Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

(1996)

• “Enter at your own peril,
• passed the vaulted door,
• Where impossible things may happen
• that the world’s NEVER seen before!
• IN DEXTER’S LAB’RATORY
• Lives the smartest boy
• YOU’VE EVER SEEN!
• But DeeDee blows his experiments
• TO SMITHEREENS!
• There is gloom and doom
• While things go boom
• IN DEXTER’S LAAAAAAAB!”

They don’t write theme songs like that anymore. Great stuff. And these are the end credits!

The first spoken part of that song is voiced by the legendary Mako! So you know the whole show is gonna be amazing!

All I want to do is list off the things I loved about this show! Here I go!

• I love Dexter’s strange, implacable accent.
• I love that there is no explanation as to why he has that accent.
• I love that he has a massive laboratory under his house that his parents are  never aware of.
• I love the new retro art style.
• I love that they made Professor Stephen Hawking into a Willy Wonka-esque man of mystery.
• I love that they parodied the Martian Chronicles using DeeDee’s bedroom as the desolate Martian landscape.
• I love the separate segments “Dial M for Monkey” and “The Justice Friends”.

Yeah I could go on. There’s not a single episode I don’t love. Best episode of all? The Dodge Ball episode. Being rather short and un-athletic, naturally Dexter shirks from a game like dodge-ball but thanks to his scientific and engineering prowess, the boy genius creates for himself a Dodgeball mech and dominates on the court. Great fun.

The Label-maker episode is pretty funny too. Dexter and his sister DeeDee start claiming things in the house by putting their name on it with a label maker. Of course this gets out of hand and soon there’s someone’s name on everything. Then Dad comes home and is very confused.

“What is going on!?!” He shouts. “This Dexter is crooked! The DeeDee is off the hook! Who put these Dexters all over the floor! They go up here on the DeeDee! Do I have to pick up all these Dexters and DeeDees my self!?! Hey honey, that Dexter looks goooood! I’m famished!”

Dexter’s parents are easily my favorite characters. They go from being really good parents to being totally crazy bananas if a joke or schtick depends on it. Jeff Bennet (Johnny Bravo) and Kath Soucie (Phil and Lil from Rugrats) lend their voices.

“No son of MiNe would be trying to sneak away from his PuNiShMeNt!” Says Dad, nonchalantly in a sing-song voice, acting as if he doesn’t know Dexter is definitely trying to sneak away from his punishment. “Because he KnOwS that he would find himself in an even WoRsE punishment.”

I’ve used that on my kids. It’s very effective. And fun to say.

Then you get the muffin episode where mom tells Dex and Dee to keep their father away from the muffins she just baked. Then she suddenly goes all dark and humorless. “Oh kids. There’s something you should know about your father. He is a muffin fiend! A Muff-O-Maniac! You’re gonna have to watch him like a hawk! And be… careful… HE’S TRICKY!”

I want to sit here and just regale episode after episode but I’ll let you experience it for yourself.

The Dial M for Monkey segment and the Justice Friends are on the mark too. Great stuff all around and not just because Randy Savage gets involved.

Question: In how many shows does Dom DeLuise guest star as a mystical mischievous disappearing reappearing giggling weirdo? So far I count Dexter’s Lab and Stargate SG-1 but I’m sure there’s more.