The Raccoons

It's the day before the opening of Schaeffer's cafe. While he and the gang are preparing the place, they're holding a hearing for musicians/entertainers for the next evening. After a ridiculous stage appearance by the pigs, a guitarist shows up, introducing himself as Hill Bailey (sp?), but Bert and Cedric soon recognize him as their long lost and forgotten idol, Woodchuck Berry. Schaeffer hires him for the show. The pigs think, why not act as Woody's ""agents"" and gain some profit without actually doing anything... they manage to trick Woody into signing a contract. It's revealed that Cyril and Woody are friends of old. In their youth, they were practising together (we find out Cyril's a saxophone player), until they were to play on stage for the first time. Cyril fled from the stage, unable to bear with the audience. Meanwhile, the pigs nearly screw up Woodie's appearance by hiring him to another place for the same evening, but Cyril manages to bring him back in time. At the end of th

There's a flight contest about to take place in Evergreen. Cyril, greedy for the 1st price, puts the poor pigs into a plane, where they begin praying that they won't hit the ground too hard. Enter: Troy Malone, breakneck ace-of-the-sky, and Melissa's former romance. He and Mel are immediately struck up with each other, making Ralph think he has a rival. He gets jealous, fearing he might loose Melissa. Ralph falls into a kind of self-esteem crisis, feeling he's just a rather boring newspaper editor, and no match at all for an exciting and dynamic guy like Troy. (""Learn to accept it, Ralph... Some people are made to make the news, and some people are just made to write it down..."") In order to prove his worth, he takes the pigs' place as Cyril's pilot, and finds himself in an air race against Troy. As we might guess, Troy wins the race, while Ralph crashes down. The proud winner jumps off his plane, his arms open for Melissa, who hurries towards him, straight past him, straight past him,

Mr. Knox and Lady Baden-Baden wish to spend a weekend in privacy, and Cyril agrees to look after Knox' nephew, Bonneville, for some days. As Cyril and Knox are about to sign a contract, it's extremely important that Cyril makes sure Bonneville enjoys his stay. But the little brat knows this as well, and displays some creativity in bullying Cedric and the pigs... Bert and Cedric have been looking forward for this day, er, night because of a very rare event: a huge quartz crystal located inside a cave will be lit by a full moon through a narrow slit and display a colorful spectacle. At night, it's revealed that Bonneville is your typical neglected child; handed over by his parents from one relative to another, lacks basic social abilities, and tries desperately to gain attention. He follows Bert & Cedric into the cave, where he is attacked by them,and he and Cedric fall down a water hole. In order to survive, they have to help each other, and get to talk. Bonneville has a sudden insight,

Lady Baden-Baden got stuck in a personal crisis, regarding the high society life as an empty, senseless and aimless waste of time. Schaeffer offers her a job in his cafe, as a cook and helper in general. She promises him the cafe would change for the better, and begins to turn it into an exaggeratingly elegant place with ridiculous background music, an obligation to wear ties and dishes with unintelligible french names. At the same time, Knox is arranging a party in honour of his wife, and hires the pigs to cater it. Cyril misunderstands this and assumes the pigs were going to leave him altogether, in order to work for Knox instead. Knox is absolutely ""not amused"" when he meets his wife working at Schaeffer's; for him, a woman of her status taking a job puts the whole family's pride and dignity to shame. They have a dispute, and would nearly get divorced, if it weren't for the pigs, who manage to reunite them (in fear of losing their catering contract).

Bert and Cedric, watching the stars at night, witness a meteor going down on an island in the Evergreen Lake and set off to search for it. They don't tell anyone where they're going, because they want to be the first to find the meteorite. Meanwhile, Cyril has sent the pigs to investigate how Knox manages to be more successful in business than he is, as he suspects him of spying on him. (Hm, is that a clear sentence, or could it be ambiguous...) They discover that Lady Baden-Baden is giving astrological advice to her husband, and so the pigs offer Cyril their fortune-telling services - hold a seance and pull off a show. In the meantime, fortune has left Bert and Cedric: while they search for the precious stone, their raft gets loose and they're stuck on the island. Even worse, Bert climbs a tree while it's already getting dark, falls off and is lying unconsciously in the cold. Cedric tries to swim to the land, but doesn't get far. Cyril and the rest of the gang are getting worried abou

Bentley visits the Raccoons once more, and this time, he's got company: namely, his older sister Lisa, a nice and attractive teenage coon girl (with a french accent :-) ), and love on first sight for Bert. Mr. Knox (bragging again) tells Cyril that he's going to house the famous Mr. J. P. Gordon for some days - an extremely important businessman, and one of Cyril's great idols. Cyril begs Knox to arrange a meeting, but doubts Knox will really put in a word for him. So, he spends the next one or two days with a series of more or less ridiculous (not to say embarassing) efforts to get into Knox's home and into J. P.'s private rooms, conveniently screwing it up time after time. He's utterly forgotten the promise he gave Cedric (a year ago or so), that he would accompany his son to a banquet of the ""aardvark youth camp"" (?) When he's reminded by Cedric, he can't decide whether to meet J.P. and disappoint his son, or vice versa. (But in the end, he decides in favour of Cedric) In the meanti

Lady Baden-Baden is gathering information for a ""who is who"" book on the families living in the forest, and their family trees (?). Cyril hopes the book will get him some interesting new business contacts, as he expects some important people will read the book. But strangely, it seems impossible to backtrack the Sneer family line, and Cyril, asked questions about his parents, suddenly becomes elusive, pretending to have forgotten their names... Bert, Cecdric and the pigs believe him, and try to help finding the information required to include a chapter on the Sneer family in the book. While Bert and Cedric start digging in the Sneer library for documents on the family origins (which Cyril has hidden a long time ago), the pigs plan to hypnotize Cyril in order to dig in his memories. Then they read about 'preprogramming' a hypnotized person to respond to keywords after awakening from the trance, and see a new way to get the long overdue increase of their payment... They do succeed, but,

Cyril is trying to convince Knox to buy his newest product: a huge steel chamber like the one he uses to protect his wealth, with impermeable steel walls, impossible to intrude upon. Schaeffer has hired the great Tromboni, a famous magician, to perform in his cafe. In his shows, Tromboni is able to escape from the cruelest traps, to unlock any lock, and so he's challenged by Mr. Knox to put the Sneer Steel Camber to the test. They lock him inside, but he's out and behind them as soon as they turn their Bert, deeply fascinated by Tromboni's magic, begs him to take him as an apprentice. He begins practising, but unfortunately, he's far too impatient to learn it properly. Instead of practising the rather unspectacular basic skills, he wants to go right on to the ""real"" imaginatory tricks. At the end, he tries out one of Tromboni's most dangerous traps and nearly suffocates in it.

Bentley's summer holidays are ending and a new school year awaits him. He's visiting Bert and Cedric and brings up memories of their own youth in them. Together they pay the Evergreen Elementary School a visit, and meet Ms. Primrose, the Raccoons' and Cedric's former teacher. When they hear the school's about to be closed, they try to help prevent this. In the end, Cyril, in a lapse into sentimentality, donates the money to modernize the school and enhance the building, which changes the government school inspector's mind.

Prof. Smedley-Smythe holds a science contest for young people, who are to prepare any kind of scientific projects and present them to a jury. Bert's digging for dinosaur fossils, while Cedric and his father build a flight device resembling a pedal-driven helicopter. After not too long, Bert finds a promising tar pit and prepares to examine it more closely. But the pigs, thinking they'd improve Cedric's chances in the contest by sabotaging Bert's project, sink a heap of fresh bones in the pit, and thus cause confusion as usual.

Bert and Cedric have gone skate-crazy. Cyril and Mr. Knox are trying to settle in the skateboard market; they have both developed their own product line and each of them equips a team for a coming race in order to prove the quality of his boards. There seems to be no place in the forest for two skateboard brands - they agree that the looser has to retreat from this market. At the pigs' place... Lloyd and Pink are huge comic book fans and members of a ""Mudman"" fan club, and feel quite elitary, scorning Floyd, who can't afford these books. In order to gain their respect, he begins to steal them from Willow's, and suffers from his bad conscience. In the end, he's going to be discovered and punished. During the race, Cyril's and Knox's race teams behave rather unfairly, trying to throw their opponent out of the race, but don't care for Bert and Cedric, which enables them to win the race (using neither Cyril's boards nor Knox's).

The Sneer Theatre is about to be re-opened; just in time for Cedric, who has written a play (""The secret of the cursed treasure""). Lady Baden-Baden appears to the casting and gets crazy for the main role. In order to make sure she gets the role, Knoxie puts Cyril under pressure, who in turn tries to convince Cedric to modify the play in favour of Lady B.B. Cedric agrees to 'improve' the script, and from this moment, odd things start to happen - Cyril has a series of utterly improbable accidents each time he tries to take influence in Cedric's writing. When they hear the phantom's threatening voice and realise there's someone behind the events, Bert and the pigs unpack their ghostbusting equipment (they've got the will, they've got the technology!) After a chase and fright sequence, the phantom is revealed to be another author formerly employed and exploited by Cyril, who wanted to take revenge, while saving Cedric from suffering the same fate.

The pigs, mightily discontented with their living and working conditions, get in contact with scandal reporter Ms. Barbara LaFrame: a TV talker specialized in interviewing and tormenting rich people who keep their personnel as their slaves... The pigs discredit their boss and she promises to pay him a surprise visit with a camera team that would ruin his reputation. But they soon regret this idea when they learn that her last victim, Milton Midas, utterly destroyed and ruined by her, had to fire all of his staff. Fearing for their jobs, they now try to get rid of her again, describing her boss as a wonderful, friendly father, rather than an employer. But she's not so easily convinced and tries to get her interview. Cyril flees from her, ending up on a roof, from where he crashes through a window and lands right in a ""bachelors auction"", where the reporter has to ""buy"" him for a large amount.