Toons After Dark: Tooning Out The News (2020)

 Stephen Colbert's other animated spin-off from The Late Show figures to be around a while.

Tooning Out The News bowed last year, both as a featurette on The Late Show, and as an ongoing series on Paramount+. Colbert serves as executive producer, but is not yet a voice actor on the show. Like, say for example, South Park, Tooning focuses on current events, and the development of interviews recalls Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast or even Weird Al Yankovic's mock-up interviews.

With Our Cartoon President having ended, that doesn't mean that Donald Trump and his sycophants, such as MyPillow CEO-founder Mike Lindell, aren't targets. That's what Tooning is for.

Episode length varies between 5 and 45 minutes. If you've got Paramount+, check it out. You'll be glad you did. Unless you're a Republican.

Rating: A.

Toon Rock: I'm Still Standing (2016)

 Three years before his breakthrough performance as Elton John in "Rocketman", Taron Egerton covered one of the legend's 80's hits in "Sing".

As Johnny, the teenage son of a mobster, Egerton nails a faithful cover of John's 1983 hit, "I'm Still Standing", which inspires pops to bust out of jail for a family reunion. The balance of the clip includes a portion of Queen & David Bowie's 1982 hit, "Under Pressure":

I really have to rent the movie before the sequel comes out around Christmas.

Game Time: Meet the youngest qualifier for a black belt (To Tell The Truth, 1974)

 Kicking off this post-holiday episode of To Tell The Truth is a game involving Philip Paley, who, at 9, was the youngest to qualify for a black belt. Future icon Chuck Norris is the special guest opening the show with host Garry Moore.

Edit, 10/25/24: Had to change the video, as this is just the opening game.

For all we know, this might've been Chuck's TV debut, too.

Toon Legends: Popeye Snags The Sea Hag (1979)

 From season 1 of The All-New Popeye Hour:

Popeye (Jack Mercer) is a private detective in this short, sent after old foe the Sea Hag (Marilyn Schreffler), aka Madame No-No, who has become more of a pirate. For some reason, Sea Hag's black dress has been replaced with a red one for this adventure, which I think is her Hanna-Barbera debut (she'd return in "Sweethearts at Sea", Popeye's 1st primetime special).

I think Allan Melvin voices her henchman.

Pedestrian.

Rating: B.

Saturday Morning's Greatest Hits: The Good Eleven (1973)

I'll bet anything at all that this next Multiplication Rock entry has been used in Sunday School. And, yeah, the angel used in Bob Dorough's "The Good Eleven" is a reason why it would.

Come to think of it, this would work in Vacation Bible School for preschoolers, wouldn't it now?

On The Air: What If? (2021)

 Well, it's here.

45 years after its initial comics debut, Marvel's What If....? has bowed on Disney+, with some of the best animation for Marvel in over a decade.

If you remember the books, you know the premise. The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) serves as narrator, taking us into a moment in time where events in Marvel's history were changed. Some good, some bad.

In the opener, for example, series creator A. C. Bradley examines what would happen if Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) took the super soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers (Josh Keaton, ex-Spectacular Spider-Man, Green Lantern). Bradley Whitford (ex-The West Wing) takes over for Tommy Lee Jones as Agent Flynn. Dominic Cooper reprises as Howard Stark.

Check the season trailer:

The opener gives us Captain Carter as a mash-up of Captain America and Wonder Woman. Ain't nothing wrong with that.

Rating: A+.

Saturtainment: A complete episode of POP! Goes The Country (1980-1)

 From season 7 of POP! Goes The Country:

Host Tom T. Hall is joined by Hank Williams, Jr., with whom he does a duet cover of Hank Snow's "Move it on Over", and relative unknown Stephanie Winslow, who, unfortunately, didn't survive the 80's. Hank, Jr. kicks it off with a live performance of "Dixie on my Mind":

In memory of Hall, 85, who has passed away.