If you thought that Shrek was the first cartoon to parody fairy tales, then your wrong, Timon and Pumbaa did it 5 years before the big green ogre.
Today I'll talk about the episode called Wide awake in Wonderland. In this story, Pumbaa couldn't fall asleep and asked Timon if he could read a bedtime story. The meerkat hesitated at first, but after the warthog kept begging, both start reading a fairy tale book and it's all about these 2 animals.
What honestly surprised me, is that the first story is actually a parody of a popular russian tale of Ivan Krylov called "The Dragonfly and the Ant". I honesty never expected an American cartoon to even mention this story, yet, it did and in a funny way. In this retelling, a meerkat is a lazy and happy go lucky one, while the warthog is the hardworking one. Another fairy tale that was told was "Goldilocks and the 3 bears", also known as "Masha and the 3 bears" in our country. As soon as Timon continued reading these stories, he was very unsatisfied, because his species are poorly treated in them. So comes up with his own story, where he's the powerful king that defeats all mean warthogs.
Like other episodes of the show, it's hilarious! Especially the Goldilocks and the Powerful King segments. I definitely recommend this episode!
The second segment called Zazu's day off by one wasn't exactly as good as the first one, but still well done. Zazu gets fired because he forgot to count one more animal that lives in the jungle. And his job was given to his assistant Gopher the mole. So Zazu decided to count every living creature again. I laughed when Gopher putted animals in the wrong places like when elephants were on a tree or giraffes in a pond. Another funny moment is when an innocent looking fish turned out to have huge teeth and ate the bird (temporary and only as a joke). Still a decent episode in my opinion, even if not as creative as Wide awake in Wonderland.