Pinky and the Brain, Vol. 1

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They're Pinky and the Brain,
Yes Pinky and the Brain,
One is a genius,
The other's insane . . .

Once you hear that theme song, you won't be able to get it out of your head. Same with this series, which is as Warner Brothers as a cartoon can get. The backgrounds are classic Warner Brothers, the music is classic Warner Brothers, and the simplified antics of the two characters are as redundantly Warner Brothers as Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner. Except that instead of a coyote coming up with elaborate plans to eat a bird episode after episode, it's a genetically engineered lab mouse who devises elaborate ways to take over the world. Appropriately, Brain and his dumb sidekick, Pinky, are residents of Acme Labs, the company which made every gizmo that Mr. Coyote used unsuccessfully.

There are natural-born leaders and natural-born followers, and this spin-off from "Animaniacs" squeezes out that plain truth like the drops that drip out of a Rube Goldberg still. The leaders are never as smart as they think they are, and the followers are blissfully happier than people with great ambitions. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in "Twins," these two mice were victims of science. Created in an Acme Gene Splicer and Bagel Warmer, Brain and a hamster we see later in the series named Snowball emerged with gigantic brains and ambitions, while Pinky came out of the warmer a few bagels shy of a dozen.

Warner Brothers cartoons have always celebrated mischief-makers and rule-breakers, but this one goes a step further by having Brain look and sound villainous. Yes, several episodes reveal him to be basically a decent mouse, but it's one of the only cartoons I know of where the evil character is celebrated to this degree and given the spotlight.

The old Warner Brother cartoons were full of irreverence and wise-guy lines, and that's also been cranked up a notch. In every episode, Brain drips with sarcasm and tosses off words like "honorificabilitudinitabus" ("with honor") and "phronemophobia" (fear of thinking) that sound made up but check out if you look them up in an unabridged dictionary. Another interesting continuation of the Warner Brothers cartoon tradition is the "quick cut." The old Warner Brothers animators wasted no time on transitions. One minute Elmer Fudd would grab Bugs Bunny by the ears in the forest, and in the very next frame the background will have changed from exterior to interior as Elmer drops him into a cooking kettle. You see that technique here too from time to time, as when Pinky is trying to keep Brain from falling off a cliff, yanking on his thumb. The very next frame, he's pulling him through the mail slot at Acme Labs, getting the pair of them back home so they could start the next day trying to take over the world.

Rob Paulsen won an Emmy for his voice portrayal of Pinky, while Maurice LaMarche patterned his Brain voice after an impersonation he did of Orson Welles at parties. And Steven Spielberg put his stamp of approval on them both and on the short-lived show, which has a cult following to this day. How good is it? Well, it varies considerably, as you'd expect a show might with more than a dozen different directors over its run and almost as many writers. Season One was the strongest, and thankfully this collection includes all of the shows from the debut season, along with nine shows from Season Two that are generally weaker. Kids will like the episodes where Brain builds large robotic humans that he sits atop, with his head peeking above and arms furiously working controls, while adults will love the sharp writing that can catch you off guard in some of the episodes.

Here are the 22 episodes (some 471 minutes) that are included on four single-sided discs:

"Das Mouse"—The first episode sets the stage, with Brain wanting to hypnotize people using crabmeat, which he has to obtain (don't ask why) from the sunken wreck of the Titanic, which puts him at risk when the U.S. government . . . . You get the point.

"Of Mouse and Man"—Brain creates a voicemail system he hopes will distract the world long enough so he can seize power, but first, as always, he has to finance his grandiose scheme, this time using a phony worker's compensation lawsuit.

"Tokyo Grows"/ "That Smarts"/ "Brainstem"—Brain uses an enlarging ray and dresses Pinky up like Godzilla; Brain tries to make Pinky smarter so he won't foul up his plans; the two lab mice sing a song about the brain.

"Pinky and the Fog"/ "Where No Mouse Has Gone Before"/ "Cheese Roll Call"—Brain tries another mind-control scheme, this time using the radio show "The Fog"; Pinky and the Brain go into space to change the plaque on a space probe to indicate he rules the world; another song, this time Pinky singing about cheese.

"Brainania"—To hatch his latest plan, Brain sets up a fake South Seas country so he can bully the U.S. into giving him foreign aid. An engaging episode that'll remind you of "The Mouse That Roared."

"TV or Not TV"—More hypnosis plans, but with dentures? Brain has to get on TV for it all to work, which, of course, it doesn't. One of the better episodes.

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