Mickey Mouse Short: Sleepwalkin'

Season 1, Episode 14: “Sleepwalkin’” 12/5/13
Starring: Goofy and Mickey Mouse
Setting: New York City, NY

Plot:
Due to Goofy’s sleepwalking problem, Mickey offers to spend the night at his home in order to keep an eye on his pal.  After sleeping for a few hours, Goofy sleepwalks right into his closet, changes into his tracksuit and he’s off!

Goofy barrels through a few walls and into the city night where he uses skyscrapers, drain pipes, the sewer system and even the moon as his own personal Olympic level training facility – he runs, he pole vaults, he does gymnastics, he swims, he dives!  Mickey is in hot pursuit but fails to wrangle in the Goof… that is, until it dawns on him that this is like an event and Goofy won’t stop until he finishes.  Mickey goes on to set up a finish line in Goofy’s bedroom where, once he crosses it, he flops down into his bed – safe and sound. 

Goofy awakens the next morning (a few seconds later) feeling so good he declares he could run a marathon.  Mickey, bleary and red-eyed from last night’s lack of sleep, is so cranky with Goofy, he runs right through Goofy’s wall and out into the city just to get away.

Short Stuff:
Goofy falls asleep just after 6pm, begins sleepwalking at 11pm and wakes up at 7am.

Goofy is a smoker based on the pipe on his nightstand.  He’s also a bit of an outdoorsman by the looks of some of the pictures on his wall along with a mounted fish and his fishing boots.

The outside of Goofy’s house looks just like the one in Mickey’s Toontown at Disneyland. 

Though not explicit, there are a few details and clues scattered about to conclude that this episode takes place in New York City.

One is the since retired New York Redbird subway train of which Goofy pole vaults over.

Another clue is the eagle gargoyles on the skyscraper from which Goofy high dives off of.  This building is none other than the Chrysler Building (they even fashioned the design of the elevator doors after the famous building). 

In fact, the Chrysler Building is so tall that we can see the Pyramids of Giza, the Eiffel Tower and an ambiguous castle off in the distance.  I’m guessing the castle is either Sleeping Beauty Castle from Disneyland Paris or Germany’s famed Neuschwanstien Castle of which actually inspired Disneyland’s original version of Sleeping Beauty Castle.

Final Grade: B+
I was actually tempted in giving Goofy top billing over Mickey in “Potatoland” but, with his predominance and performance in this short, I could no longer ignore the fact that Goofy has been carrying the load for four of the last five shorts and deserves some credit.  Along with that, this episode really was a throwback to the old school slapstick physicality of Goofy shorts from the 40s – the only thing missing was his trademark “Yahooey” scream.  Unfortunately though, this was another instance where the episode would’ve been better served had Donald been in Mickey’s role.  I know this is technically a “Mickey Mouse” series but the instances are piling up where he’s being overused and just plain miscast.