Recap / Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers

The following is a list of episodes from the late 1980s The Disney Afternoon series, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, which sees the mischievous chipmunks from the old Donald Duck cartoons as miniature crime fighters, joined by a fat Australian mouse named Monterey Jack, an orphaned engineer named Gadget Hackwrench, and Monterey's sidekick fly, Zipper.

NOTE: The episodes listed here will be in production order.

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Pilot Movie/Five-Part Episode

1. To The Rescue: A criminal mastermind named Aldrin Klordane and his pet cat, Fat Cat, frame an aging police detective, Donald Drake, and his canine companion, Plato, for stealing a priceless ruby. While the human police try to get Drake to confess to the crime, a pair of chipmunks named Chip and Dale help Plato find the real culprits — and get some help from a globe-trotting Australian mouse named Monterey Jack, a housefly named Zipper, and a beautiful, but orphaned and absent-minded engineer named Gadget Hackwrench.

Season One

1. Three Men and a Booby: The Rescue Rangers help a ditzy bird find her egg, which has been stolen from her by a Peter Lorre-esque egg collector.
2. Pound of the Baskervilles: The ranger plane crashes at an old mansion and they run into a dog who's looking for the will of the old owner. While one son has hoarded the house, the dog's owner sends his dog in looking for it. Eager to apply the detective skills of his favorite detective, Chip leads the investigation, and discovers his favorite stories might be closer to this case than he thought. Yes, this is an Affectionate Parody of the Sherlock Holmes franchise.
3. Piratsy Under the Seas
4. Out to Launch: The Rangers going to watch a space shuttle launch turns out of this world when Chip and Dale end up in the ship and get blasted into space.
5. Catteries Not Included: The search for a girl's missing kitten leads the Rangers to Professor Nimnul's laboratory, where the Professor plans to generate lightning bolts by building up static electricity in the fur of several cats, including the kitten the Rangers are looking for, which have been catnapped by his robotic bulldogs.
6. Bearing Up Baby
7. Parental Discretion Retired: Monterey Jack's father, Cheddarhead Charlie, comes to visit.
8. Kiwi’s Big Adventure: In New Zealand, the Rangers have to get their Ranger Plane back from a tribe of kiwis who take it for a flying deity and want it to give them their ability to fly back.
9. The Luck Stops Here: Gadget finds herself secretly helping a down-on-his-luck inventor, when it turns out his cat is deliberately sabotaging him on purpose in order to remain as inventor's good luck charm.
10. The Pied Piper Power Play: Nimnul's newest idea for a power plant (since the failure with static electricity from cats) involves storing it in a potato and generating it in hamster wheels driven by mind-controlled mice. Unfortunately (for him), he accidentally also lures Gadget and Monty into said wheels, thereby leading the Rangers onto the case.
11. An Elephant Never Suspects: The Rescue Rangers are accused of stealing peanuts by the elephants at the zoo.
12. A Case of Stage Blight: While attending a night at the opera, the Rangers stumble upon the plans of an alligator who aspires to be an actor, with him planning to make his debut by taking over the role of the opera's hero.
13. Battle of the Bulge
14. The Case of the Cola Cult: The Rescue Rangers stumble upon a cult that worships a brand of fizzy drinks and resides in one of the manufacturer's warehouses. What nobody knows, not even the cult's leader, is that one of the higher-ranking members uses the cult as a scam to get the members' riches.
15. Normie’s Science Project:
16. The S.S. Drainpipe: Toy boats are disappearing all over the city, along with massive amounts of gold, putting the Rangers on the trail of Rat Capone. Things turn hectic when Dale's desire to be like his favorite superhero, the Red Badger, cause more problems then needed.
17. The Carpetsnaggers: Nimnul builds hover-driven, remote-controlled rugs which he then sells to rich people whom the carpets could and shall rob blind. The Rangers stumble upon a flying doghouse with both the dog and one of Nimnul's flying carpets inside and investigate.
18. Dale Beside Himself: Three vacationing aliens on earth decide to head back home when one of the alien named Dtz decides to stay back unknown to the other two aliens. He meets Dale and soon hi-jinks ensue as Dale finds himself at odds with the alien as he tries to convince the other rangers that he's the real Dale.
19. A Lad in a Lamp: Monterey Jack and Zipper find a magic lamp and incur the wrath of a Jackass Genie whose wishes alienate Monterey Jack from his friends...and things get worse when Monterey Jack's wish for more wishes turns him into the new genie and Fat Cat nabs the lamp for himself.
20. A Creep in the Deep: A megalomaniacal fish who has come across the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea uses it to try and "liberate" sea-dwelling creatures from the humans.
21. Throw Mummy from the Train
22. Puffed Rangers: When Dale can't find a free toy in his cereal box, the Rangers end up discovering a scheme to smuggle foreign cars into the country.
23. Does Pavlov Ring a Bell?: Chip and Dale become jealous when Gadget shows attraction to a spaced out lab rat named Sparky. However, Sparky may be in more danger then first assumed.
24. Ghost of a Chance
25. The Last Leprechaun
26. Fake Me to Your Leader: Zipper, wanting to be bigger and stronger, accidentally gets zapped by Nimnul's enlarging ray during the professor's plan to use giant pillbugs for a fake alien invasion.
27. Chipwrecked Shipmunks
28. Robocat

Season Two

1. Chocolate Chips
2. Gadget Goes Hawaiian: During a Hawaiian vacation, Gadget meets a Hawaiian princess named Lawhinie who looks exactly like her and the two pull the old "Prince and the Pauper"-style switcheroo.
3. Double O Chipmunk
4. Gorilla My Dreams
5. Prehysterical Pet
6. A Wolf in Cheap Clothing
7. Adventures in Squirrelsitting: While trying to retrieve the stolen Maltese Mouse from Fat Cat, the Rangers crash into the home of a squirrel family. They end up having to babysit a teen-age squirrel girl who develops a severe crush on Chip (plus jealousy towards Gadget) and her wild toddler sister while still having to solve the ongoing case.
8. Mind Your Cheese and Q’s: After getting distracted by cheese while rescuing Gadget from being blown away by a kite, Monterey Jack decides to swear off cheese forever...which is easier said than done when he goes through withdrawal and things get worse when the Al Capone-esque gangster Rat Capone causes a cheese shortage in the city.
9. Flash the Wonder Dog: Dale urges the other Rescue Rangers to rescue his favorite TV show character, Flash the Wonder Dog, but becomes disillusioned when he discovers that Flash isn't as heroic as he is on TV. Meanwhile, Fat Cat and his goons pose as Flash the Wonder Dog and commit crimes all over the city so the real Flash will take the blame.
10. A Chorus Crime: It all starts out with a seemingly unspectacular case of countless stolen tap-dancing shoes. It turns out that Nimnul needs a lot of Arctic ice (again), and this time, he wants to use tap-dancing penguins to break it off.
11. Song of the Night ‘n Dale: The Rescue Rangers crash land in China, where a paranoid emperor is being gaslighted by his sister.
12. A Fly in the Ointment: Nimnul invents a telephone teleportation device, of course with criminal intents. Zipper tries to stop him, but he ends up under the device together with Nimnul, and the two switch bodies. While Zipper with Nimnul's body is mistaken for an alien, Nimnul with Zipper's body needs the Rangers' help for once to get his original body back.
13. Risky Bees-ness: Zipper falls for a queen bee whose entire hive is being brainwashed by a punk-rocking female scientist.
14. Good Times, Bat Times: A cleaning woman has found a way to become a witch. The Rangers find that out while at a drive-in. Also, one of the cleaning woman's familiars has fallen head over heels for Dale and decides to quit her in favor of them.
15. Dirty Rotten Diapers: Gadget urges the other Rescue Rangers to use Lighter and Softer tactics in catching criminals, which doesn't work when a midget criminal posing as a baby mops the floor with each of them.
16. Zipper Come Home: After being blamed for ruining the kitchen by Monterey Jack, Zipper runs away from home and ends up in a society where he's hailed as a god — and prepped to be a sacrifice.
17. Last Train to Cashville
18. Short Order Crooks: Monterey Jack decides to use a local diner to cook his famous cheese chowder while the proprietor is on vacation...at the same time two bank robbers are plotting to dig underground from the diner to the bank's main vault. Their paths cross when two police officers find the cheese chowder, think the bank robbers cooked it themselves, and demand more.
19. It’s a Bird, It’s Insane, It’s Dale: Dale comes across a piece of meteorite that fell from the sky, which grants him super elastic powers. Adopting the name, Rubberbando, he goes on a superhero crime-fighting spree, leaving the other Rescue Rangers in the dust and feeling insignificant. Unfortunately, a two-bit conman finds another piece of the meteorite and uses it to commit crimes.
20. One-Upsman Chip:
21. When Mice Were Men
22. Weather or Not: Monterey Jack does battle with Professor Nimnul and his weather machine.
23. Pie in the Sky: The Rangers help a bird who got seperated from his flock while migrating, but Chip wants a bigger mystery to solve for once.
24. Love is a Many Splintered Thing: While fighting two wooden furniture thugs, Monterey Jack gets distracted by a smell that's (for once) not cheese. Rather, it's the smell of perfume from Desiree DeLure, a female mouse he fell in love with back when he was a globetrotting explorer (and whom he planned to marry, only to get a whiff from a cheese truck and eat himself into a food coma), who comes back into his life and begs him to help her get away from her criminal boyfriend — but Chip thinks the entire thing is a trap.
25. Le Purrfect Crime: Fat Cat's French cousin wants to rid all of Paris of poodles with ultrasonic noise. Also, he tries to use Dale who suffers from amnesia against the Rangers when they intervene.
26. When You Fish Upon a Star
27. Out of Scale: Chip and Dale are kidnapped by two thugs who have kidnapped and forced Professor Nimnul to use his shrink ray to shrink the city's monuments so their crime boss's daughter can have new toys.
28. They Shoot Dogs, Don’t They?
29. Shell Shocked
30. Seer No Evil: Monterey Jack's old friend, a gypsy moth named Cassandra, tells the Rangers' fortunes...and predicts doom for Chip, who, naturally, is skeptical.
31. Rest Home Rangers: On his birthday, Monterey Jack falls victim to Nimnul's latest invention: an aging ray that is fueled by prunes.
32. A Lean on the Property: Monterey Jack's embarrassing mother, Camembert Kate (last seen at the end of "Parental Discretion Retired"), comes to visit and Monty must prove to her that he's his own man (or mouse, rather). Meanwhile, Fat Cat uses moles to level the city's skyscrapers (which, as you can figure out, is the reason why this episode doesn't play at all in this post-9/11 attacks society^note though, as of Disney Plus' release in 2019, this episode is back. And it's also on iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, and Google Play for those who don't want to buy Disney Plus just to see this episode).