Mike, Lu & Og is a Russian-American animated television series created by Mikhail Shindel, Mikhail Aldashin and Charles Swenson for Cartoon Network, and the 7th of the network's Cartoon Cartoons. The series follows a girl named Mike, a foreign exchange student from Manhattan; a self-appointed island princess named Lu; and a boy-genius named Og. The trio takes part in a variety of adventures as Mike and the island's natives share their customs with each other.
Twenty-six half-hour episodes were produced by Mikhail Shindel's Kinofilm Animation in Los Angeles and animated by Mikhail Aldashin at Studio Pilot in Russia, featuring two stories per episode. The series 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 as reruns, though it is often removed from the schedule and put back on it on a frequent basis.
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Premise
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 briefly sink then and "pop up like a cork" every "few hundred years or so"). She found herself dumped on a forgotten, scantily mapped island populated by descendants of a British shipwreck. This island is called Albonquetine, named after one of their founders, Joshua Wendell Albonquetine. It may be based on the real-life Pitcairn Islands. 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 fashion sense (or lack thereof).
Characters
Mike (short for Michelanne) (voiced by Nika Frost) is an 11-year-old Manhattan-born girl who enjoys the features of the tropical island, but misses the life 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, at one instance creating a television.
Lu (voiced by Nancy Cartwright), a 10-year-old self-proclaimed princess of the island, Og's cousin and Alfred and Margery's niece is characterized by her loud and arrogant nature. She continually exploits Mike, Og, and her pet turtle, Lancelot. Og, being sagacious to a fault, frequently obliges to her will, even at the cost of her own well-being. Though she has a habit of tormenting everyone, she usually learns a lesson in humility by the end of each episode. Lu's unruly behavior is most likely a result of poor parenting on the part of her father, Wendell.
Og (voiced by Dee Bradley Baker), a 7-year-old native of Albonquetine, Lu's cousin and Wendell's nephew, has a surprising predisposition to scientific theory and discovery. His inventions gone awry help develop the plots of many episodes. He is close friends with three animals; a pig named Pig (voiced by Kath Soucie), a goat named Goat (also voiced by Dee Bradley Baker), and a porcupine named Spiney (voiced by Martin Rayner) who are capable of speech and well learned in philosophy. Together, they form the Philosophical Society, discussing such "great thinkers" as Nietzsche, matters of existentialism, and the relevance of time. Og enjoys experiencing new things. To name a few adventures, Og made a video game for himself in "A Boy's Game", performed nude in a fashion show in "Hot Couture" (possibly an homage to "The Emperor's New Clothes"), and made jujubombs in an episode of the same name.
Wendell (voiced by S. Scott Bullock) is Lu's father, and the Governor of the Island. He is wiry, weak-willed (as seen when he ate so many sweets that he returned into his former, "pre-workout" shape in the course of a few hours), and is seemingly unable to control his daughter or of delivering any sort of punishment to her. He is then apt to start crying. He has been the island's Governor for many years. This was misinterpreted by Mike, who thought he was an American-esque governor, which led 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 cosies, and speaks in a squeaky falsetto similar in style to Kenneth Williams, although whether this was intentional or not remains uncertain. His Wife is never seen or mentioned.
Alfred (voiced by Martin Rayner) is Og's father, and Margery's husband. He is eccentric and charismatic, and also has a noticeable speech impediment preventing him from pronouncing his Rs. He fancies himself to be the island's hunter, using suction-cup arrows to persistently hunt a single wombat. It appears that the island's inhabitants are vegetarian (though clams and chicken soup appear to be fair game), so one may wonder what happens if Alfred ever catches the wombat (Including Alfred himself).
Margery (voiced by Kath Soucie) is Og's mother and Alfred's wife, who fancies herself to be an artist and writer. Her arts including painting, sculpting, and cooking. The majority of Margery's artwork has to do with the island's ancestors. For this, she often seen working on a sculpture of several ancestors on the side of a mountain, reminiscent of Mount Rushmore. Every once in a while she will also be found painting food, and often found cooking it. Margery is the island's chef, preparing meals and tea for everyone on her side of the island, as well as preparing buffets and elaborate meals for special occasions. In writing, she is something of a historian. Throughout the series she is working on a book about the island's history titled "Cuzzlewits End". Margery is very level-headed compared to Alfred's eccentric behavior. An example of this is shown in "Scuba Dooby Doo" when Alfred valiantly offers to protect everyone from the mailman whereas Margery plans on serving tea and crumpets.
Old Queeks (voiced by Corey Burton) is the Island Elder and Medicine-Man whom the Islanders seek advice from. He is also seen to be able to perform a kind of magic, summoning dead spirits. He is often opposed to Mike's innovative ways, but sometimes gets caught up in the modern crazes to hit the island. Old Queeks claims to be psychic and he claims to "know all and 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 Queeks' telescope, they still held onto their beliefs that he was psychic and communicated with a higher power(s). In some respects, this is truth enough. He can see all with a telescope, and he did bring ghosts to the island to plague Mike for annoying him. He lives alone on the top of a mountain in a cave, and enjoys using "bat products" (i.e.: products made with bat guano). This includes everything from toothpaste to snacks.
Lancelot is Lu's long-suffering pet land turtle. She dresses her up in gaudy outfits, forces her to perform weird and dangerous stunts, and often makes her carry Lu on her back. For this reason, Lancelot is always running away from Lu, which is why she keeps her on a leash. Despite this abuse, Lancelot tends to be the savior of Mike and the Islanders (especially Lu) when they're in trouble. Like the other animals on the island, Lancelot tends to exercise more common sense than the humans. Unlike the members of the Philosophical Society, she does not speak (except for a "squeaky" type scream when Lancelot's in danger or a snickering laugh and in "Night of the Living Relatives" where she shouted "BOO" to scare the daylights out of Lu). According to a Cartoon Cartoons book from 2001, Lancelot is female, though many times in the series Lancelot is referred to as a male by other characters.
Three pirates living nearby are 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 eye patches. 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. In one episode Mike invited the pirates to a Thanksgiving type feast but with only one catch, that the three Pirates had to dress up as Mike's (girl)friends visiting from Manhattan without causing concern with the others (with the exception of Lancelot who saw through their disguises). Their captain is known to force his men to put on blindfolds, so he can sneak into his treasury and put a rabbit puppet named Bunny on his hand, engaging in conversations with it, speaking for it in a squeaky voice. In its first appearance, its mouth moved as the captain spoke. In its following appearance, the mouth stayed still.
The 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 (voiced by Alison Larkin), a Cuzzlewit girl, is seen to be an extremely experienced thinker. She is accompanied by two Cuzzlewit boys, twin brothers Haggis and Baggis (voiced by Brian George and S. Scott Bullock, respectively), who constantly batter each other with clubs and appear to be dimwitted and rowdy. In the only episode taking place on the Cuzzlewits' side of the island, "Queeks, Queeks Who Got the Queeks?", they are revealed to have a much larger population than the Albonquetanians. The elders of the Cuzzlewits and the Albonquetanians do not get along, hence their separation. This leads to a practical question: what do the Cuzzlewits call the island? Despite the adults' squabbles, Mike and Hermione become friends in "The Three Amigas". The Cuzzlewits are shown to all have the same genetic characteristics – an underbite which causes their lower central incisors to be bucked teeth.
Episode list
This is a list of episodes from the animated series Mike, Lu & Og. The show ran for two seasons consisting of 26 episodes.
