Mickey Mouse Short: Fire Escape

Season 2, Episode 2: “Fire Escape” 4/25/14
Starring: Mickey Mouse
Co-starring: Minnie Mouse and Goofy
Setting: Generic urban setting

Plot:
Mickey is on his way to Minnie’s apartment when he comes across Goofy sitting on a park bench.  They engage in a short conversation until they spot a plume of black smoke billowing from Minnie’s apartment window.  Mickey, in a panic, instructs Goofy to call for “help” while he rushes to Minnie’s apartment.

Mickey arrives at Minnie’s apartment building, setting the complex in a frenzy while attempting to evacuate all its tenants.  He heroically goes onto save the entire building -including the many babies of the apartment. However, the fire escape broke and now he can’t reach Minnie.  Mickey then galvanizes all the saved tenants to construct a “human” pyramid to lift the heroic mouse to his girl’s top-story window. 

Once in Minnie’s apartment, Mickey makes a startling discovery: Minnie’s place isn’t on fire at all, she’s merely overcooked and badly burnt the turkey she was making for her dinner with Mickey.  To make matters worse, Goofy barges through the front door with two firefighters in tow who immediately unleash their hoses on the mice.

Short Stuff:
Nice detail of the napping goat with a chewed up can on his nightstand.

Yup.  Male mice have nipples but do they produce milk?  No. They don’t. Parenthetically, I’m not sure who’s more obsessed with nipples: me or this series???

The sequence where Mickey evacuates the baby animals reminds me of the famous scene in “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” where Pee-Wee helps save all the animals from the burning pet shop. 

I love the deep, baritone voice they give the tiny ant.

Minnie disproves her cookbook’s line of “Nothing can be overcooked.”

Based on her lack of success, one wonders if the splat covered line in her cookbook reminding her to “Don’t f…. to …..” could’ve helped.

Yet another great supporting performance by Goofy.  He gets the action started by noticing the fire and then finishes it off by bringing in the firefighters.  

Final Grade: B-
This episode is nice and funny enough but it seems like a missed opportunity to at least throw in a few recognizable characters and/or cameos as residents of the apartment complex.  These shorts have introduced a handful of cool, new characters (the panda, the cable car driver, the ant, etc.) but they’ve just been one-off performances so far.  It’s tough to world build if characters appear in only one episode, never to be seen again.