson in this episode, even if he didn't do much interacting with the characters but considering he was losing air in his submariner, it's understandable. I just really liked awe and wide-eyed wonder seeing the merfolk and taking it all in.
My Final Thoughts
This is a fun episode that does a great job of using the idea of the author interacting with the characters of his works and the team behind this episode went to great lengths to show respect to what came before and how more important Anderson is as a literary figure. Join me next time as we look at Melody. Peace!
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