Live-Action Plot: Mario and Luigi are anticipating their lunch with pro football player Lyle Alzado when they get a call from their cousins, Marianne and Luigeena. Mario mistakenly discloses their guest’s forthcoming arrival, and the ladies insist on coming over. Marianne and Luigeena are, of course, played by the Mario Bros. actors in drag, and are utterly horrific to look upon. The ladies flirt with Alzado for awhile, with multiple references to his impressive musculature made. Eventually, the cousins are distracted by a Mel Gibson citing and take off.

Very Special Guest: Lyle Alzado played in the NFL for 15 seasons. He died just a few years after this episode, in 1992, from brain cancer at the age of 43. Alzado admitted to pounding steroids throughout his career, and blamed them for the cancer that killed him. Alzado reportedly used natural, rather than synthetic, growth hormones. These would have been harvested from human corpses. Apparently, that’s a thing that you can do. I wonder if Marianne and Luigeena knew all of this and just didn’t care. After all: muscles.

Animated Plot: Toad, Princess Toadstool, and the Mario Bros. wander through the desert looking for Aladdin’s lamp. It’s hoped this magical artifact will be able to save the Mushroom Kingdom from King Koopa. The team winds up imprisoned by a sultan, but quickly escape. Of course, Koopa shows up and briefly kidnaps the princess, before she is rescued. They all live happily ever after, except for Koopa, who gets stuck with a truly obnoxious genie. Up until this point, Toad’s head/hat had been coloured incorrectly, with white used as the spots, and red as the filler in-between. This is the first episode of the series to reverse that colouration, thus correcting the mistake.

Horrible Stereotype Alert: Not many Italian jokes in this one, or even fat jokes. The ladies’ obsession with a muscular football player is pretty stereotypical, but not all that shocking. Perhaps the most questionable content comes from the cartoon, in which the princess is placed in a harem and referred to as a “wench.”