Pinky, Elmyra & The Brain

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Pinky, Elmyra & The Brain
🎵So Pinky and the Brain Share a new domain It's what the network wants Why bother to complain?🎵
Genre: Comedy Sitcom Science fiction Running Time: 11 minutes 22 minutes ("Teleport a Friend") Country: United States Release Date: September 19 - November 28, 1998 Network(s): The WB (Kids' WB!) Created by: Tom Ruegger Distributed by: Warner Bros. Television Distribution Starring: Cree Summer Maurice LaMarche Rob Paulsen Nancy Cartwright Seasons: 1 Episodes: 13 Previous show: Pinky and the Brain

Pinky, Elmyra & The Brain is the retooling of the American animated television series Pinky and the Brain (itself being a spin-off from Animaniacs) with the title characters being joined by Elmyra Duff from Tiny Toon Adventures.

Plot

The series follows with ACME Labs destroyed, leaving Pinky and Brain homeless and on the run from a man named Wally Faust. Pinky and the Brain finally end up in a pet store and take refuge inside a turtle; they are still inside the turtle when it is purchased by Elmyra Duff and named "Mr. Shellbutt". In their new home, Pinky and the Brain continue to attempt new methods of trying to take over the world while enduring Elmyra's affection at the same time.

Why We Deeply Resent This

1. The whole reason this show exists is because of executive meddling on the part of Warner Bros., who wanted Pinky and the Brain to be part of a sitcom "more like The Simpsons".
2. Right beyond the bat, the pairing of both Pinky and Brain with Elmyra is a huge mismatch due to not only poor chemistry between the trio, but because it goes against the idea set by its original creators that both Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs/Pinky and the Brain are set in their own separate universes.
3. Elmyra has been flanderized beyond belief in this show into a little brat. She is even more unlikable than she was in Tiny Toon Adventures as she'll punish Brain just for using scientific terms. In addition, she is even dumber and more annoying than she was in TTA, which ruins what could've been some good episodes.
4. The writing for Elmyra is childish, clichéd, unfunny, and predictable.
5. While the songs from Pinky and the Brain were good, the songs in this show are forced and just plain annoying.
6. The humor isn't even close to the humor the original shows had.
7. The setting just doesn't work for a show about mice trying to take over the world.
   • Because of the show's setting, both Pinky and the Brain get constantly tortured by Elmyra for no reason whatsoever throughout the series. This is unlike the original show, where the reasons why Pinky and the Brain often fail in their attempts at world domination is due to usually karmic reasons such as the impossibility of Brain's plan, Brain's own arrogance or overconfidence, Pinky's stupidity or just circumstances beyond their control. Worse still, Elmyra never receives any comeuppance for her actions in this show.
8. The name of Elmyra's pet turtle, Mr. Shellbutt, is an incredibly stupid name, even for a pet.
9. Because of this, Steven Spielberg stopped making any more incarnations of Animaniacs or Tiny Toon Adventures until 2020 when Hulu rebooted the former.
   • Though he did make Wakko's Wish in December 1999, even after this show was cancelled.
10. Even the creators of Animaniacs/Pinky and the Brain who worked on this show were not happy with this show and the changes the Warner Bros. executives made to it when it came out, even going so far as to reference it in the show's opening theme song as well as having Brain lament "I deeply resent this..." at the end.
11. As of the Animaniacs 2020 reboot as well as the confirmation of Pinky, Elmyra & The Brain being considered non-canon in 2017, this spin-off had no impact with Steven Spielberg's cartoons other than being a shallow and sour sellout that was greenlit into a series by the Warner Bros. executives in terms of their business practices. You can watch both the original and new Animaniacs shows respectively, Tiny Toon Adventures, Freakazoid, as well as other work created by Steven Spielberg whatever you want, but skipping Pinky, Elmyra & The Brain, and anything too important would not be missed.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The voice acting, music, and animation are still good.
2. The theme song had a few lyrics providing evidence that the show was clearly done under protest by the crew, meaning that no one in the production team at Amblin Entertainment or Warner Bros. wanted this spin-off to happen all except for the executives, these lyrics are examples of Pinky, Elmyra, and the Brain making fun of itself. Here are three examples:
   • "So Pinky and the Brain, share a new domain. It's what the network wants, why bother to complain?" (as stated in the infobox of this page)
   • "The Earth remains a goal. Some things they can't control."
   • The theme song ends with Brain even lamenting "I deeply resent this".
3. Despite being flawed as well, Pinky and the Brain are usually the only likable characters since, most of the time, they didn't do anything wrong at all.
4. Mr. Shellbutt's name, despite it being really stupid, can be pretty funny.
5. NARF!

Reception

Pinky, Elmyra & The Brain got a score of 5.8/10 on IMDb with worse audience reviews.

Though, not everyone hated the series. Doug Walker, aka the Nostalgia Critic, made a video discussing the series stating his own opinions and defenses on why he enjoyed the retooled series.

Trivia

• Peter Hastings quit Warner Bros. and left for Disney after helping with the episode "You'll Never Eat Food Pellets in This Town Again!".
• In Brazil, the show had excessive reruns on the Saturday morning children's block of SBT Sábado Animado during the late 2000s and early 2010s, this is due to the fact that Silvia Abravanel started to direct the block in 2007 and in that period several classic cartoons were removed in favor of broadcasting only reruns of the more childish and lighter versions of cartoon characters.
• In 2017, Tom Ruegger confirmed that the show was non-canon.

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