Adventures in Care-a-lot 4

Now, I liked these episodes, but the animation quality made it really, really, really hard to watch. Especially in the second part.
Part one - Erased
This story was seriously amusing. In another kind of story, this could have been weird, and this was weird, but in a good way. Still, I didn't truly understand what happened until I read the synopsis in the Teaching Moment, which wasn't even posted until this week. For once, procrastination pays off!
Anyway, the actual story. It starts off with Grizzle for a change, putting the finishing touches on his new robot companion. Appropriately named New-B, he's outfitted with an eraser ray, perfect for removing belly badges, and he isn't exactly locquacious. Grizzle sends him on his way.
Meanwhile, down in Care-a-lot, both Grumpy and Funshine have plans for Wingnut: Grumpy wants him to help out in his garage, but Funshine already made plans with him. Share advocates asking Wingnut what he wants to do, and Funshine wins out. Grumpy goes back to his garage, rationalizing that even a robot needs fun, when he's suddenly hit by the eraser ray! Instead of being erased, however, his belly badge turns upside down and his color fades. With renewed fervor, Grumpy goes after Wingnut again, this time determined to get him to work!
Grizzle is not happy to see his ray didn't work (and blames it on New-B). But New-B continues zapping Care Bears, flipping belly badges, draining colors, and causing much dissent among the bears. Now, apparently what the ray really does is make each bear only care about what their badge is about, and also makes them unable to empathsize with each other, hence the fighting. This becomes hilarious later on.
Meanwhile, Funshine and Wingnut are kicking back by the river (a rare chance to see both Funshine sans hat and Wingnut in swimtrunks) when Grumpy shows up and demands Wingnut. Since he hasn't been hit by the ray yet, Funshine agrees that they can have fun later. As soon as Grumpy and Wingnut leave, New-B strikes again, and Funshine demands Wingnut back. While he and Grumpy fight, Wingnut beats a hasty retreat. Grizzle is thrilled, sensing that if the Care Bears keep fighting, he'll be able to waltz in and take Care-a-lot for himself.
Wingnut runs into Oopsy, who agrees to go talk some sense into Grumpy and Funshine. Along the way, they run into Share, who insists that Oopsy share Wingnut with her and her alone. So Wingnut goes with Share, who then runs into Love-a-lot, who would "love" to be with Wingnut, too, but bristles when Share refuses to share him with anyone else. "This, I don't love." (But I love Love-a-lot having actual dialogue ^_^) Wingnut, freaked out by the strange behaviour, and the upside-down badges, heads for the hills with Share and Love-a-lot in hot pursuit.
Oopsy is having troubles of his own, as he runs into Cheer, who forces him to cheer up (this is the best part), and Surprise, who surprises Oopsy and clashes with Cheer. Oopsy slips away and meets up with Wingnut again, and they brief each other on what just happened. But all their pursuers show up again and start arguing with each other. Hiding from everyone else, Oopsy and Wingnut find New-B, who explains exactly what's going on (his blurps are translated to Oopsy by Wingnut, oddly enough). Oopsy confronts everyone else and tries to explain everything, but since he didn't have the Teaching Moment, he settles for individual examples. The ray made Grumpy grumpier, and Surprise became surprisier, "And I suppose it made you 'oopsier,'" Grumpy comments, getting a laugh from everyone else. But that's not the case, because New-B never zapped him Oopsy doesn't have a belly badge, so he isn't affected. But he expresses his concern for everyone (and Wingnut's, too), and Grumpy apologizes for making fun of him. With that, his belly badge rights itself, and his color returns. Wingnut hypothesizes that apologizing is the key to getting back to normal, and with Oopsy's encouragement, everyone apologizes to everyone else, and things are the way they should be again.
Only Grizzle has already arrived, ready to start construction on Care-a-lot (all those hearts and rainbows have to go!). So he's shocked to find everyone, not only back to normal, but standing right behind him. He blames his plan's failure first on Mr. Beaks and then on New-B, and they leave, arguing the whole way ("What do you mean, 'who programmed who?!'"), leaving Cheer to wonder if that's how they were all acting. Oopsy assures her that they weren't quite that bad.
Funshine and Grumpy end the episode by trying to get the other to go with Wingnut in an infinite loop of putting the other guy first.

Part Two - Best Bear in Care-a-lot
Here the screen got all stretched out for some reason, making it hard to watch at times. Still, I liked the story, mostly because of Funshine's cheesy bigheadedness.
To start things off, Funshine is going around doing good deeds for his friends, like giving flowers to Cheer, finding Grumpy's tools, and even Surprising Surprise! She's so impressed, in fact, that she calls a council (alas, it turns out that the book building is not a library at all, but town hall ;_;) of herself, Grumpy, Cheer, Share, and Bedtime Bear. She wants to thank Funshine for being such a great guy, so they decide to give him an award. Grumpy insists he's too busy to make it, but caves way too easily (nobody said anything, and we didn't even get any close ups of them giving him significant looks or anything!).
Later, Funshine is giving Share's garden a little extra sun when Surprise, Share, Cheer, and Grumpy show up and give him a little gold statuette of himself, complete with recorded messages from all of them. Funshine is so pleased the listens to it (all day, I'm assuming, and) right before bed, even recording his own message to himself.
The next day, Funshine is still toting around the award, brushing off Harmony, and showing it off to everyone. Cheer starts to worry about how much Funshine likes the award.
Meanwhile, Grizzle is playing charades with Mr. Beaks when the Care Bear Alert goes off. He sees Funshine showing off his award to everyone and decides to take it, so he can find out why it's so important. Back in Care-a-lot, Funshine has just named his award Goldie when Grizzle snatches it. He attempts to get it back, but it's no use. Unable to cope with not hearing how great he is, Funshine gives off the Care Bear Signal (like a stare, but just him) and alerts everyone of the situation. No one else is as concerned, and Grumpy insists that he can just make another trophy, but Funshine's starting to get hysterical, so they (they being Grumpy, Cheer, and Share) agree to help, since Grizzle did take the award without asking.
Up in his lair, Grizzle is pleased that he snagged the award, but can't figure out what it is, and is annoyed that it's not even real gold. But he definitely realizes its value when he sees the Care Bears approaching (again via rockets from The Big Wish Movie). Funshine is able to walk right in and grab Goldie, but before they can leave, Grizzle traps them all in a voice-activated bubble cage. Grumpy uses his belly badge to make a cloud that zaps lightning (perfect!), but it doesn't damage the cage at all. Grizzle explains that the bubble cage only responds to his voice, demonstrates this, and then leaves to take a nap.
Trapped in the bubble, Funshine admits that it's his fault they're in this mess, and everyone agrees (it was great!). Funshine can't quite grasp that having the award doesn't automatically make him great, but Cheer clears things up (they still like him, but he needs to get over himself), and they all brainstorm a solution: they'll use the voice recorder in the award to record Grizzle deactivating the cage! So they trick Grizzle into deactivating and reactivating the cage, which he does repeatedly, until he gets annoyed at the bears' unflappable attitude in the face of his taunting and goes back to bed. The bears easily escape, but Funshine leaves the award in Grizzle's lair.
Back in Care-a-lot, Funshine delivers the lesson he learned from all this: there's a difference between being a good guy and being better than everyone else. Meanwhile, Grizzle finally spots the button on the award, and ends up activating and deactivating the cage on himself. We can assume that this goes on for a while.

With this episode, I think it's safe to say that UR-2 is gone for good ;_; Ah well.