The Pepe Le Pew commentaries are back on

 Hey, yeah, remember how I said there would be video commentary with me and the Looney Tunes Critic put up on his channel?  Well, I overshot that announcement by almost exactly one year.  I'll let Trevor Thomson, the man himself, explain:

I didn't know he had a "situation" going on. And I'm sure Covid-19 didn't exactly help things either.  Oh well. I'm glad he's slowly but surely getting back on his feet and continues to keep trucking along with his channel. Here's hoping he'll get that coveted Golden Play Button someday soon.

Like he said, the commentaries we did will appear on his channel every Saturday during the month of February 2021 (barring any other unexpected roadblocks).  The first one will appear this coming Saturday February 6th. Don't forget to "toon" in.

I'd also like to expand a bit on what Trevor said about what the women in his life said about Pepe.  They do make an accurate assertion when they say that poor Penelope the Cat has no agency and is completely at the mercy of this "chad skunk".  They're not wrong.  You can see it in this exchange from the cartoon Scent-imental Romeo:

"...sontez vous, sontez vous wherever you..." 

"...are."

BONGGGGGGG!

"Flirt"

Just look at the horror in Penelope's eyes.  She is essentially living in #MeToo Hell.  "That mallet to the skull wasn't enough to stop him???!!!", her face seems to scream as she stares into the crippling abyss of what she realizes is her life now.

If you've seen even one Pepe Le Pew cartoon, you know for sure that she cannot run and
she cannot hide and EVEN BRUTAL BLUNT PHYSICAL ASSAULT won't stop this indestructible romeo. What are her options? She's like Sarah Conner running away from a combination of Warren Beatty and The Terminator.

I like their comparison to the women in Johnny Bravo who are not so put upon and have all of the resources to resist and fend off Johnny's advances.  They're living a better life for sure.  But, of course, I don't believe for a second creator Chuck Jones' intentions was to take pleasure in watching a female cat get psychologically tortured.  As I mentioned on a blogpost I made about Pepe Le Pew many moons ago, Chuck's inspiration was him watching writer Tedd Pierce constantly trying to woo any one of the Ink & Paint girls even though he hadn't bathed for a few days.  The lack of self-awareness on Tedd's part along with the awkward discomfort of the poor lady trying to escape the encounter are comically exaggerated in the Pepe/Penelope dynamic.  That's all that's happening.  As per other examples, if anyone in real life saw the violent way Moe interacted with Curly....

....or the volatile and often condescending manner in which Basil dealt with Manuel on Fawlty Towers...

...so many Human Resource Centres wouldn't hesitate to draw up paperwork to help extract these people from such an abusive situation.  That is certainly not cooperative human behaviour.  

There's also that trope in cartoons that most often cats are tortured for our amusement, as the filmographies of Sylvester, Tom, and Catnip can demonstrate:

Penelope could just be one of many cartoon cats that suffers a different yet similar fate.

However, all of these scenarios were made to laugh at human foibles, not to celebrate them.  In other words, it's just comedy.

But, of course, it being comedy, one is tempted to ask if the comedy is funny or not.  That right there is just simply open to a wide variety of opinions, none more valuable than the next.  Whether you find Pepe Le Pew funny or not is completely up to you.

In my opinion, he may not be the funniest, but he is certainly a wonderfully elegant character made elegant in a way only Chuck Jones could've achieved and fully deserves his Oscar win.  I know pretty much every animation enthusiast reading this knows full well Pepe Le Pew's oscar win is the truth.  But, I think some casual greenhorn fans might be doubting such a win.  Well, for them, I will en this post with footage of the cartoon For Scent-imental Reasons winning that very award.  Enjoy!