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Mike, Lu & Og

Mike, Lu & Og was an American animated television series that ran on Cartoon Network, produced by Kinofilm Studios. The show was the seventh Cartoon Cartoon, based on a short for The What-A-Cartoon! Show. Created by Chuck Swenson, the show follows a girl named Mike, a foreign exchange student from Manhattan; a stuck up island princess named Lu; and a native boy and gifted inventor named Og. The trio takes part in a variety of adventures as Mike and the island's natives share their customs with each other. 26 half-hour episodes were produced, featuring two stories per episode. The series aired from 1999 to 2001 on Cartoon Network, and featured voice actors Nika Frost as Mike, Nancy Cartwright as Lu, and Dee Bradley Baker as Og. It began airing on Boomerang in May 2006. Mike, Lu, and Og stopped airing on Boomerang in June 2008 but returned on September 1, 2008, and can currently be seen on Cartoon Network Video.

Plot

Mike applied as a foreign exchange student, and on a lark asked to be sent to a tropical island (which has the strange capability to sink and pop up "like a cork" a few moments later every "few hundred years or so"). She found herself dumped on a forgotten, barely mapped island populated by descendants of a British shipwreck (which is why Lu and Og, and their parents, speak perfect English). This island may be based on the real-life Pitcairn Island. The Castaways have "gone native" and are trying to behave like Polynesians, with varying degrees of success. Amongst other things, this explains Og's name and his (un)dress sense.

Characters

Mike

Manhattan-born Mike (short for Michelene) enjoys the features of the tropical island but, in return, misses the life that she had in New York and, as revealed in a particular instance, her school. Fortunately, Og is able to recreate many of the things that Mike misses most about the United States. It is also suggested throughout the show that she attended a parochial school in New York.

Princess Lulu

Lu, a self-proclaimed princess of the island and Og's cousin, is characterized by her loud and arrogant nature. Lu continually exploits Og and her pet turtle, Lancelot. Og, being sagacious to a fault frequently obliges to her will, even at the cost of his own well-being. Though she has a habit of condescending to Mike and the other characters, she usually learns a lesson in humility by the end of each episode. Lu's poor behavior is most likely a result of poor parenting on the part of her father. Nobody knows what happened to Lu's mom.

Og

Og, a native of the island and Lu's cousin, has an unexpected predisposition to invention and science. His inventions gone awry help develop the plots of many episodes.

His family owns three animals; a pig, a goat and a hedgehog who are capable of speech and well learned in philosophy. Often, Og engages in conversation with the three animals.

Og enjoys experiencing new things. This is expressed when Og made a video game for himself in one episode, performed in a fashion show in the nude in another episode, and made joo joo bombs in a following episode.

Wendell

Lu's father and the Governor of the Island. He has a wiery, weak will (as seen when he ate so many chocolates that he returned into his former, "pre-workout" shape in the course of a few hours) and is seemingly unable to control his daughter and of delivering any sort of punishment to her. He is then adept to start crying. He has been the island's Governor for many years. This was mis-interpreted by Mike, who thought he was an American-esque governor, which lead to an "election" on the island, not realising that the Islanders came to the island from England (and, as seen in the episode with "King Bob" - they hold the "King of England" in great respect).

He has a large collection of "tea-pot cosies", and speaks in a squeaky falsetto similar in style to Kenneth Williams, although whether this was intentional or not remains uncertain.

Alfred

Alfred is Og's father. He fancies himself to be the island's hunter (who uses suction-cup arrows and is protective of his right to hunt the wombat) who persistently chases a single wombat who evades him at every turn. Alfred and the wombat have a seemingly love-hate relationship. Ironically, Alfred is a vegetarian hunter.

Margery

Og's mother and Alfred's wife. Frequently works hard preparing meals.

Margery fancies herself to be an artist and a writer -- particularly a historian. Throughout the series she is working on a book about the island's history titled "Cuzzlewits End".

The majority of Margery's artwork has to do with the island's famous ancestors. She is building a sculpture of several ancestors on the side of a mountain (reminiscent of Mount Rushmore).

Margery is also the island's chef, preparing meals and tea for everyone on her side of the island, as well as preparing buffets and elaborated meals for special occasions.

She is level headed and gets Alfred out of trouble. She wears the pants in the family but allows Alfred to think that he's the head of the household.

Old Queeks

The Island Elder and Medicine-Man, the Islanders seek advice from him. He is also seen to be able to perform a kind of magic, summoning dead spirits. He is opposed to Mike's innovative ways.

Old Queeks claims to be psychic and "to know all-see all". In one episode Mike becomes suspicious of Queeks and decides to investigate him. She climbed up the opposite side of the mountain and found that Old Queeks was not psychic but that he spied on the Islanders through a telescope. Even after Mike informed the Islanders about Old Queek's telescope, they still held onto their beliefs that he was psychic and communicated with a higher power(s).

He lives on the top of a mountain in a cave, and enjoys using "bat products" (ie: products made with bat guano). This includes everything from toothpaste to snacks.

Lancelot

Is Lu's long-suffering pet land turtle. Lancelot is always running away from Lu, that is why she has to keep him on a leash. Lancelot tends to run away from Lu when she goes overboard and he has had enough of her misbehavior.

Lancelot tends to be the savior of the Islanders and Mike (especially Lu) when they're in trouble.

Lancelot follows the trend of the rest of the pets, where they seem to have more common sense than the Islanders.

The Pirates

Living nearby are three pirates, descended from the pirates who caused the Brits to be shipwrecked in the first place but were then shipwrecked themselves. Their leader is a captain with two wooden legs and two eyepatches. Despite these handicaps he seems to get around without any problems. The pirates sometimes attempt to catch and eat Lancelot but are always foiled by the three children.

Their captain is known to force his men to put on eyepatches, to he can sneak into his treasury and put a stuffed animal finger puppet on his hand, engaging in conversations with it, speaking for it in a squeaky voice.

Cuzzlewits

The other inhabitants of the island, whose very existence Lu eagerly denies, live on the other side of the island. Although they are shown to live in caves, one of their number, Hermione, a Cuzzlewit girl, is seen to be an extremely experienced thinker. She is accompanied by two Cuzzlewit boys, Haggis and Baggis, who constantly batter each other with clubs and appear to be dimwitted.

In the only episode taking part on the Cuzzlewits side of the island, they are revealed to have a far greater number then the people on the side of the island, where Mike lives.

The parents of The Cuzzlewits and The Islanders do not get along. That is why they live on opposite sides of the island.

In "The Three Amigas", Lu becomes envious of the fact that Mike and Hermione become best friends, have sleepovers, and have left her out of their fun.

The Cuzzlewits are shown to all have the same genetic characteristic - an underbite which causes their 2 center lower teeth to be bucked teeth.

Voice actors

Nika Frost - Michelene "Mike" Mavinsky
Nancy Cartwright - Lu
Dee Bradley Baker - Og
S. Scott Bullock - Wendell
Corey Burton - Old Queeks
Martin Rayner - Alfred
Kath Soucie - Margery

Episode list

Season 1: 1999-2000

1 The Tube/Roller Madness
2 Sultans of Swat/Tea for Three
3 Losing Lancelot/Buzz Cut
4 Elephant Walk/Palm Pet
5 Yo, Ho, Who?/A Boy's Game
6 Whole Lotta Shakin'/Mother of All Marathons
7 Hot Couture/Opposites Attack
8 Scopin' It Out/The Good Ship Bad
9 High Rise/The Great Snipe Hunt
10 JuJubombs/Turtle Stew
11 A Bicycle Built For Me/Crowded House
12 Nobody's Nose/Scuba Dooby Doo
13 High Camp/Sneeze Please

Season 2: 2000-2001

14 A Learning Experience/We the People
15 Money/Repeat After Me
16 Thanks, But No Thanks/Hot Dog
17 That Sinking Feeling/Founder's Day
18 Giant Steps/Night of the Living Ancestors
19 For the Love of Mike/Sparks
20 Brave Sir Lancelot/The Big Game
21 Flustering Footwear Floatsam/Fathers and Pies
22 Queeks, Queeks, Who's Got the Queeks?/Alfred, Lord of the Jungle
23 The King of Curtains/Margery the Duck
24 A Freduian Split/Fitness Fever
25 The Hunter and the Hunted/To Serve Lu
26 The Three Amigas/Sleeping Ugly