This episode starts off with a bang! -- right in the poor coyote's face -- and ends with one of the most disastrous "epic fails" of Wile E's career.
In between, there's enough action going on to keep you laughing throughout. Director Chuck Jones once wrote that one of his major rules in this series was to, wherever possible, make gravity the coyote's greatest enemy -- and it certainly is here. The poor hungry canine spends virtually the entire cartoon falling off one of those two-mile-high precipices -- and even over a waterfall -- in fact, it gets so bad for him that Road Runner actually seems to take pity on him at one point and provide a giant coil spring to break his fall (not that it completely saves him from pain).
Mind you, maybe Roadrunner owed him that after earlier "meepmeep"ing him off the edge of one after he'd just completed a long, painful climb up the darn thing. It's a scene very similar to one in the earlier "Zoom and Bored" -- but even funnier this time in that it shows more of Wile E's horrified expression after the bird zings him yet again.
But the best scene by far is the long-drawn-out ending, in which Coyote finally seems to have trapped Road Runner at the edge of a cliff, only to have Cruel Fate intervene once again, sending our hapless predator onto a series of calamities, ending with him thoroughly defeated and wondering why gravity only works on him, and not on that frustrating bird!
A couple of trivia notes: this cartoon was released in January 1960, thus becoming the first WB cartoon released in the 60's. And it's also the first Road Runner cartoon not to credit Michael Maltese as the story writer. In fact, there is no "Story" credit at all, making me suspect Maltese really did write it, but his name was removed because by this time, he had defected to Hanna-Barbera. Besides, his touch seems to be all over the pacing of this hilarious cartoon. He was one of the best!
In between, there's enough action going on to keep you laughing throughout. Director Chuck Jones once wrote that one of his major rules in this series was to, wherever possible, make gravity the coyote's greatest enemy -- and it certainly is here. The poor hungry canine spends virtually the entire cartoon falling off one of those two-mile-high precipices -- and even over a waterfall -- in fact, it gets so bad for him that Road Runner actually seems to take pity on him at one point and provide a giant coil spring to break his fall (not that it completely saves him from pain).
Mind you, maybe Roadrunner owed him that after earlier "meepmeep"ing him off the edge of one after he'd just completed a long, painful climb up the darn thing. It's a scene very similar to one in the earlier "Zoom and Bored" -- but even funnier this time in that it shows more of Wile E's horrified expression after the bird zings him yet again.
But the best scene by far is the long-drawn-out ending, in which Coyote finally seems to have trapped Road Runner at the edge of a cliff, only to have Cruel Fate intervene once again, sending our hapless predator onto a series of calamities, ending with him thoroughly defeated and wondering why gravity only works on him, and not on that frustrating bird!
A couple of trivia notes: this cartoon was released in January 1960, thus becoming the first WB cartoon released in the 60's. And it's also the first Road Runner cartoon not to credit Michael Maltese as the story writer. In fact, there is no "Story" credit at all, making me suspect Maltese really did write it, but his name was removed because by this time, he had defected to Hanna-Barbera. Besides, his touch seems to be all over the pacing of this hilarious cartoon. He was one of the best!