Karma Krisis

Season

2

Episode

3a

Date Aired

August 6th, 1999

Written By

Gene Grillo

Storyboarded By

Bob Onorato (uncredited)^[1]

Directed By

Russell Calabrese

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Forest Chump	A Star Is Bruised

"Karma Krisis" is a Season 2 episode of Johnny Bravo.

Synopsis[]

Johnny doesn't listen to Bunny's advice, and he rips up a chain letter. This results in a long run of bad luck, and a timely appearance by Dionne Warwick.

Plot Summary[]

At home, Johnny finishes a bust of himself out of chopped liver. Bunny opens a piece of mail for him, discovering a chain letter. Devastated, she advises him to avoid bad luck by forwarding it. However, Johnny is not convinced and rips the letter up. Turning on the TV, he tries to watch Bikini Bungee Jumping. An accident occurs, causing "technical difficulties" and a cut to an old man reading the Pennsylvanian Penal Code. Moments later, a baseball smashes through the window right into Johnny's liver sculpture. Bunny warns her son that his bad luck has already started, but he shrugs it off. Having nothing else to watch, Johnny heads out to the gym.

Johnny parks his scooter outside, wrapping it in chains, an anchor and a lock. As soon as he walks in, a woman shoves him out, pointing to a "No Johnnys" sign. Johnny walks back to his scooter, which gets destroyed by a falling meteor. A child's stray baseball then hits him in the ear. After asking "What next?", lightning strikes Johnny and he stumbles. A nearby parade of Shriners and circus performers trample over his body, leaving him laying on the ground. Suddenly, a bus pulls up, filled with past victims of Johnny's advances. The women kick him and beat him with their purses, pairing their tasers together to cast the final blow. As the smoke clears, Suzy approaches. She suggests to pet a kitty, which Johnny is desperate enough to try. Finding a stray cat in an alley way, he gets attacked instantly.

Now at Pops' Diner, Johnny lays on the bar counter as Carl works to pry the cat's claws off his face. Pops tells Johnny about bad juju before revealing that he had taken some of his hair and toenails to make a voodoo doll. He advises to keep it safe, telling Johnny that no harm will come to him. Carl finally pries the cat off, causing the doll to fly onto the griddle. Johnny screams, withering in pain until Pops flips the doll into some flour. Carl dissuades Johnny from superstition, claiming that the only way to break a curse is to "swing a sack of salamis in a cornfield while yodeling at the break of dawn."

At the break of dawn, Johnny arrives at a cornfield with a sack of salamis. After he yodels and swings, he believes that his bad luck is over until a tornado sweeps him up. He plummets to the ground beneath a house, The Wizard of Oz style, and exits it before getting crushed by a cow. Traveling in a magic bubble, Dionne Warwick visits Johnny to give him some wisdom. She reveals that bad luck is self-inflicted, and that it really is all just superstition. Thrilled, Johnny leaves, only for Dionne to suffer the same bad luck that he did.

Trivia[]

This episode (and likely "A Star Is Bruised") was storyboarded by the late Bob Onorato. As he went uncredited, this was only revealed when a number of storyboards were uploaded to the Cartoon Network website. These boards were also unfinalized, with the stages after clean-up not yet stamped on the cover page.
- On the cover, Jed Spingarn is credited for the episode's story, but this was also left out of the final episode.
Two notable differences between the few storyboards and the final episode are:
1. Pops gives a different backstory detail to Johnny, mentioning sugar cane. In the final episode, Pops instead claims he was "hunting giant squid off the coast of Bimini back in '62."
2. Pops yells "No! You fool!" at Carl as the cat knocks the Johnny doll out of his hand. In the final, Pops says nothing.