Six Days a Week - An 'Animaniacs' Retro Recap: 'Hooked on a Ceiling'

Written by Mike Cervantes

Episode 4:
In the first of a long-running set of pre-show bumpers, The Warners escape their water tower by inflating a giant clown balloon, who takes the water tower’s roof as a hat, and then uses an electric fan as a rudder. 

Hooked on a Ceiling
A historian at the beginning of the cartoon introduces Michelangelo, getting in a dig on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the process. (The one talking ninja turtle is voiced by Rob Paulsen. Nice touch.) Michelangelo, the painter, is voiced by Maurice LaMarche doing an imitation of Kirk Douglas, and he greatly resembles Kirk Douglas as well. They’d later use the same caricature in other cartoons under different names. It is possible that Generation X only really knows of Kirk Douglas as that one guy who got made fun of all the time on Animaniacs.

Michelangelo has kicked out all of his assistants during the painting of the Sistine Chapel, and he needs to have the ceiling finished in time for “his eminence” to arrive. Enter the Warners, who are working as discount painters and wallpaper hangers. After a few running gags involving The Warners getting Michelangelo repeatedly kicked out of the church, they whitewash the ceiling, and then re-paint it with images of a velvet Elvis, dogs playing poker and a pair of kids with giant eyes, all the while commenting on Michelangelo’s proclivity for “painting naked people on a church.” Eventually, they take Michelangelo’s side and they finish the ceiling, except for the “Creation of Adam” in the center. The Warners instead paint a mural of E.T. and Elliot in the same pose, and it impresses his eminence, who turns out to be Stephen Spielberg.

Goodfeathers: The Beginning
This is the very first Goodfeathers cartoon. There’s not a lot about the history of these characters online, but it isn’t hard to figure out their origins. They’re pigeon versions of the characters played by Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, and Ray Liotta in the film Goodfellas. Why pigeons? Is there any animal more “New York City” than a pigeon? Then there’s the added bonus of using the words “squawk” and “coo” and some randomized names of Italian dishes and celebrities in place of the swear words used by the actors in the original gangster flick. There’s also an endlessly recurring gag taken from the film’s “how am I funny?” sequence, where Pesto always finds a reason to misunderstand Squit, then drag him into a dust-up. 

The Goodfeathers shorts were always rather Sisyphean in their approach. They were man against nature, only the ‘nature’ part was played by a city full of fast moving cars and angry pigeon-hating citizens. In their debut short, the trio waste no time with this premise when Squit, the Ray Liotta pigeon, needs to fetch a bagel from the center of a busy street, so he can be let into the gang. They get pummeled by multiple cars, the New York City Marathon, and the subway, until the Godpigeon shows up. When the Godpigeon roars, traffic comes to a halt, and he takes the whole bagel for his meal. Then he lets Squit into the Goodfeathers. 

Wheel of Morality
Moral #4: Never ask what hot dogs are made of.
This one has a different opening from many of the other Wheel of Morality segments. Wakko is genuinely curious about the moral of the story. In later segments they made use of the “it’s that time again” version, so they could save on time and animation.

In the closing, The Warners return to the water tower using a ladder pulled from Wakko’s gag bag. When Ralph the Guard attempts to do the same thing, the ladder disappears back into the bag, Ralph lands in the bag, and then hops away.

Adult Jokes and Neat Moments:
-Yakko: "We’re not doing it for the sake of art, and we’re not doing it for the sake of money, we’re doing it because….We like drawing naked people!"
-Bobby: ‘Ey coo off! I’ll go for it when I wanna go for it!' (They didn’t get away with this as much in later seasons.)

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