Are you hooked on the brothers? We sure are! The Super Muscle Busters are super proud to provide an episode-by-episode guide to the shining starman of 1989 syndicated television, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! Our blog layers homemade plot summaries with creamy facts and rich, meaty random thoughts to create a piping hot information lasagna, fresh out of the oven for you. Served with garlic bread and house salad.
Dance / Jungle Fever
September 20, 1989
Ver. Consulted: SMBSS Restored by Ninja4561
Guest Starring: Shabba-Doo (
)
Live Action
It's Luigi's birthday, so Mario presents him with a certificate entitling him to a free dance lesson from Shabba-Doo. Luigi is thrilled; not only is this the gift he always wanted, but it's also just in time for the annual dance at the plumbers' hall. Between this dance and the Elvis impersonator contest from episode 9 it is clear that the brothers' United Association local provides them with a robust social life. Be like Mario, kids: join a union.
Cartoon
Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool and Toad are scouring the Amazon Jungle for Sheldon the witch doctor in the hopes that he can whip up a potion to rid the Mushroom Kingdom of King Koopa. King Koopa, dressed as a racist caricature, impedes our heroes by first sabotaging the rickety rope bridge over George's Gorge, then sending albatosses to torment them with bob-ombs filled with itching powder. Mario and co. manage to commandeer an albatoss, Super Mario Bros. 2 style, to escape the gorge, but they are overcome by the horrible itch, allowing King Koopa to beat them to the village where Sheldon and a bunch of really weird and ugly mushroom people reside. Princess Toadstool is unaffected by the itching powder for some unexplained reason, so it falls to her alone to rescue the kidnapped Sheldon. Well, she also has the help of Butterfingers, Sheldon's weird little assistant.
Princess Toadstool tracks Koopa to a platform in the sky, where at first it appears Sheldon is willingly collaborating with the terrible turtle by cooking up a potion to transmute Toadstool to stone; Sheldon turns the tables on his kidnapper by warning the Princess to duck the potion he throws at her (she couldn't have figured out to do that by herself?), which splashes on King Koopa instead. Turns out the potion is an extra strength itching elixer and not a petrification potion like he promised Koopa; apparently, making King Koopa itch is enough to satisfy the Princess's original purpose for searching out Sheldon, so she forgets about her political rival and asks the good doctor for a potion to relieve her friends' itchiness. Sheldon gives them the next best thing: a big bowl of a spaghetti, reasoning that it will distract them from the itch. I don't think this guy's much of a doctor, to be honest.
Live Action
Shabba-Doo arrives to teach the brothers, decked out in their b-boy finest, how to break it down. At first Mario and Luigi are all left feet, but after taking a break to watch a preview of this week's episode of Legend of Zelda, they are fantastic dancers when filmed from the waist down.
Alligator Dundee / Stars in Their Eyes
September 19, 1989
Ver. Consulted: SMBSS Restored by Ninja4561
Guest Starring: Paul Elder ()
Live Action
After Mario and Luigi finish another successful plumbing job (the toilet was clogged with a "pludaris"), their good pal Ratagator pokes his head out of a sewer pipe and warns them of a horrible scary monster in the sewers. Ratagator pops back down the pipe and in walks Alligator Dundee, who is himself on trail of a ferocious, vicious creature.
Cartoon
Whilst flying through the Mushroom Universe, our heroes' spaceship is shot down by King Koopa's space troopas and forced to make a crash landing on Planet Quark. Thinking quickly, Luigi suggests they stuff tools down their pants to keep from floating away. They meet some two-nosed aliens ("quirks") and discover slave driver Astro Mouser squashed like the Wicked Witch of the East under their crashed vessel. Sadly, Mouser recovers from his injuries and starts chuckin' bombs at the brothers. They escape in a bathtub barge, which they are able to keep afloat under the rain of explosives using their plumbing expertise. Here's the plan, Stan: the good guys need to dress up like quirks to infiltrate Moon Man Koopa's factory and steal parts to repair their spaceship. Alas, they quickly run afoul of the Moon Man himself and his big magnet and are hoisted by the anchors in their pants into dreadful captivity!
Forced to forge the chains of his own comrades' servitude in Moon Man Koopa's factory, Mario takes inspiration from his more politically-minded brother and raises his hammer in the air, declaring "Honk-noses of world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!" The brothers discover that they can unlock Koopa's remote-controlled shakles with the soundwaves created by their banging hammers, which seems like a big design flaw. Our heroes repair their spaceship and engage in an outerspace dogfight with Koopa's weird bird-beaked rocketship; after they've blasted everything that isn't nailed down out of the torpedo tubes as improvised ammunition, Princess Toadstool makes the difficult decision to fire the last emergency spaghetti ration down the bird ship's gullet to evade capture. Moon Man Koopa vows to punish the quirks for his defeat, but they rise up and play the Legend of Zelda theme on their double-noses; the horrible buzzing noise vibrates Moon Man Koopa's ship to pieces and frees Planet Quark.
Live Action
The brothers realize that the monster Alligator Dundee has been hunting is their friend Ratagator. Rather than clear up the confusion immediately, they initially go along with Dundee's plan to lure Ratagator out of the sewer pipe with a tuna sandwich, only to turn on their Australian ally and capture him in a net. They finally explain to the distraught guest from down under that from Ratagator's perspective it's the human who is the monster; Alligator Dundee protests that he's just a simple Australian bloke trying to make it in the big time, and thought he could be famous if he moved to New York, captured a beast, and fell in love with a beautiful American woman. Mario thinks all that would make for a fine movie indeed, and Alligator Dundee agrees, but declares that he'll change his name first... to Ratagator Dundee!
Mama Mia Mario / The Great BMX Race
September 18, 1989
Ver. Consulted: SMBSS Restored by Ninja4561
Guest Starring: Nobody
Live Action
Mario and Luigi exult their foul bachelor lifestyle, scarfing down pizza in a messy basement like true proud kids' show protagonists, when the phone rudely rings to disrupt their revelry: it's Mama Mario, and she's-a coming over! In a panic, the brothers burst into action to whip the ol' basement into shape. Mario takes the trash out the back door, and here comes Mama Mario (Mario in drag) through the front door to scold Luigi and beat him with her handbag.
Cartoon
One day while riding a tandem bike through the desert for no reason, Mario and friends come across Fryguy (boss of World 4 in SMB 2), who claims Toad owes him 60 gold coins. Luckily, a BMX bike race with prize money on the line is about to begin. Their opponents in this race are a koopa on a yellow Penny-farthing, Tryclyde on a green scooter, and Mouser on a pink Easy Rider chopper. "Looks like you forgot your training wheels, sewer saps!" declares Mouser, who then laughs so hard at his own joke he falls off his bike and gives the brothers a head start.
Mario and Luigi proceed to dominate the race, even having time to for a quick stop to carb load at the Pasta Pit. Momentum swings back in the antagonists' favour when debris on the road punctures the brothers' tires, allowing their enemies to surround them menacingly. Mario and Luigi perform their "patty-cake, patty-cake pasta man, give me pasta power as fast as you can" routine and whip up a dust cloud that allows them to escape into a vegetable patch and pelt their pursuers with produce until the pusillanimous foes forfeit the race. All's well that ends well? No! Here comes Princess Toadstool and Toad to tell the brothers the terrible truth: this race was a trick, and a trap devisvt by King Koopa. There is no prize money, and none of this mattered at all. See you next week, kids!
Live Action
Mama Mario puts the boys to work washing the street from Mario Brothers Plumbing down past Flatbush Ave and all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge. Fed up with this shabby treatment, Luigi tricks Mama Mario into thinking she has won the lottery so she'll go away. When there's a knock at the door Luigi's afraid she has returned so he heads out the back door to find a winning lottery ticket, leaving Mario alone to face the wrath of Aunt Luigeena (Luigi in drag), who scolds Mario and beats him with her handbag. That's some good old-fashioned ethnic humour, like-a mama used to make.
