17 The loading of gunpowder into a rifle is problematic for Sylvester, particularly with Hippety Hopper pulling the rifle’s trigger, Porky receives a surrealistic anti-smoking message, and Bugs’ arrival by mistake in the middle of the Sahara Desert is greeted by animosity by Saharan land baron Riff Raff (Yosemite) Sam. 56 Yosemite Sam is Ebenezer Scrooge, Porky Pig is Bob Cratchit, Tweety is Tiny Tim, and Bugs is the spectre who imparts to Scrooge the true meaning of Christmas, Foghorn Leghorn endures an uninvited visit by his annoying, egotistical, practical joking college chum- Jackie Gleason-inspired rooster Rhode Island Red, and the World War I aeroplane with which Wile E. Coyote chases the Road Runner is catapulted by a string of power lines toward a violent crash. Bobo the Elephant’s appearance on the baseball pitcher’s mound as Sweetwater Schnooks’ relief-hurler prompts members of the opposing team to comment that, “This is a ball game, not a circus,” and Porky resists the attack of a lion by use of a chair a la big top lion tamer. The cartoons included in the seventh week of Merrie Melodies: Starring Bugs Bunny and Friends were “Wild and Woolly Hare”, “Bell Hoppy”, and “Rocket Squad” of Show 31; “Quack Shot”, “Captain Hareblower”, and “The Leghorn Blows at Midnight” of Show 32; “Tom Tom Tomcat”, “Whoa, Be-Gone!”, and “The Hasty Hare” of Show 33; “The Prize Pest”, “Bewitched Bunny”, and “The Mouse That Jack Built” of Show 34; and “Cracked Quack”, “Roman Legion-Hare”, and “Kiddin’ the Kitten” of Show 35. Week 7’s proximity to Halloween accounts for the presence in its instalments of “Bewitched Bunny” (Witch Hazel’s connection to the night of ghouls is obvious), “The Prize Pest” (Daffy’s Jekyll-and-Hyde act and Porky’s ghastly costume), the every-mouse’s-nightmare scenario of “The Mouse that Jack Built”, and Bugs’ assumption that Marvin Martian and K-9 are trick-or-treaters in “The Hasty Hare”.
Prehistory is a shared time-setting of “Caveman Inki” and week 4’s “Wild, Wild World” (Show 16). The Mynah bird of “Caveman Inki” and Beaky Buzzard in “Strife With Father” are both black-plumed fowl of voracious species, although Beaky is too bashful to be an aggressive hunter in “Strife With Father”. The cartoons of week 2 were “Mutiny On the Bunny”, “Deduce, You Say”, and “Much Ado About Nutting” of Show 6; “Mouse-Taken Identity”, “Rabbit Fire”, and “To Beep or Not to Beep” of Show 7; “Frigid Hare”, “Kiss Me Cat”, and “Dog Collared” of Show 8; “Bill of Hare”, “Lovelorn Leghorn”, and “The Hypo-Chondri-Cat” of Show 9; and “Daffy Dilly”, “Stooge For a Mouse”, and “What’s Opera, Doc?” of Show 10. “Mutiny On the Bunny” recalls Marvin Martian’s fussing about insubordination by K-9 (after Bugs suggests that Marvin’s faithful cohort may have mutinous intent) in week 1’s “The Hasty Hare”. 15 Modern technology fails to facilitate farmer Elmer Fudd’s elimination of the rabbit raider of his carrot patch, Charlie Dog proposes a pet-and-master relationship to an uninterested and fiery Southern Colonel, and in the wintry city, Tweety flees Sylvester and an orange putty tat onto a frozen park pond and cuts the ice around the cats so that they fall into frigid water and become flu-stricken.
Cartoons in episodes of Merrie Melodies: Starring Bugs Bunny and Friends do not correspond in the same way as those in weekly (i.e. one show per week) television series like The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show. In honour of Bugs Bunny’s fiftieth birthday in 1990, a television series of 65 half-hour instalments composed of Warner Brothers cartoons was released in syndication, that is directly to individual television stations, by Warner Brothers Domestic Television, to supplement the ABC television network’s Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show. This television series was given the name of Merrie Melodies: Starring Bugs Bunny and Friends because the more familiar Looney Tunes title had become the property of the Nickelodeon specialty cable television channel. Bugs Bunny cartoons in the fifth week of Merrie Melodies: Starring Bugs Bunny and Friends. It is interesting that the first two Tweety cartoons on Merrie Melodies, “Tweet and Sour” (Show 3) and “Putty Tat Trouble” (Show 15), contest Sylvester with a one-eyed, orange tabby for possession of the “itty birdie”, and “Putty Tat Trouble” and the next Tweety cartoon on the show, “Snow Business” (Show 25), are winter-timed and contain scenes in which Sylvester uses a long-neck ashtray to extinguish his smoking tail.
40 A young mouse dreams that he is Little Red Riding Hood and that Sylvester is the Big Bad Wolf, with their confrontation occurring inside of a house and Sylvester being defeated by the mouse’s cunning and hurriedly constructed contraption- a miniature Army tank. 10 Daffy endeavours to gain entry to an ailing millionaire’s mansion in order to provoke laughter in the wealthy one before his death and is blocked from entering the lavish house by the millionaire’s stodgy butler. 32 High seas pirate Yosemite Sam finds fierce opposition to his attempted seizure of a ship by a stowaway in said ship’s carrot cargo, Daffy and Elmer wage war in a marshland when Elmer comes thereto to hunt ducks and Daffy indignantly objects to Elmer’s intent, and Foghorn Leghorn deceives Henery Hawk into selecting the barnyard dog as fowl quarry- pheasant under glass. The episodes of week ten: Show 46 with “Bonanza Bunny”, “Chaser On the Rocks”, and “Cats A-Weigh!”; Show 47 with “You Were Never Duckier”, “The Unmentionables”, and “Early to Bet”; Show 48 with “Pop ‘im Pop!”, “Frigid Hare”, and “Bugged By a Bee”; Show 49 with “Horse Hare”, “Porky’s Bear Facts”, and “A Hound For Trouble”; and Show 50 with “Rebel Rabbit”, “Run, Run, Sweet Road Runner”, and “The EGGcited Rooster”.
