Hello & welcome back to A Look at Disney as we continue our deep dive into Disney's mermaid history. Years ago, I gave my thoughts on the Jim Henson produced pilot Little Mermaid's Island. A pilot that was meant for Disney Channel to air as a daily series. This series would have been akin to shows such as Welcome to Pooh Corner and Dumbo's Circus. However, the puppets were of a higher quality.
However, at the time of my writing of that original article, only a clip of this show existed on YouTube. However, the two episodes that were shot but never aired of this show have been uploaded to YouTube in full. I will provide links to these episodes here, Sebastian's Birthday and To Tell The Truth.
And after having watched both of these episodes, man..... I really wanted to like this, I really did. It had the makings of being something I could love. Puppets that were done by Jim Henson based on characters from one of my favorite Disney movies.
Let's start with the plots for the episodes.
Sebastian's Birthday
It's Sebastian's birthday and his friends are planning a surprise party for him and it opens with a song with Sebastian singing about it being his birthday. And okay, there are way too many songs in this thing. Almost every other scene has a character breaking out into song. Ariel, Flounder and Flounder's sister, Sandy (We will talk about her and some other characters in a bit) tell Sebastian that they are too busy to play with him. And this leads to the usual plot that you see in this kinds of episodes as Sebastian thinks that no-one cares about him but they meet up at their friend, Scales The Dragon's cave to celebrate his birthday.
To Tell The Truth
This episode was okay and the lesson was a bit more on the nose of it was about not lying as Flounder breaks Ariel's pearls after she goes up to visit Grimsby, who has a special surprise and Flotsam and Jetsam convince Flounder and his sister to lie to Ariel about what happened. And they end up taking some of Ariel's pearls. Yeah, it's not great but I think I liked this episode a bit more.
Characters
Ariel played by Marietta DePrima
Ariel felt off in this incarnation. She's not bad but the jovial and adventurous spirit that Ariel has in the movie doesn't seem to be present. I thought at first that her presence in this show equated mean but the more I think about it, the more I think that's not the case and I think the word that I was looking for was stern. Consider that Triton and Ariel's sisters are not present in this show. So, in a way that made have to be the adult of the group. Which could have worked and while I did enjoy what Ms. DePrima did with the role to make it different from Jodi Benson, it felt off.
Sebastian voiced by Samuel E. Wright
Sebastian was easily one of the best characters in this show and I contribute that highly to getting Samuel E. Wright back to voice him for this show as he felt like Sebastian all the way through. And he was the most enjoyable part of the first episode.
Flounder and Sandy - Unknown
Again, Flounder felt off and I think part of the problem with that comes from the introduction of his sister, Sandy as his character was reduced from a guppy, a loyal guppy that truly cared for Ariel as his best friend and would do anything for her. Just listen to his voice, when he asks
Ariel, are you okay?
As you can feel the sincerity in his voice for his friend but in this show, his role was reduced to "boy" and Sandy was just"girl" or girl Flounder.
Scuttle voiced by Buddy Hackett
Scuttle was the other great highlight of this show as again, it was Buddy Hackett playing him and you can't go wrong there as he was just so great in this role.
Grimsby played by Clive Revill
In another interesting change with this show, Grimsby is a jovial sea captain that already knows Ariel and her friends. And while this is a huge and I mean a huge departure from the character in the movie, I liked this character as he was just so fun. Granted, the Disney nerd in me did find it weird that Ariel already knew him and that Eric was never mentioned throughout either one of these episodes. And speaking of, Grim was Max's owner in this show and I should bring this up for Henson fans.
The puppet used for Ambrosius in Labyrinth was recycled as Max the sheepdog.
Scales The Dragon voiced by Jim Cummings, performed by Michael Thompson
Hi Jim Cummings! This character felt superfluous as he rarely interacted with any of the other cast members except for Grimbsy and I think Scuttle or Sebastian but he really added nothing of value to the show. To be honest, when I wrote my original article on this show, I had no idea that this character existed and I think that's for a good reason as he's perhaps the least interesting part of the show.
My Final Thoughts
Jim Henson sadly passed away two months after filming these episodes was completed and that does kinda put these in a different light a bit. As you could see what he was going for with this show and if had survived, maybe something could have come from it. At the end of the day, it is just an interesting footnote in Jim Henson and Disney history of a what could've been. I liked the idea of what I saw in these two episodes and I think if this show had gone forward, this would probably be one of the better puppet/live-action shows that aired on Disney Channel in that era. I do hope that you guys take the time to watch these two episodes as they are fun to look back at if you are a fan of Jim Henson or if you love Ariel. Join me next time as we look at an episode of The Little Mermaid TV series...
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