Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Animaniacs’ On Hulu, Where Yakko, Wakko And Dot (And Pinky And The Brain) Come Back To Wreak Havoc After 22 Years

The world Animaniacs left in 1998 — after a 5 year, 90-episode run on Fox and The WB — was a bit different than the one we’re in now. No social media, no smartphones, and pretty much no reality TV. Donald Trump was still a semi-respected real estate developer and semi-successful casino owner. So, with a new writing staff in place (the show’s creator, Tom Ruegger, was not included in the reboot, much to his consternation) and lots of new things to skewer, do Yakko, Wakko and Dot Warner (plus the return of Pinky & The Brain) make us laugh like it did back in the ’90s?

ANIMANIACS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In a Jurassic Park-like setting, the Warner brothers (and sister Dot!) are discovered by Laura Dern, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum soundalikes. Turns out that the Animaniacs were “reanimated” by Steven Spielberg (Andy Milder). A man in a green Hulu suit says, “This is going to make a lot of money!”

The Gist: Yes, Yakko (Rob Paulsen), Wakko (Jess Harnell) and Dot (Tress MacNeille) are back, reanimated after 22 years to wreak havoc on the Warner Bros. lot. They run right back to the water tower, where they use Wakko to try to bash their way inside, before Yakko remembers that it’s “a pull.” Wakko manages to find the rotting tuna sandwich he left there, despite the web of laser traps guarding it. Then they trick Ralph the Guard (Frank Welker) into taking them to the CEO’s office.

There, she shows them a tablet, “containing all human knowledge,” which Yakko promptly eats. Because he’s full of the knowledge of the last 22 years, he starts to sing about everything they’ve missed… at least up until 2018, when the writers actually wrote the song. They guess the other two years, which isn’t far off. And, by the way, we see Hillary, Trump, Russian bots, and pretty much everything but the coronavirus.

Then we go to Acme Labs and visit our buddies Pinky (Paulsen) and The Brain (Maurice LaMarche). As usual, The Brain’s daily plan is to try and take over the world, but in 1998 Pinky gives him an idea for a long play: Invent memes on the internet. Twenty-two years later, he unleashes what he thinks is an adorable photo on social media, complete with a mind-control filter, and gets 0 likes. But when Pinky videos him getting crushed by a globe, it gets millions of likes and everyone’s mind is controlled… until the next viral meme comes along.

We go back to the Warners as they sing about reboots, decrying the lack of creativity in Hollywood… of course, when Hulu presents them with a huge check for their own reboot, they sign pretty darn quickly.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Animaniacs, the first time around.

Our Take: The biggest concern with a return of the 1993-98 series Animaniacs, beloved by kids for the zany physical humor and by adults for the self-referential jokes and pop culture references, would come back as a watered down version of itself, and how it would adapt to these pretty wacky modern times.

But the Jurassic Park intro should have laid those fears to rest a bit. Also, the intro, which looks pretty much the same as the original, changes things slightly, switching “Pay for play contracts” to “You should see our big contracts” to reflect the Hulu deal, and adds descriptions like “gender balanced, pronoun neutral, and ethnically diverse… the trolls will say we’re so passé but we did meta first!” Then the Warners ruminate over their first line, with Yakko even making fun of Wakko’s Liverpudlian accent.

So the first episode gets this transition from an era that was just at the dawn of the internet, in the pre-social media days, to an era where there’s a term like “influencers” and we just had a reality show host for a president for the last four years. What we hope is that, after this episode that gets everyone up to speed, the Warners, plus Pinky and the Brain, have updated versions of their hijinks.

We’ll let you in on a little secret: As much as we love the Warners, the P&TB segments were what we loved the best (we weren’t as enamored of the series built around the lab mice, but maybe we were just grumpier back then), and we said “NARF!” when the first P&TB segment was as funny as it was. The plot is usually the same: Brain thinks up a flawed plot to take over the world, and Pinky usually unwittingly spoils it. This one was no different, except they had a Seth Meyers (Brendan Hunt) holding a “SMUG” mug and a great line by Pinky: When Brain says, “And all by manipulating the alpha waves of the human brain,” Pinky replies, “There’s a human you!?”

Listen, will the 2020 version of Animaniacs reach the brilliance of the one from the ’90s? Maybe not. But it’ll try pretty hard to reach those heights, and any laughs that come from that will be welcome ones right about now.

What Age Group Is This For?: The show is likely the only TV-G show that makes a Queer Eye reference. Like the previous version, the Warners’ craziness and physical humor will appeal to the 7-and-up crowd, but the self-references and pop culture jokes are purely for the grownups.

Parting Shot: “Here’s the check for the Animaniacs reboot, you sellouts!” The Warners are in green pants/jackets/skirts, holding a massive check in front of stacks of cash spelling “HULU.” Wakko says, “Yeah, but when we sell out, we know we’re selling out, so it’s cool!”

Sleeper Star: Kinda hard to call anyone sleepers, since they’re all from the original cast, but we’re partial to LaMarche’s impression of Jeff Goldblum in the cold open.

Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing we can see. The only thing we worry about is that, since the episodes were written two years ago, they’ll miss a ton of what’s current now and seem a bit behind.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If there’s anything we need right now is something reliable to make us laugh. And Animaniacs fills that bill, just about as well as it did in the go-go ’90s.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Animaniacs On Hulu