Western Animation / Jabberjaw

8 Following

×

WHERE TO WATCH

SUBSCRIPTION

Mometu

Stream

Tubi TV

Stream

Fandango at Home Free

Stream

The Roku Channel

Stream

FOUND TV

Stream

PURCHASE

YouTube

RentBuy

Fandango At Home

RentBuy

Apple TV Store

RentBuy

Google Play Movies

RentBuy

Powered by JustWatch

In 1976, Hanna-Barbera created this show for ABC as a response to the popularity of the film Jaws. Frank Welker based the lead character's voice on Curly Howard from The Three Stooges, along with Rodney Dangerfield's Catchphrase, "I don't get no respect."^note Welker would later go on to actually voice Curly in "The Robonic Stooges" segments on Skatebirds using the same voice. On at least one occasion, he'd also channel Lou Costello when he really screwed up: "I'm/I've been a baaaad shark."

Jabberjaw, an amphibious shark, is the drummer in a rock band called the Neptunes. His human friends are guitarist Biff, bassist Clamhead, keyboardist Bubbles and tambourinist Shelly; the last appeared to be allergic to Jabberjaw's displays of affection. When they're not making music, Jabberjaw and his friends solve mysteries Under the Sea, in yet another variation on the Scooby-Doo formula. They live in a future when the ocean floor has been extensively colonized, with domed cities and the like.

In subsequent appearances, Jabberjaw was a referee in Laff-A-Lympics and a competitor in Yogi's Space Race.

Cartoon Network made a music video in the 1990s that revisioned the Neptunes as a ska band. The video aired regularly as filler on the Boomerang network until 2014 when Boomerang became ad-supported. Most recently, a Gender Flipped version of Jabberjaw (later retconned to be the original version's daughter) is part of the cast of Jellystone!, working in Magilla Gorilla's accessories store.

Jabberjaw contains examples of:

• Abhorrent Admirer: Jabberjaw to Shelly, if her reaction when he tries to kiss her in the opening (or really any other time) is anything to go by.
• Adaptation Distillation: The aforementioned music video.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Jabberjaw actually seems to go out of his way to annoy Shelly in the film strips and even jokingly threatens to eat her at one point.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Shelly in educational firm strips about whales and sharks. Sure, she's still somewhat annoyed by Jabber's jokes but is a lot more patient with him and doesn't yell at him even once, not even when he jokingly contemplates having her for a snack. She still gets him back for it, though.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Shelly. She's raven-haired, haughty, and the most standoffish one in the bunch, though it's downplayed due to her not being much taller than anyone else.
• Alpha Bitch: Shelly is this in general, but it's usually directed at Jabberjaw.
• And I Must Scream: The immobilizer ray guns in "No Helpin' The Sculpin" and the "power" in "There's No Heel Like El Eel", both of which leave the victim petrified and fully aware of what's happening to them with the latter also making use of Taken for Granite.
• Artistic License – Biology: No canon explanation or backstory as to how Jabberjaw can breathe out of water is ever given. The Aquaman crossover attempts to rectify this by saying it's the result of humans experimenting on marine life.
• Artistic License – Physics: Plentiful, not to mention how Jabber walks.
• Band Toon: The show is built around a band called the Neptunes touring the colonized ocean floor.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Used in the first episode, where the main characters plummet to Earth from a rocket.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: Jabberjaw, ironically, threatened to sue Shelly for plagiarism when she borrowed his.
• Butt-Monkey: Jabberjaw... even his catchphrase lampshades it! To a lesser extent, Shelly and Clamhead also suffered from this, the former usually at Jabberjaw's hands, er, fins.
• Catchphrase:
  • Jabber's "No Respect! No Respect!"
  • Biff's "Hoppin' Halibut!" & "Jumpin' Jellyfish!"
  • and Clamhead's "Wowwy-wow-wow!"
  • And of course, there's "You blubberhead!"
• Cloudcuckoolander/Dumb Blonde: Bubbles, whose personality was allegedly based on Gracie Allen.
• Deadpan Snarker: Shelly, being an Expy of Alexandria Cabot, has a snarky remark for nearly everything that goes on around her.
• Domed Hometown: Pretty much every underwater city has to be domed.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: It's practically the theme of the series as far as Jabberjaw is concerned with him all but asking this question outright in the opening. With regards to the Neptunes as a whole, the first four lines of Running Underwater pretty much sum it up.
• Expy:
  • Design-wise, Clamhead heavily resembles Shaggy.
  • Shelly is basically what Alexandra Cabot would be, minus the skunk stripe, if the latter actually had talent and were somewhat less of a Jerkass.
  • Speaking of the Stooges, if Jabberjaw is Curly, then Shelly is Moe, and Clamhead is Larry whenever the three of them end up together during a split-up.
• Fake Band: The Neptunes.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Pretty much every city the Neptunes visit view sharks as mindless maneaters, and have systems to throw them out. And they view Jabberjaw as such, leading to his catchphrase. In the crossover comic with Aquaman, this extends to all sea creatures.
  • Subverted in "Claim-Jumped Jabber," where Jabberjaw tries to avoid this by pretending to be a walrus. When he got into the hotel he saw a sign claiming sharks were welcome. However, as the clerk then informed him, they don't allow walruses though.
• Five-Man Band Concert: The cartoon's premise is that a band called "The Neptunes" has an amphibious shark for a drummer. Besides the titular character, who is The Big Guy, the band has Standardized Leader Biff on the electric guitar, Only Sane Woman Shelly on the tambourine, Mellow Fellow Clamhead on the bass (and, occasionally, the trumpet), and Cloudcuckoolander Bubbles on the keyboard. Their instruments are appropriately ocean biology-themed.
• Flintstone Theming: Most places in the show are parody names but with an underwater theme.
• Flowery Insults: Shelly constantly refers to Jabberjaw as "Blubberhead" and manages to incorporate the word "blubber" into just about every other insult she has for him.
• Forced Transformation: In one episode Shelly and Clamhead are turned into sharks and, along with Jabberjaw, 'trained' to become remorseless destroyers. It works about as well as you'd think.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Jabberjaw is Sanguine, Biff is Melancholic, Shelly is Choleric, and Clamhead and Bubbles share the Phlegmatic.
• Furry Confusion: Or fishy confusion, at least. Most fish portrayed in the show — including most other sharks — are drawn realistically and can't move about on land. And then there's Jabberjaw...
• The Future: Press materials and one song indicate that this show takes place in the year 2062. Later canon retcons it to being set in 2076.
• Gone Horribly Right: In "No Helpin' the Sculpin", Clamhead is mistaken for a scientist by the villainous Sculpin. The others show up to try to help him 'fix' the Time Machine the Sculpin has him working on. They, of course, are just trying to scam him to let Clamhead go. But it turns out they actually fix it to work, causing Jabberjaw, Shelly, and Clamhead to be briefly sent back to prehistoric times.
• Hey, That's My Line!: Shelly once used Jabberjaw's catchphrase. Jabber threatened to sue her for that. Never mind that said catchphrase is already someone else's.
• Hypocrite: Shelly constantly accuses Jabberjaw of being a Large Ham while being quite the Attention Whore herself.
• Jerkass: Shelly, although sometimes she is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold and more often than not has a pretty good reason for shooting down someone else's plan or telling Jabberjaw off.
• Kaiju: Gorgon the sea monster in "Dr. Lo Has Got To Go" is grown to enormous size by the the titular mad scientist in order to extort his city's government. For bonus points, the episode takes place in the series' counterpart to Japan.
• The Lancer: Shelly acts as this to Standardized Leader Biff, usually by calling out the potential (or realized) flaws in his schemes. She also takes charge whenever he's not around.
• Laugh Track: Of course. This is 70s Hanna-Barbera we're talking about.
• Mad Scientist: Dr. Lo, The Octopus and The Phantom of the Kelp, among others.
• Never Mess with Granny: Jabberjaw's grandmother, Gammyjaw, as seen in the Cartoon Network Presents #23 comic.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Jabber's voice is patterned after Curly of the Three Stooges, even with some of the same verbal tics.
• No-Respect Guy: In spite of being the Neptunes 's drummer, Jabberjaw gets no respect from the general public because he's a shark and only rarely does he get any from Shelly. Shelly herself counts as this due largely to being the Only Sane Woman who is Surrounded by Idiots.
• Not Zilla: Gorgon, Dr. Lo's pet sea monster whom he grows to Kaiju proportions to threaten the city of Aquahama into meeting his demands.
• Only Sane Woman: Despite her vanity, Shelly is sane enough to see the flaws in Biff's or Bubbles' idiotic ideas and is mainly the one who keeps Jabberjaw in line.
• Reused Character Design: In "There is No Place Like Outer Space", an alien named Domax leads a group of villains that blatantly reuse the design of Space Ghost villain Zorak, albiet with the completely different color scheme. A promo that aired on Cartoon Network decades later handwaves this as merely a guest appearance.
• Running Gag: Let's see. There's Jabberjaw (and sometimes the entire band) being thrown out of a venue because "No Sharks ^note  or whatever animal Jabber tries to pass off as Allowed"; there's Jabberjaw constantly whining about not getting any respect; there's Shelly getting kissed against her will (usually by Jabber but other sea life, dinosaurs, and even plants are guilty of this in later episodes.)
• Secret Circle of Secrets: The Brotherhood of Evil is one in "Hang On To Your Hat Jabber". The main leader keeps a mask over his face while everyone else only reveals their faces under a hood.
• Secret Identity: Some villains in this show have these, but that being said most of these are to disguise Mad Scientist agendas instead of a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax.
• Sir Cameos-a-Lot: Jabberjaw in particular appears in a lot of crossovers (especially with Scooby-Doo) despite having only one cartoon to his name.
• Spoofy-Doo: The protagonists are basically Mystery Inc. from Scooby-Doo, but they solve underwater cases and have a shark as their mascot.
• Standardized Leader: Biff fills the role of the group leader on this show.
• Status Quo Is God:
  • The Neptunes will save the undersea world in each episode and usually get recognized/rewarded for it but this never carries over into the next episode.
  • "Claim-Jumped Jabber" starts with Jabberjaw receiving an Unexpected Inheritance to a gold mine for allegedly rescuing the owner from a giant octopus at some point and ends with him learning that this was due to a spelling error and the Neptunes going from potentially becoming millionaires to having to hold a gig to pay for their way back home since they used their bottom dollars to get to the mine in the first place.
  • The end of "Hang On To Your Hat, Jabber" has Jabber using a reality-altering helmet to get Shelly to finally show him some respect. By the following episode, she's right back to insulting him.
• Suddenly Shouting: Shelly's go-to tactic whenever Jabberjaw stands up to her and she needs to put him back in his place. Her reaction to being smooched by him in the opening is also this, though it's not heard over the theme music.
• Tailfin Walking: How Jabberjaw gets around and he provides the Image Source. One-shot character Francine Lafinn can walk on her tailfin, too. Commander Shark's army of shark-human hybrids are apparently supposed to be able to do this by design, but only Shelly and Clamhead (transformed into sharks themselves) are actually shown walking on land.
• Threatening Shark:
  • Inverted, as Jabberjaw is harmless to humans, though it doesn't stop them from freaking out when the presence of a live shark sinks in. Shelly knows better but she has her own reasons.
  • In a two-part educational film strip about sharks, Jabberjaw playfully threatened to eat Shelly at the end of the first part. She seemed worried that he was being serious. The second part ended with her revealing that humans catch and eat sharks while also wondering how he'd taste.
  • Played with by a Villain of the Week who turned his Mooks into sharks, and by shark woman Francine Lafinn who tried to seduce Jabberjaw in "Claim-Jumped Jabber".
• Totally Radical: Seriously, who in real life actually says "Wowwy-wow-wow!"?!
• Tsundere: Shelly with a heavy lean on the tsun- abrasive, snarky, and constantly (often loudly) reaming on her bandmates and/or shooting their ideas down. However, it's mostly directed at Jabberjaw, not without reason, and she will find it in herself to genuinely compliment him at times.
• Underwater Base: If a villain has a base on this show, it is underwater.
• Under the Sea: The show takes place in an era where mankind developed civilizations underwater.
• Unexpected Inheritance: In "Claim-Jumped Jabber", Jabberjaw inherits a gold mine for having saved an old prospector. But in the end, this is a clerical error, as the proper recipient was a Mr. Jabberclaw (who is human).
• Vitriolic Best Buds / With Friends Like These...: Shelly has this dynamic with, well, everyone. She constantly insults the other Neptunes and/or complains about whatever they're planning or doing but she sticks with them regardless.
• Wacky Racing: "The Fast Paced Chase Race" has most of its plot take place during a underwater race with many shenanigans throughout.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Robotic shark ejectors are this for Jabber. The one time he tried to avoid them by disguising himself as a walrus, he found that walrus-ejectors also exist.