Tucker runs for Student Council President, but no one pays attention until he receives a minion named Hotep Ra.
7.9
"Good"
While Tucker is frustrated that no one is paying attention to his Student Council President campaign, including his campaign managers, Danny and Sam, they take a trip to the museum. There, they see a shrine of an ancient pharaoh who looks just like Tucker! When Tucker’s reflection appears in an ancient mirror, a minion of the pharaoh named Hotep Ra appears to serve Tucker! He later gives him the king’s Scarab Scepter, which causes Tucker to behave like a tyrant, where he sends the whole class to ancient Egypt during the debate, where Tucker is the king of them all! But Ra has his own plans in store for Tucker and his realm…
From the commercial, this episode did look interesting, though I wasn’t sure I would think much of it. I actually had to miss it for a Los Angeles Lakers-New Jersey Nets game, but I recorded it and watched it later. When it was done, I found KT to be a fairly decent episode.
The opener was pretty good in some parts, not so much in others. I thought Tucker was treated a bit unfair when trying to get people to vote for him, and it did tend to continue throughout the course of the episode. Danny and Sam still did support Tucker’s campaign, just in their own way. Danny’s platform of “Mini-skirt Fridays” was good for a laugh as well. But I didn’t really like it that much when Tucker tried to point out a ghost, but wasn’t listened to.
I had fears that for Tucker, this would get to be too much like WyW. But I felt his reasons for behaving like he did were more understandable, and again, not entirely his fault. There were plenty of times where I thought he was treated unfairly at the beginning, at the start of the museum scene, and during the debate. But there were also times where I thought he was being unfair as well. He wanted people to listen to him, but perhaps he should also do more listening as well. Danny and Sam wanted to help his campaign, but he just wanted to do it his way and wouldn’t listen. His yelling at them got on my nerves in some parts, and I really didn’t like his attitude that much after getting the scepter, under mind control or not.
Danny and Sam were both done very nice in this episode. While they didn’t pay Tucker a lot of attention that much, they still wanted to help him, and their lack of listening to him was not done in a jerky way. They were IC in being bugged by Tucker’s attitude as well.
I found Hotep Ra to be a rather cool villain. The plot with a king’s servant wanting to overthrow him was a tad clichéd, but this was done a lot better than it could’ve been. He did have a pretty evil vibe to him, and I liked that he was able to keep Tucker in the dark about it all. His little shouts of “I am risen!” were funny, along with what Tucker said after the second time.
The second half trip to Ancient Egypt got to be pretty cool. I’ve studied a lot about ancient cultures and I know the story of Passover, so I was able to relate to it just a bit. It was pretty cool to see for the most part, especially the chariot races, and Tucker’s laws were funny. Funniest of all that was when Star and Paulina were tending to his feet. And I also liked Dash’s comment about not doing manual labor until thirty.
Once again, the music, the humor, the action, and the animation were all done in a truly splendid way. Most of the humor came from the Egyptian scenes. Perhaps the funniest of the whole episode was when Tucker called Sam Samantha and she got mad about it. I never envisioned her liking her full name. As for the action, another brilliant job. I LOVED seeing Danny use his ghostly wail again! Too bad it didn’t work on his prime target, the sphinx.
But for some reason, things were a little boring in some parts. I felt like I wasn’t able to get into it as well as most episodes I’ve seen, and I think the last episode this happened was Identity Crisis, which I still believe as the worst episode of Season 2. As for KT. The theme with the election was plenty clichéd. Guy who tries to talk about the issues, no one listens, his competition is a bully, he makes them listen with threats. Not very enjoyable for me.
As for the sphinx, I found it pretty cool that Tucker got it to obey his command. Unlike that squeaky toy in SoG that calmed down the dog, this actually flowed with the episode in general instead of just being thrown in there. And the ending was done nice as well. For reasons even I’m not sure of, I liked that Tucker made sure nobody remembered the trip, and also that he dropped out of the race. And again, I found it funny when he started blathering how cool he was, and when Star and Paulina chased him off at the end. Two episodes in a row, huh?
All in all, I found King Tuck to be a good episode. Could’ve been a lot better, but still alright. I actually thought this to be better at first, but after going through it a few more times, I realized it was somewhat sub-par of the standards of most DP episodes.
7.9/10. A minor setback for the series, but a very short one, IMO.