Blast From The Past: The Life & Times of Juniper Lee Episode 1

You can't stop the girl

Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back again with another Blast From The Past. Today, we'll be taking a look at The Life and Times of Juniper Lee: a series I was sure Cartoon Network had all but forgotten until it got a mention in the Steven Universe/Uncle Grandpa crossover.

The series was created by Judd Winick. Die hard comic book fans may know Mr. Winick from his work with superhero stories such as his Green Arrow and Green Lantern runs and he's the head writer of the Hulu original animated series: 'The Awesomes'. I mentioned that last one because...I like The Awesomes.

#Season3Hype

Tangents aside, The First episode of  The Life and Times of Juniper Lee is titled "It's your party and I'll whine if I want to." (I'm sure that's a reference to something...) and it starts off with our setting Orchid Bay City and a voice over that explains the world of magic; that it and magical creatures exist and live among humans, but regular people can't see them because of the magic barrier that exists between them. Of course with these magical creatures, there's a group of them that want to destroy the balance of the human and magic realms. In comes the Te Xuan Ze who is tasked with the responsibility of keeping this order. And on that cue, we're introduced to our hero Juniper Lee, an eleven year old girl with a short temper and quips aplenty along with her younger brother Ray-Ray, a hyperactive boy that loves pretty much every aspect of June's job and wants to be involved in all of it. A lot of you 90's kids may recognize the voices of these two characters since Juniper is voiced by Lara Jill Miller (Who was the voice of Kari from Digimon) and Ray-Ray is voiced by Kath Soucie whose resume includes Rugrats, Dexter's Laboratory, and Danny Phantom just to name a few. The two have a discussion about Juniper's job as the Te Xuan Ze: Ray Ray thinking it's the coolest thing since sliced bread while June herself isn't so hot on it. This all is happening while Juniper is kicking monsters out of the park and keeping them from having public bathroom toilets for lunch.

The next scene starts with Ray Ray horribly trying to wrap June's present for best friend Jody's birthday party. It is this scene that we're introduced to the third member of Juniper's team: Monroe, a pug that's several centuries old with a Scottish accent and a huge expertise in magic. Right off the bat, we see that Monroe is a very snarky, and arguably, cranky character as shown by his back and forth with both Juniper and Ray Ray. Ray Ray and Monroe finally get the present wrapped up and they, along with June, head outside and get ready to go to Jody's party. But before they leave, a jar falls out of Juniper's bag, accidentally releasing the evil attacking genie inside of it. After quickly stuffing the genie back in it's bag, they all leave. Keep the genie in mind for later on.

Our heroes show up at the party and here we get to meet and get a feel for June's friends: First up it's Jody: Juniper's best friend and a very hyper, very preppy girl. Ophelia, the goth girl and deadpan snarker of the group. And Roger, who equates to that one friend everyone has that tries really hard to be cool, but just comes off as a bit of a goof. I kind of find Roger as a character to be pretty ironic as he's voiced by the great Tara Strong and the character is really similar to another character she voiced, Dil Pickles from 'All Grown Up'. It's also in this scene where Monroe gets the funniest moment of the episode, I don't want to spoil it for you folks, just go find it. June's party is soon pooped when a leprechaun by the name of Jeff. But Jeff isn't your run of the mill leprechaun no, he's tall and very hippie-like, and he comes to Juniper for help on his and his chief's Racatan problem. This is a problem that June doesn't believe...until her bracelet goes off resulting in her leaving the party.

 

Juniper then travels to her grandmother's place, her grandma being the previous Te Xuan Ze and asks if her grandmother could take care of the issue. When her Ah Ma (Ah Ma meaning Grandma in Chinese) refuses, June then complains about the burden that her job of being the Te Xuan Ze is: because of this job, Juniper a lot of the time misses out on hanging out with her friends and whatever plans they have together, and she really didn't want Jody's party to be another one of those occasions.

Okay, this has been put off long enough and the review can't go on WITHOUT bringing it up. You see, The Life and Times of Juniper Lee caught some flack among viewers as it was a show about a Chinese American adolescent with the initials 'JL' tasked with the job of protecting the magical world along with the guidance of her grandparent mentor and her magic savvy dog that's lived for centuries. The problem here was that there was a show on Disney Channel called American Dragon: Jake Long with that exact premise...and that show had debuted four months before Juniper Lee did...

It sounds bad now, but hang on and read til the end where I crack down on this comparison.

I think this scene is done well as it shows the internal conflict within Juniper: The stress and disappointment that comes with her job and her missing out on her personal life and desires. After complaining about having to deal with the Racatan, Ah Ma becomes very distressed and rushes June out of her house to take care of the problem.

After heading into the forest, June comes face to face with the Racatan, which is initially just a giant hamster. But it's when June makes physical contact with the beast that it goes from an admittedly cute looking little thing to this...

A rabid monster that breathes fire.

After a couple of minutes of running from the Racatan, Juniper goes into her bag in search of something. But as it would turn out, when June left the party to head to her grandmother's, she accidentally took Ray Ray's bag, his bag containing her present to Jody. This results in Jody's present getting banged up and gets June boiling. This causes June to come at the monster with vigor and restarting the fight. The fight itself is alright, nothing really special to note from it outside of a funny moment where Juniper pulls the classic "Why are you hitting yourself" scenario.

During the fight, Ray-Ray and Monroe (Who June left at the party) show up with her bag and she takes the jar, containing the genie and releases it, in turn causing the genie to take care of the evil Racatan by flying off with it and making it, along with himself, disappear in a swirling tornado.

The episode ends with Juniper back at Jody's apologizing for leaving during the party and missing out on the rest of it. She hands Jody her present: A snow globe of Orchid Bay, and they head inside for cake, not without a few words from Jeff the Hippie Leprechaun.

The Life and Times of Juniper Lee Episode one is another great introduction episode. As I stated earlier, it's very easy to draw the comparisons between this show and American Dragon: Jake Long. But is it a rip off? No. There are very small yet very distinct differences that you wouldn't know until you watch the show to get. Whereas Jake Long presented the world of magic in a more traditional manner, Juniper Lee took a lot of familiar mythological creatures and put its own spin on it: You have tall leprechauns, mummies that want to start their own chain restaurants (That is literally the second episode), Thor who's a total bro...

Which...isn't too far off from what the Marvel movies do with Thor...

Another thing to note is I think the argument could be made that Juniper Lee had better written characters in its first episode than Jake Long did. I have to tip my internet hat to Judd Winick (who also wrote the first episode). A lot of the time (at least in the early to mid 2000s) kids are written in a more stereotypical manner that I can't really...type in words (You'll know it when you watch something with kids). Juniper Lee's characters are smartly written, they don't feel dumbed down to entertain the younger audience. It's a lot like Avatar the Last Airbender in the sense that with the way the characters are written, you kind of forget how old they actually are at times. The characters are well written, a lot of the jokes still hit their mark and manage to get a couple of good chuckles out of me, and the episode's an all around fun experience. After ten years, The Life and Times of Juniper Lee still holds up and is still worth a watch. The thing about that is the series is tough to track down since as of now Cartoon Network hasn't released the full series on DVD and it's tough to find episodes on the internet. I found the first episode via Veoh (Yeah remember when Veoh was still a thing?) but if you find it, it's worth your time. This show is one of Cartoon Network's lost gems.

Til next time folks, I'm The Shaman of Animation: Take Care...