Adventures in Care-a-Lot Episode 24

And here we have the last original episodes of the year, and possible the season, as the following two broadcast episodes were already released on DVD in early 2008.  I've been sitting on this post for a little while, so I had to get it out before I start posting about anything else.  The first story is fun, but the second, I'm sorry, just feels like a waste of time.

Forget It - "Yes, you may gloat with me, Mr. Beaks."

It all starts one morning, with Funshine walking down the street, feeling pretty proud of himself for reasons we are not privy to.  His stroll is interrupted by Tenderheart, showing off his new Grumpy-made pogo stick.  Funshine, impressed, wonders if Grumpy would make one for him as well.  Tenderheart offers to let Funshine try it out before deciding if he wants one, but Funshine is...hesitant.  Tenderheart basically jams his helmet onto Funshine's head and pushes the pogo stick on him, so Funshine gives it a try.  With a little coaching from Tenderheart, Funshine starts to get the hang of it, until the pogo stick goes haywire on him.  He hits the wrong button and ends up in the fountain.  He's okay, but even Grumpy can't fix the damage done to the pogo stick.  Funshine apologizes to Tenderheart, but points out that he was hesitant about riding in the first place. Tenderheart can't believe his friend is trying to pass the buck, and the two of them argue a bit before deciding not to be friends anymore.  Grumpy and Oopsy (who was in the scene, but didn't have any lines) just shrug.

Meanwhile, Grizzle unveils his latest creation: The Forget Me Ray!  With this device, as he explains to Mr. Beaks, he will erase any memory of himself from the Care Bears' minds, thus regaining the immunity he had back in Oopsy Does It, before they knew who he was.  Back in Care-a-lot, Cheer and Grumpy try to get Tenderheart and Funshine back together, but it hasn't been long enough for them to get over it and the two of them are still cold to each other.  Which is exactly when Grizzle shoots all of Care-a-lot with his ray.  However, as is usually the case with his rays, it doesn't do exactly what he wants, although this time it's close enough.  Instead of making them all forget him, they all forget everything.  Which means that Funshine and Tenderheart no longer remember their feud.

Grizzle shows up in Care-a-lot and introduces himself to everyone as Mr. Grizzle, and tells them what to do, since no one can remember what they're supposed to be doing.  First things first, he gets everyone to start painting Care-a-lot gray.  But when he goes to check on things, he finds the first group playing around with the brushes because they forgot where the paint was.  Grizzle realizes the tragic flaw in his plan: not only did the ray make the Care Bears forget, it keeps them from remembering, too.  So, he gives everyone a post-it note with their job on it and sends them off again.  But again, he does not find them painting, but looking at the clouds.  Turns out that the Care Bears forgot how to read, so they can't read the notes, either.  But Grizzle does not give up just yet.  This time he ties a gray string to everyone's fingers to remind them to paint the town gray and sends them off.

After implementing this not-very-likely to succeed tactic, Grizzle goes to Grumpy's garage to fix the ray while complaining to Mr. Beaks about it, which Funshine and Tenderheart overhear.  Funshine distracts Grizzle while Tenderheart sneaks the ray out, and they later use it on themselves.  They instantly remember their fight, but they both agree that they have to help their friends first and be mad at each other second.  Which is exactly when Grizzle shows up, demanding they return his ray.  Which they do, in a manner of speaking, by turning it on him.  Then they recruit the amnesiac Grizzle to return everyone back to normal.  After that, they send Grizzle back to his lair with all the paint, so he can "spruce it up."

With that taken care of, Funshine and Tenderheart resume being mad at each other, much to the other bears' amazement.  Not able to let it go, Cheer, Grumpy, and even Oopsy beseech the two bears to patch things up, and they do finally give in and apologize to each other for real this time.  And Grumpy reveals that he made them both matching pogo sticks for when they made up.  So maybe it was like a day in between the first few scenes or something.  Anyway, Grumpy warns them not to go near the fountain, and what's the first thing they do?  Fall in the fountain, of course.

As an epilogue, UR-2 and Rocketbottom try to figure out where Grizzle's new-found enthusiasm for painting came from.

Gone - "There goes one girl in need of a Care Bear Stare."

Did you know that McKenna actually has a friend who isn't a Care Bear?  As the opening montage shows, she does have one.  Unfortunately for her, as is usually the case with a suddenly introduced friend, her family has to move away.  McKenna and her friend share a sad farewell, and then her wristband starts glowing.  It's really the charm bracelet underneath, but in her current state of mind, McKenna does not look forward to visiting her friends in the sky.

Up in Care-a-lot, the Care Bears are preparing for the arrival of the Thunder Whales, and Share gives us a continuity nod while showing off the flowers she painted, which gives Grumpy a good segue into showing off his latest invention, a kind of mechanical tail that will let him talk to the Thunder Whales.  Oopsy is all kinds of excited for the whales to show up and Grumpy has to physically restrain him to keep him away from the mechanical tail.  Although Oopsy gives up on trying it out, turns out Grumpy didn't need any help making it go crazy and chase him.  Not quite ready for communication, I guess.

After that small debacle, McKenna shows up, even though she's not in the mood to do anything and just settles herself under a tree.  Cheer and Funshine resolve to get McKenna involved in the Thunder Whale's arrival, but don't think of just Care Bear Staring her back in good spirits.  She rebuff's Funshine's attempt, but agrees to help Grumpy, since she just has to push a button.  But even the sight of Grumpy being chased by his own creation is not enough to cheer her up, and she runs off.  Grumpy, of course, see the obvious solution of giving her a stare, but it's time for the commercial break, so she doesn't get one.

After the break, McKenna halfheartedly flips a coin into the fountain and tells Share that she wished her friend would move back.  So Share gives her the 'it's okay to feel sad when your friend moves away' talk, and wouldn't this really be more of a job for, oh I don't know, Best Friend Bear?  Share's deficiency is pointed out by McKenna: since all of Share's friends live right there in Care-a-lot, she has no idea how McKenna feels.  Share jumps over this fact by instead reminding McKenna that she has other friends, although I think she's just referring to the other Care Bears.  No time to think about that now, the Thunder Whales are almost here.

The whales show up, do their whaley thing, and for some reason Funshine and Cheer feel obligated to use their badges as twin spotlights to guide the whales.  Grumpy attaches the tail of the mechanical tail to Oopsy's head so they can at least say Hi, and Share and McKenna go in for a close encounter with one of the whales.  McKenna notices a distressed whale nearby and soon spots the source of its distress: one of the babies got caught in a tree.  So McKenna conjures up a cloud from her bracelet and lifts the whale to safety.  She is congratulated by the others and the whale comes back for a hug (aww), and then it's off the whales go for another year.  This makes Share realize that she does know what it feels like to have a friend move away (kinda), so, um, good?  The others point out that just as the whales return year after year, so too will McKenna see her friend again, and McKenna acknowledges that such things as e-mail and phones exist in the world.

So McKenna goes home having resolved her feelings over her friend moving away, only to find that her mom (and her friend's mom) sprung for a webcam, so now she and her friend can Skype all the time!  Happy ending all around, I guess.

Ugh, this ep was like pulling teeth, seriously.  Nothing happened, but they stretched it out to an full 10 minutes anyway #_#  At least McKenna has a hot mom to make watching the whole thing  worth it (a little, anyway).

Thoughts on the Oscar Nominations

So the nominations for this year's Academy Awards were revealed yesterday.

Why were only three songs nominated again?  Seriously, there have to be tons of potentially nominated songs.  But with the going track record of movies that have more than one song nominated, at least "Down to Earth" is a shoe-in to win.

Basically, the only movie I care about in any category is Wall-E.  All right, I'm glad Kung Fu Panda got nominated for Best Animated Feature, and while it was an awesome movie in its own right, I just don't think that it's going to beat Wall-E.

Space Pirate Mito Revisted Intro

In 2003, I was a freshman in college.  About ten minutes away by bus there was a little store called Magnum Opus that rented anime exclusively.  And they had everything, seriously.  If it was anime on DVD in the States, they had it.  I checked out a number of series thanks to that shop, including Magic Users Club/Mahou Tsukai Tai! and the series I'm posting about today, Space Pirate Mito.

Space Pirate Mito came out in Japan in early 1999, but started being released in the states by Media Blasters in late 2002 through mid 2003 (they stretched a 13 episode series into four discs).  The sequel, Space Pirate Mito: The Two Queens came out just a few months after the first series ended, but it wasn't released over here until 2007, in a two-disc, sub-only complete collection called Aoi and Mutsuki: A Pair of Queens.  Although I always meant to get it, I didn't actually do so until very recently, when I saw that Best Buy had a Complete Anthology collection which included both series, for only $15.

So I started watching the second series, which picks up a little after the end of the first series, and though I've only watched three episodes so far, I've been filled with the urgent desire to rewatch the original series to pick up on the little things I've forgotten.  (I remember most of it, granted.)  So I've decided to put the second series on hold while I go back (and blog) the original 13 episodes.

Adventures in Care-a-Lot Episode 23

Tour de Farce

In a stunning move on the show editor's part, the first story features McKenna, rather than the second.  We open on her riding her bike around Care Square, openingly wondering how her bike could be making so much noise when her crash quota is still under three.  Unbeknownst to her, Funshine chucks a sunball at her head, but rather than knock her over, it turns her bike all sparkly.  Surprise jumps out of hiding to compliment Funshine on his good guy qualities, and McKenna, wanting to show off her sparkly bike, invites Funshine and Surprise to go on a ride with her.

As usual, word of the bike ride spreads to half of Care-a-Lot, and more bears show up than expected.  McKenna is not phased by this, though, and suggests making the ride a bigger trip.  It's quickly transformed into a picnic at Rainshine Meadows, and as the bike-riders get set to go, Share notices Grumpy walking around in the background.  Funshine goes over to invite him along, but Grumpy cuts him off before he can get three words out.  He wants nothing to do with bikes and bikeriding, garnering stares from the others, who are unable to fathom the thought of not liking bikes.  Grumpy goes off on a rant against bikes and then storms off toward his garage.

Everyone else is surprised at this, especially since Grumpy apparently loves picnics.  Any further musing on the subject is cut short by Oopsy haphazardly riding around on his bike, ending with him crunching the back of McKenna's bike.  She's about to fix it herself when she realizes that if Grumpy fixes it, she can use her feminine wiles to coax his reason for hating bikes out of him.  So it's off to Grumpy's garage.  Naturally, Grumpy initially sends her away, but even he can't resist her puppy-dog eyes attack (a little flattery doesn't hurt, either).  As Grumpy gets down to work, so does McKenna.  Grumpy insists that he's too busy to go bike-riding, but when McKenna mentions the picnic, he starts to reconsider.  But only for a minute.  He jumps on the defensive and fixes her bike in record time.  Rather than leave, McKenna tells him that she was a lateblooming bike-rider, and as she suspected, this hits a nerve with Grumpy, though he tries to hide it.  She confesses to her own embarrassment at not knowing how to ride which gives Grumpy the courage to do the same.  Seems he's tried for so long that he's tired of trying anymore (how'd none of the other bears know about this, then?).  McKenna promises to help him this time, and with her support, he's sure to do it!

As the two of them leave the garage, Grumpy tells McKenna not to tell anyone else that he doesn't know how to ride.  Predictably, everyone else is standing outside his garage, but they promise not to tell, either.  Grumpy is not reassured by this, and reneges on the whole deal.  But everyone insists that it'll be so much fun if they all help him, so Grumpy grudgingly agrees.  He promises to give anyone who laughs his "grumpiest grimace ever," a threat he has to put into action immediately, as everyone laughs at it.  Only Oopsy actually notices, though.

A little later, Grumpy emerges from his garage covered in padding; his attempt to "eliminate the 'ouch factor,'" as he puts it.  And thus begins a montage of Grumpy 

learning to ride, mostly crashing (at one point, Funshine comments, "That's what helmets are for"), and flying through the air way more than is necessary.  Most of the teaching is done by McKenna and Funshine, with everyone else acting as a cheering section.  After one crash too many, Grumpy is ready to give up, insisting that he hasn't learned anything.  But McKenna points out the marks Funshine made each time Grumpy tried riding, showing that progress is being made.  Grumpy's enthusiasm is renewed, especially when Funshine suggests Tenderheart and himself keep up with Grumpy on the bike to keep him from crashing this time.  

At first this plan works, until Grumpy mysteriously disappears off the bike (which mysteriously keeps going without him).   Turns out he got caught in a tree branch while no one was looking.  As he fumes, the peanut gallery wonders whether he's reached the last straw, but in direct contrast to their thoughts, he announces his dedication to not giving up until he shows the bike who's boss!  For some reason, he feels the best way to do this is to bike down some stairs.  With his eyes closed.  What?  The others compensate for Grumpy's foolhardiness by using their belly badges (and occassionally their own bodies) to keep him from harm.  At one point, Surprise creates a jack-in-the-box that flings Grumpy through the air, but fortunately he lands right where he started, none the wiser.  He celebrates his mastering the art of bike-riding and while the others are glad for him, they're pretty worn out from keeping him on the bike, although they don't let on.  But they have enough energy to bike off into the sunset, with Oopsy going off course, naturally.

So much Grumpy cuteness!  Especially in that scene between him and McKenna.  I feel his pain for not being able to ride a bike, though.  Still, why did he think riding down stairs would be a good idea when he kept falling over on solid ground?

Bad News

And bad it is.  I really didn't like this episode, mainly because I felt that it was a mistake to use Share in it (Trueheart fits, though).  The story begins with Trueheart and Share bored out of their minds and half-asleep.  Oopsy shows off his new bell and wakes them from their stupor, but they're still bored.  A bell starts to ring, but it's not Oopsy's this time; it's the Care-a-Lot Fire Brigade!  There isn't any fire, though, just a twinklet stuck in a tree.  Share, Trueheart, and Oopsy excitedly follow after the truck and watch as the twinklet is rescued, as is its rescuer.  Later, Trueheart and Share are still talking about the twinklet rescue, and decide that everyone in Care-a-Lot should hear about it.  Share suggests having it announced in Care Square, but nearly swallows a bug in her efforts to demonstrate her idea.  Trueheart has a better idea: since she runs the Care-a-Lot website, she'll make a news section for it that they can keep updated.  But since it takes more than one story to fill a news section, the two of them go off in search of some news.

Their first stop leads them to Grumpy's latest invention, a machine that will do your yardwork while serving you drinks, which Share promises to make the headline (favoritism, eh? ^_~).  They also interview Cheer, who debuts a new kind of rainbow.  With the story of the fire brigade already set, they call it a day on reporting and upload the stories to the website.  And to guarantee everyone sees their reporting, they have Grumpy build a huge widescreen monitor to display the stories in front of the library.  Those reported on are impressed with the stories, and Share and Trueheart can't wait to write more articles.

As they sit in the library, Trueheart and Share notice Bedtime walking around in a daze, and they follow him out of the library and watch as he wanders through shrubbery and right on top of Funshine.  Funshine tells them that Bedtime's just sleepwalking and that it's not a big deal.  Trueheart and Share feel otherwise, and snap a pic.  As they run off to update the website, Funshine warns them to keep Bedtime's embarrassing secret to themselves (but if he sleepwalks all over Care-a-lot, how is it a secret?), but they're already out of earshot.  As they hurry along, they find the sweet shop in a state of disarray, the result of Love-a-lot and Harmony's attempts to speed up a smoothie.  They get a photo of the sticky shop, unaware that the other bears have only gone to get cleaning supplies.  They also get a shot of Grumpy's latest invention lying on its side, an apparent failure (in reality, just blown over by the wind).

Not content to just have their stories displayed on a huge monitor, Trueheart and Share call everyone's attention to the latest reports (including Share's extra-annoying "Extra! Extra! Hear all about it!" =_=).  Those libeled quickly jump to their own defense (except for Bedtime, who is still sleepwalking), but Trueheart and Share defend their stories as being exactly what they saw, and therefore true.  Funshine and Cheer try to explain why their stories were a bad idea in the first place, but Trueheart and Share are having none of it, and go off in search of more news.  And what a scoop they find!  Oopsy, leaving Share's garden with an armful of flowers!  Naturally, they get this up on the website ASAP, and they don't even have to make any announcements before the news starts spreading all over town (even surprising Oopsy himself).

Share and Trueheart pounce on Oopsy, who tells them that he was just pulling some weeds for Share since she's been too busy reporting to tend her garden lately.  Neither bear believes him, until Cheer magnifies the image from the report, showing without a doubt that Oopsy really did have weeds and not actual flowers.  Share starts to give a heartfelt apology, but Funshine can't let her (and Trueheart's) actions slide without reprimanding her for not checking the facts.  The two would-be reporters learn the error of their ways, and report one final story: they won't be reporting any more stories!  Which is definitely good news.

Bonus Screenshots:

Cameo by Best Friend, Champ, Wish and Amigo

Christmas comes Late or Early, depending on how you look at it

Apparently, later this year Disney Publishing is going to release a Wall-E Christmas story.  There are only three images at the link, but I love the idea already.

Comics: Still Your Fault

Click for fullsize Looking For Group.

I'm mostly posting this because the line "I made you a diagram.  Still your fault," made me laugh more than Looking For Group usually does.

Ricardo Montalbán is dead!

I promise I'm not going to annouce every single celebrity death I hear about, but I had to share this one.  Ricardo Montalbán is of course more famous for his other roles (particularly Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island and Khan in the second Star Trek movie), but to me he will always be Gutierrez on Freakazoid!  And occasionally Señor Senior Sr. from Kim Possible.

Update: here's a post that Paul Rugg posted about Ricardo's work on Freakazoid.

Lyrical Meme

Put your media player on shuffle, take the first line from the first twenty songs and arrange them like a poem. Use the first line of the 21st song as the title.

Got a Gun, Fact I Got Two

When I woke up tonight

Everything has its season

One perfect moment

On the corner of main street

I make the big bad wolf seem sweet

And now the prince

Do you have the time?

Toys can break

You talk about life, 

Jackie Blue

You're on the air

She's writing, she's writing

Some love is just a lie of the heart

No intentions

Winding your way down on Baker Street

In any other world

Most times it's only the simple everyday things

Well you must be a girl with shoes like that

Out on the winding, windy moors

Pretty soon we were takin' it serious

Japan is weird: HachiKoi

Sometimes, I find things that I have to share, just because of how odd they are.  This is one of them.

HachiKoi is a seemingly typical dating sim for the Gameboy DS (only in Japan).  You play a boy about to die of some strange illness unless you fall in love with a girl and she with you.  Your choices include the typical genki girl, sporty girl, reserved girl, etc.  But in addition to these typical choices, there's also a chunky girl, for players who like a girl with a little more substance than the usual candidates.

And I gotta say, she is absolutely adorable, even if she is giving me some wicked Comet-san vibes.

Adventures in Care-a-Lot Episode 22

Luck O' the Oopsy

Not an episode where Oopsy and Good Luck team up to try and counter Oopsy's clumsiness, although Good Luck does play a part.  No, this episode is about the Care-a-Lot Grand Prix, an anything goes race.  Share hopes that everyone can win, and corrects Grumpy when he tries to tell her that there can only be one winner.  According to Share, trying your best is all it takes to be a winner.  Yeah, you go, Share.  Cheer plans to use rollerblades, Funshine's going to fly on a sundisc and Share makes herself some skis.  Grumpy feels he has them all beat as he unveils his latest and greatest creation, a super cloud car named Stormy.  His thunder is stolen by Oopsy flying by on a jet-powered board with Wingnut in tow.  He strikes a few poses as he goes by, inspiring awe from the watching bears.  His attempt at a trick landing only lands him a parking spot in the Gathering Tree, though.

Later, Oopsy stops at the grocery store to pick up some snacks, while Grumpy parks Stormy and also enters the store (Best Friend Bear is the clerk).  As you may have guessed, they run into each other.  Grumpy sends Oopsy to the opposite end of the store, but Oopsy does not take the hint, and follows Grumpy around as he shops.  Grumpy repeatedly rejects Oopsy's attempts to sell him on some milk, and ends up walking into a display, and 

ends up covered in eggs.  Oopsy tries to help, but just accidentally drops his milk on Grumpy's head.  Grumpy quickly pays for his groceries and leaves the store.  Oopsy follows after him, trying to make amends, but Grumpy is having none of it.  Oopsy forcibly tries to help with the groceries, but Grumpy forcibly tries to keep him from doing just that, and the honey, jam, and flour wind up all over Stormy.  Oopsy starts to give his catchphrase, but Grumpy stops him, claiming to be sick and tired of hearing it (although it's more likely he's sick and tired of Oopsy getting away with things by saying it), and even calls Oopsy 'bad luck.'

This brings Funshine and Share onto the scene, although they don't really do too much.  Oopsy promises to wash Grumpy's car before the race, but Grumpy is loathe to let him do it.  Share helps to convince him, but what really does it is the creepiness of Oopsy literally groveling at Grumpy's feet.  Grumpy has no choice but to give in, but promises that he'll be watching the entire time.  Later, Grumpy supervises the cleaning while Share plays hopscotch in the background.  There is a very contrived sequence here wherein Share should have known better than to do what she did, as should have Oopsy, but the end result is Grumpy's car being irreversibly sticky.  Grumpy once again declares Oopsy is bad luck, but Oopsy waxes the car, and this manages to take care of it (I doubt it would work in real life, though).  Grumpy is even impressed, until he hears that the wax takes 48 hours to dry, which he doesn't have, since the race is the next day.  So Oopsy tries drying it with a hairdryer, but this only reduces Stormy to dust.  Grumpy once again calls Oopsy bad luck and storms off.  Oopsy starts to think he is bad luck after all, and though Share tries to dissuade him, there's no denying that accidents happen around him more often than not.

At the library, Oopsy searches for an answer to his problem in a stack of books, but the stack just falls to the ground, proving his point.  Good Luck, on page duty, comes by to help pick up the books and asks Oopsy what's wrong.  Oopsy gives him his problem in a nutshell, and Good Luck just tells him that everyone has good and bad days, even him.  Oopsy, however, is distracted by Good Luck's four leaf clover belly badge.  Inspired, he runs off to a field of clovers and plucks one.  Now, if there's a whole field of four leaf clovers, wouldn't they cease to be lucky?  I mean, four leaf clovers are lucky because they're hard to find, right?  Well, Oopsy believes it to be lucky, anyway, as he tucks it into his helmet and takes off on his jet board to practice.

On the day of the big race, Grumpy shows up in the all-new Stormy II, and makes a point to line up on the exact opposite side of the starting line as Oopsy.  Good Luck acts as announcer for the race and Love-a-Lot waves the starting flag.  As the racers take off, Good Luck finds Oopsy's clover on the ground.  As the race progresses, Grumpy finds that his newly (and quickly) built car just doesn't have the same oomph as Stormy I and trails further and further behind, while Oopsy leads by a mile.  He crosses the finish line to much acclaim, although Wingnut demands his fair share of the praise as Oopsy's racing partner.  Even Grumpy begrudgingly congratulates Oopsy and finally admits that Oopsy isn't bad luck after all.  Oopsy credits his win to the clover, only to find it missing.  Good Luck tells him that he never had it during the race, and that he made his own luck (and Good Luck should know).  Funshine adds that it was Oopsy's practicing that won the race, and Good Luck adds some advice about making your own luck.  Oopsy decides that having friends is what makes you really lucky, as the episode comes to a close.

This episode had some good 'heh' moments, like Oopy's third milk solicitation (the rule of threes).  It's nice to see some other bears working, especially in the library ^_~ On that note, there was plenty of good luck for Good Luck Bear fans.  Very nice to see him get a chance to shine.  

Rudemate

Another McKenna episode.  What's up with McKenna showing up in the second half of every episode, anyway?  And usually with some unexplained new trinket.  Like in this episode, where she comes for an extended visit in Care-a-Lot (how'd she get permission from her parents for this?).  After beaming her up, Grumpy takes her bag, but it is loaded with rocks, apparently, and he can't lift it.  So she rubs a charm on a bracelet she just happens to be wearing, producing a little cloud to carry the bag for her.  Where the heck did that bracelet come from?  When did she get a badge/charm from Grumpy?  And how did the badges she got in previous episodes turn into golden charms, anyway?  Come on, writers, be consistent about this stuff!

McKenna heads to Tenderheart's house, where she'll be staying, and he has to remind her to wipe her feet.  She wipes one and leaves it at that.  Tenderheart leads her to his guestroom, telling her how he got it tidied up just for her, then leaves her to unpack.  To McKenna, this means 'strew everything across the room,' much to Tenderheart's surprise/dismay.  He offers to help her put things away, but McKenna is more interested in a snack.  Specifically, some 'Care-a-Lot Carrots.'  Tenderheart tells her he has some in the fridge and to help herself.  In order to get to the carrots, McKenna takes out half the fridge's contents and then leaves once she has what she was looking for.  Tenderheart is not pleased.

In the time it takes for Tenderheart to put everything back, the living room is an absolute mess.  Seems McKenna started out by looking for a book but made a fort instead.  Tenderheart decides to renege on his invitation, but his attempts to break it gently to McKenna are misinterpreted, and she starts playing 'volleyball tennis' in the house, knocking over paintings and lamps.  Finally, Tenderheart has had enough, and yells at her to stop.  He tells her off for not picking up after herself, and McKenna retorts that she shouldn't have to since she's the guest.  So Tenderheart kicks her out until she learns some respect.  With a huff, McKenna collects her things and leaves, slamming the door behind her.  The curtain rod on a nearby window falls down and Tenderheart sighs.  She decides to head over to Love-a-lot's house, and Love-a-lot welcomes her with open arms.  One screenwipe later and Love-a-lot's house is in the same condition as Tenderheart's.  Just like Tenderheart, Love-a-lot sends McKenna off with the same huff, slam, and falling curtain rod.

Word travels quickly in Care-a-Lot, and so when McKenna tries to hole up with Grumpy, he immediately rejects her, citing Tenderheart and Love-a-lot's ordeals as reason enough to send her packing.  McKenna insists she was just having fun, and again mentions that she was the guest.  Grumpy informs her that there's more to being a guest than making messes, but the fact remains that she has no place to stay.  Faced with a challenge, Grumpy comes up with an idea and tells McKenna to come to Care Square at the end of the day and he'll have a solution.  McKenna gives him an awkward hug and goes off to do who knows what.  In the meantime, Grumpy calls over Tenderheart and Love-a-lot to talk about McKenna.  Love-a-lot is all too eager to complain about what she went through, and Tenderheart completely understands.  Grumpy suggests that McKenna needs to learn to be a good guest, and Tenderheart adds that she needs some responsibility lessons, too, but he doesn't want her learning them in his house.  So Grumpy unveils his blueprints for a house for McKenna, to teach her respect for her own things, hoping that will trickle down to respect for other's things.  

They spend the rest of the day building the house, and just as they finish, McKenna shows up.  She bypasses any tension between her and Love-a-lot and Tenderheart by telling them she's staying with Grumpy, which Grumpy is quick to dispute.  Instead, the three bears show her the house they built for her.  McKenna swoons at the sight of the house, gives the three of them an awkward group hug, then goes to explore her new house.  Tenderheart and the others wait to see what will happen.

McKenna slides across the floor in her socks, jumps on the couch, and exhults in her new ruleless lifestyle.  To celebrate, she pulls of her socks and flings them wherever.  All too soon, the house is covered in garbage and dirty clothes, but McKenna pays it no mind, until her piled up stuff avalanches her right out of the house.  As she wonders how she ended up in this mess, the house itself gets ready to bust.  She quickly conjures up a lollipop to prop it up from her charm bracelet, but not for long.  She heads to Tenderheart's house for some help, but when he hears the particulars, he brushes her off.  Her pleas for help are rendered moot when Tenderheart notices the dirty footprints she tracked into his house.  He shows her the door and she leaves in despair.

Back at her almost-exploded house, McKenna bemoans her fate while tossing another piece of garbage on the pile.  Out of the blue, Tenderheart admonishes her for her lack of guest skills, reminding her that she has respect her own things as well as those of others.  McKenna finally gets it, and Tenderheart reaches out to her.  But she still has to clean up the mess on her own, he tells her, and McKenna understands, making a vow to always pick up after herself from now on.  After a while, Grumpy and the other two show up to see how she's doing, and the house is almost completely clean.  As she finishes up, McKenna apologizes for being a bad guest and confirms that she's learned her lesson.  She even invites the three of them to be guests in her newly-cleaned home.  They take her up on it, and McKenna mock reminds Tenderheart to wipe his feet.  The two laugh, and then McKenna follows them in, wiping both her feet this time.

Not a great episode, but it was nice to have a couple of non-core characters take the lead this time.  Disgruntled Tenderheart was awesome, by the way, but McKenna's face animation was really funky this time around.  Which is weird, because a lot of the episode had pretty good animation, but parts of it had really weird/bad animation.  How odd.

What I'm Looking Forward to in 2009

I feel like I should have more of these, but here's what comes to mind:

• Next week's Ugly Betty with Bernadette Peters and Nikki Blonsky
• Monsters vs. Aliens
• Up (mostly for Ed Asner)
• The full debut of the 2009 revamp of Strawberry Shortcake