Season Review: Looney Tunes Cartoons Season Three

Thanksgiving is a perfect time for families to come together, eat lots of food until our bellies pop, and spend quality time with one another. For the Looney Tunes, it’s a great time to come together and unleash some more cartoon mayhem. Following its decent debut on HBO Max, Looney Tunes Cartoons successfully made some improvements for its sophomore season, such as removing specific restrictions and providing more good cartoons. It faltered a bit in the end with the “Back to School” special back in August, but overall, it was a solid second season that happened to be better than the first. Now, our favorite cast of zany characters is back with the third season that offers more slapstick and Acme weaponry than ever before.

Like the previous seasons, the third season of Looney Tunes Cartoons continues the zany misadventures of our favorite characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and more. Each of the nine episodes consists of two or three shorts that put the Looney Tunes in different environments. These cartoons include a new Tweety short (“Happy Birdy to You”) that celebrates the 79th anniversary of the character’s debut short, A Tale of Two Kitties, and the show’s first sketch staring two rodents Hubie and Bertie, “Frame the Feline”.

Looney Tunes Cartoons never shied away from its variety when it comes to its miniature stories. Whether it’s the environments, the scenarios, or the characters it paired with, the show never lost its momentum in providing clever ideas in its slapstick and dialogue. Fortunately, the same can be said for its third season. While some of the shorts in season three may not be as hilarious as others, it continues to provide a ton of slapstick, charismatic characters, solid animation, and clever ideas for nostalgic fans and newcomers alike.

As usual, the nine episodes featured the same character pairings as the previous seasons. The most popular ones include Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, Sylvester and Tweety, and Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. The third season also has cartoons involving Petunia Pig, Hubie and Bertie, and Porky’s ungrateful nephew Cicero. Now, I don’t blame the show for keeping these pairings intact for three seasons because they’re part of what made the old Looney Tunes shows instant classics. They’re cat-and-mouse games where the prey outwits the predator through trickery and slapstick. Plus, the Daffy and Porky cartoons have proven to be very popular since their first episode together last year.

While the pairings still deliver the goods regarding their chemistry and comedy, the third season didn’t give any other characters a chance to shine compared to its second season, aside from Petunia, Hubie, and Bertie. It felt like this season has relied a bit too much on the pairings that worked exceptionally well in the previous seasons instead of giving the other Tunes like Tax and Foghorn Leghorn more to do. The writers did pit Bugs against Marvin the Martian or Yosemite Sam in a few cartoons and had Porky being tormented by Cicero in “Unlucky Strikes”. But, unfortunately, they’re not enough to carry the show’s variety out of harm’s way. It also didn’t help that season three consists of nine episodes, which is surprisingly shorter than what the first two seasons offer.

The 20-second cartoons also made a comeback in its third season. Season three managed to add some new content to this list, along with the return of the “End of the Leash” segment. The new segments include “Daffy Psychic”, “Daffy Traffic Cop Stop”, “Balloon Salesman”, and “Put the Cat Out”. The former three were hilarious sketches that featured Daffy making a fool out of Porky in different predicaments, even though they’re just smaller versions of the regular Daffy and Porky cartoons. The “Put the Cat Out” segments? Not so much.

“Put the Cat Out” involves Porky Pig putting Sylvester outside in the cold weather and Sylvester attempting to pull a switch-a-roo on Porky. If any of that sounds familiar to you, you’re not wrong. The segment is a carbon copy of the end credit sequence in The Flintstones where Fred puts Baby Puss outside the house, only to be thrown out by the saber-toothed cat instead. Not only was this idea pretty lazy, but the slapstick it delivered didn’t compete with what the other shorts provided. Plus, why would they make a cartoon about leaving a cat out in the cold?

Overall, the third season of Looney Tunes Cartoons is an enjoyable and wacky dessert to feast on after a huge Thanksgiving meal. Unfortunately, it couldn’t match the same heights as its stellar second season regarding its variety. While it did deliver some new ideas in its 20-second segments, their execution wasn’t as spectacular as I hoped they were, mainly the “Put the Cat Out” shorts. The usual pairings from the last two seasons also tend to overshadow the other supporting characters more than before. Nonetheless, the show maintained its strength in delivering cartoons that were wonderfully animated and charismatically enduring. There’s no doubt that Looney Tunes fans will also get a kick out of its third season. However, if the developers want to keep them glued to the screens, they will have to keep working on its variety for its potential fourth season regarding the supporting characters.