much more pronounced case of distracting boy-craziness is one of the more notable characteristics of Candace, the title characters' teenage older sister in the mad-science-ish-around-the-edges Disney Channel series Phineas and Ferb. Although there is no particular indication in any of the episodes I've seen that Candace shares her brothers' aptitude for building elaborate contraptions or for coming up with ingenious technical solutions to problems, the fact that she spends literally all her time obsessing over either exposing Phineas and Ferb's unorthodox activities to their mother or getting a date with the good-looking Jeremy obviously prevents her from accomplishing anything constructive -- or, in most cases, even having any fun.
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As the above description suggests, mad science also appears to be a predominantly male province on Phineas and Ferb. This may have something to do with the fact that, although the series was officially launched fairly recently, in February 2008 (after a months-earlier preview of the pilot episode in August 2007), creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff "Swampy" Marsh had originally come up with the idea sixteen years earlier and stubbornly persisted in pitching it to various networks until Disney finally took the bait.
Phineas and Ferb is set in Danville, a largish town in a somewhat vaguely-defined Tri-State Area that appears to be characterized by an abnormally high level of mad science-type activity generally. (Despite this vaguely Eureka-esque atmosphere, most of the characters remain so invincibly unaware of traditional mad science stereotypes that they routinely mistake the German-accented, lab coat-wearing self-proclaimed evil scientist Dr. Doofenshmirtz for a pharmacist.) The local mall sells vials of rare superscience-suitable isotopes such as pizzazium infinionite, and one of the exhibits in the Danville Museum of Natural History is an H. G. Wells-type nineteenth century model time machine, which in the episode "It's About Time!" is briefly restored to working order by the tween jack-of-all-technical-trades title characters. Fortunately for Phineas, Ferb, and their perpetually exasperated big sister Candace, all of whom wind up taking an unscheduled one-way trip to 300 Million B.C. as a result, their friend Isabella Garcia-Shapiro and her cohorts in the local troop of Fireside Girls are able to respond to Phineas' fossilized S.O.S. by constructing their own time travel rescue vehicle, following the standard instructions in their Girl Scout-like troop handbook.
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Danville also has its own distinctly inept self-styled resident supervillain, the aforementioned Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz (doctorate acquired online), whose corporate headquarters is subtly titled "Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated." Doofenshmirtz has built his own rather unreliable henchman in the form of Norm, a cheerfully destructive hamster wheel-powered robot who can fly, transform into a pick-up truck, and extend his arms and legs until he towers several stories high. Unfortunately for his creator, although Norm's artificial intelligence increases as the show goes on, the business-suited robot continues to exhibit so little common sense that he often winds up actively hindering the schemes of the infuriated Dr. D, whom Norm longingly regards as his father.
However, Doofenshmirtz's true scientific specialty and favorite intellectual progeny is his endless series of "-inator" devices. These include the juice-inator, designed to dissolve City Hall into pineapple juice; the away-inator, for dispatching annoying fellow motorists to an alien dimension; the de-volitionator (which Doof actually purchased at Brain, Bath and Beyond, "the area's largest big-box mind-control store") and the freezeanator. The latter is a device for turning living beings into statues, which Doofenshmirtz did invent himself. However, he uses it only on the obtuse backseat-driver leader of the government agents attempting to foil his schemes before becoming distracted by a disagreement with his officially-designated nemesis, Phineas and Ferb's pet Perry the (Sentient Secret Agent) Platypus. The resulting soap-operatic talk show face-off serendipitously results in the ray's accidentally freezing a live Tyrannosaurus rex that had been rampaging through the museum as a result of the kids' time-traveling misadventures.
The stars of the show, ten-year-old stepbrothers Phineas and Ferb, occasionally spend an entire episode engaging in unquestionably mad scientific activities of their own, such as creating a device that enables the user to phase through walls and other solid objects à la Kitty Pryde of the X-Men ("Just Passing Through"); constructing an elaborate homemade water park ride composed entirely of self-sustaining interlocking waterspouts ("Buford Confidential"); and entertaining their friends by putting their army of homegrown nanobots through a dazzling series of transformations, including giant faucet, rowboat, giant gingerbread man and, finally, a small fleet of one-kid cars, planes and spaceships, which they eventually employ to foil the latest Doofenshmirtz-related plot ("Norm Unleashed").
More typically, the stepbrothers function not so much as junior mad scientists themselves as they do as build-it-in-your-own-back-yard budding engineers whose mechanical expertise is usually needed to translate other people's more grandiose conceptual designs into reality. The beneficiaries of their technical assistance range from Dr. Doofenshmirtz to Phineas and Ferb's brilliant but mechanically klutzy classmate Baljeet, who morosely declares that he has no hope of impressing his teacher and winning the science fair with his design for a functional portal to Mars unless the far more practically adept Phineas and Ferb assist him with its construction. Sure enough, with all three boys working together, the portal not only provides an instructive view of bulbous aliens attending a similar science fair on Mars, but, after Doofenshmirtz accidentally short circuits it, teleports the wannabe evil scientist all the way to the Red Planet.
Two adult female mad scientists have made guest appearances on Phineas and Ferb. In the episode "Oil on Candace," Dr. Gevaarlijk, Doofenshmirtz's reluctant mentor and former instructor in Evil 101, accepts Dr. D's invitation to come inspect his latest nefarious accomplishments, only to be thoroughly unimpressed by the crumpled debris testifying to her sad-sack student's numerous unsuccessful schemes. In a last-ditch effort to do something right before his disgusted professor returns to their mutual European homeland of Drusselstein, Doofenshmirtz attempts to shoot down the moon -- which both mad scientists agree has inspired far too many sappy song lyrics -- with his swivel-mounted laser cannon.
Unfortunately, the cannon only has enough energy for one shot. When Doofenshmirtz predictably knocks it askew, accidentally shooting downward to rupture a nearby dam instead, the dissatisfied Dr. Gevaarlijk departs with her original disdain for her would-be disciple reconfirmed.
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The other female mad scientist, the vaguely Judi Dench-like Professor Poofenplotz, first appeared on camera in the Isabella-centric episode "Isabella and the Temple of Sap." Phineas and Ferb and Perry the Platypus, the usual stars of each episode's A and B plots respectively, this time make only fleeting appearances. Instead, the episode's main storyline follows Isabella's jittery pet dog Pinky the Chihuahua (a member of the same largely animal-staffed secret agency as Perry) as she investigates Professor Poofenplotz, crossing paths with Isabella and the Fireside Girls at an abandoned amusement park. Isabella & Co. are there to retrieve a rare tree whose oil Isabella's crush Phineas requires to construct his latest contraption. For her part, Poofenplotz is seeking the last remaining cache of her favorite Stiff Beauty hairspray, whose production has been discontinued due to the fact that besides herself, the only people who had been purchasing it were professional clowns.
On paper, Professor Poofenplotz's stereotypically feminine preoccupations with accessories (in the episode "Day of the Living Gelatin," her offstage evil plot revolves around handbags) and physical appearance make her sound eye-rollingly trivial and silly. However, her stern, focused demeanor and noticeably higher levels of wholeheartedly evil intent and general competence suggest that at least theoretically, she is far more formidable and genuinely dangerous than the goofy Doofenshmirtz. When Poofenplotz snarls, "I can't very well take over the world until I'm drop-dead gorgeous," she at least appears to be convincingly committed to both goals, albeit in a somewhat narcissistically Snow White's stepmother-ish fashion. Doofenshmirtz, on the other hand, often behaves as if he subconsciously regards his dastardly plots as a mere excuse to play elaborate cat and mouse games with his frenemy Perry the Platypus.
Poofenplotz's "Isabella and the Temple of Sap" quest for industrial-strength hairspray ultimately fails as dismally as all of Doofenshmirtz's ventures. However, in Poofenplotz's case, this seems more the result of coincidentally happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (the old amusement park structure filled with Stiff Beauty hairspray collapses in on her as a side effect of Isabella and friends' carefully aimed attempt to ricochet off a rickety old rollercoaster to safety) than of messing up or misfiring her own invention, as so often happens with Doofenshmirtz.
Each of these adult female mad scientists appears to be a far more capable and credible threat than the ever-present Dr. Doofenshmirtz, despite the fact that Poofenplotz seems to be equally unlucky. However, the fact that Dr. Gevaarlijk and Professor Poofenplotz appear in only a token handful of the over 170 episodes of the series aired so far minimizes their impact and suggests that the incorporation of female mad scientists into the Phineas and Ferb-verse was something of an afterthought.
As it happens, both Dr. Gevaarlijk and Professor Poofenplotz were introduced into the Phineas and Ferb continuity considerably earlier in the series' four seasons to date than the relative scarcity of their appearances might lead one to expect. According to the Internet Movie Database, "Oil on Candace," the episode introducing Dr. Gevaarlijk, was episode 34 of season one (originally aired October 17, 2008). Professor Poofenplotz was first mentioned in episode 6 of season two ("Day of the Living Gelatin," debut airdate February 28, 2009) and made her most prominent on-screen appearance later the same season, in "Isabella and the Temple of Sap" (season two, episode 19 -- the 55th episode aired so far), which originally appeared on October 17, 2009. However, since then she has made only a cameo viewscreen appearance in the background of the closing musical number of season two's "Rollercoaster: The Musical," originally aired on January 29, 2011. (A female troll officiously guarding the Bridge of Comprehension in the third season epic fantasy spoof "Excaliferb," first shown on January 15, 2012, bears a suspicious facial resemblance to Poofenplotz, but lacks her distinctive British accent.) Gevaarlijk, on the other hand, has never appeared again at all -- somewhat understandably, since she lives on a different continent.
Phineas and Ferb is a wittily-written and often delightful show that was a pleasure to research for this article. I found myself heartily agreeing with Wired critic Matt Blum, who commented that he could stand to watch just about anything with his kids, "but I actually look forward to watching Phineas and Ferb with them." Most of the series' female characters, especially Fireside Girls leader Isabella Garcia-Shapiro and Dr. Doofenshmirtz's rebellious (and non-science-minded) teenage daughter Vanessa, appear to be notably brighter than the regular female cast members on Dexter's Laboratory, not to mention most people of either sex on older, more lowest common denominator kid-targeted shows such as The Jetsons, The Flintstones, or even Rocky and Bullwinkle (in which only one of the protagonists was permitted to be smart and all the other characters were either comically obtuse or downright dumb). Even Phineas and Ferb's control-freak sister, Candace, whose obsession with putting a stop to the boys' mindbogglingly precocious high-tech activities by "busting" them to their mom positions her as a far less successful equivalent of Dee Dee in her Dexter's Laboratory role as obstructor of her brother's experiments, is a far more complex and sympathetic character than the comparatively one-note nuisance Dee Dee.
The introduction of Dr. Gevaarlijk and Professor Poofenplotz in Phineas and Ferb's first and second seasons, respectively, is proof of the producers' praiseworthy efforts to incorporate more scientifically impressive strong female characters -- in the genuine, not the satirical Kate Beaton-esque sense -- into the series not long after its official 2007/2008 debut. However, the fact that many of the central concepts of the show had presumably already been formulated and developed as long ago as the less gender diversity-conscious early to mid-1990s, during the sixteen years when creators Povenmire and Marsh kept unsuccessfully submitting the series to various networks, appears to have subconsciously affected the producers' ideas about which types of characters would be most central to the mad scientific aspects of a typical Phineas and Ferb plot. As a result, when it comes to mad science, the girls and women in the cast tend to be relegated to the roles of admiring and reasonably scientifically literate occasional helpmeet (Isabella) or memorable but rarely seen guest star (Dr. Gevaarlijk and Professor Poofenplotz).
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