Note: Are you ready to sing and dance!?
Junior Express is an edutainment show made for latin american audiences, starring Diego Topa as himself. More or less. The show revolves the quirky crew of a monorail that travels around the world to bring concerts to kids. Of course, things are not always smooth sailing, and several episodes revolve around solving problems, either with their monorail or within the crew itself, the latter of which are normally aggravated due to the crew's tendency to be overtly eccentric.
The show premiered on 2013 and has received relatively positive attention on Latin America.
This show provides examples of:
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Acting for Two: Diego Topa plays both himself and Arnoldo. Whenever it's needed for Arnoldo and Topa to interact with each other, one of the two will have his back to the audience, and will exit the scene as soon as possible. - Aside Glance: Some characters tends to do this
- Berserk Button: Strap yourself to your seat and don't blink if you want to leave unscathed:
- Melody does not take kindly to you interrupting any of her bombastic, almost acrobatic twirls or any of her catchphrases.
- Arnoldo takes a passive-aggressive stance whenever he feels his cooking skills are being undermined, to the point where Francis acts eerily like an abuse victim when around him. Not that it prevents him from getting what he wants anyways by stroking Arnoldo's ego, though.
- Lila is mostly the most level-headed of the crew, just don't get into the control cabin unless you're Topa.
- Tell Carlos he does not look like his brothers. He will make you spot the differences between them.
- Brutal Honesty: "Solo por hoy":Melody: Melody acaba de resolver su problema.
Rulo Ricardo: Melody no solucionaste ningun problema - Christmas Episode: 2 actually
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Natalio. He swtiches back and forth from spewing complete non-sequiturs, calling out others on their lies, and fixing musical instruments to trying to get to the control cabin.
- Deus ex Machina: Melody is considered a living version of this trope. With her magic cart, she is able to pull out whatever's needed to solve a certain problem. Even on cases where she doesn't have what she needs, she has something that leads to the desired result, or otherwise she herself will have some sort of ability that allows her to solve the problem anyways. Special mention goes to the episode where she starts speaking "lionesse" (and lionesse only, since it was the only animal language she could speak) to ask lions for directions towards the jungle station. While they were stranded. Inside the monorail. And lions just so happened to be passing around to help her. Her explanation was that lions have "very good hearing".
- Didn't Think This Through: Francis in "que si, que no" after realizing he made Arnold give up on cooking the favorite food of the crewmates,
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu??: Arnoldo tends to talk badly about captain topa.
- Edutainment Show
- Emotion Suppression: Carlos' whole schtick is that he is unable to show anything more than a seemingly feigned emotion. Even when it looks like he's genuinely laughing, it just feels sufficiently off for the other crew members to notice, after which he immediately switches to a monotone, lifeless tone and tells them to "carry on".
- Gass Hole: Downplayed with Carlos.
- Genki Girl: Both Melody and Doris fill the role pretty well. Just don't anger the former unless you want to get the stare.
- Hammerspace: Melody's cart is basically this. She can [usually] pull anything from below it, no matter how contrived or impossible it may seem.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Arnoldo And los rulos can qualify.
- Large Ham: Arnoldo, Although sometimes its Downplayed.
- Topa as well.
- Loved by All: Lady Pink, when she shows up, almost everyone wants to take a selfie with her.
- Manipulative Bastard: While a more lighthearted example than usual, Francis is capable of manipulating situations to his advantage, mostly by stroking Arnaldo's ego and playing with his phrasing.
- Motor Mouth: Doris tends to ramble for long periods of time, mostly about her friend Josefina and all the quirky antics they have lived together. Except when someone really needs her to run her mouth.
- Noodle Incident: Almost anything that has to do with Josefina. Doris is capable to turn almost any conversation into a long-winded speech about some random incident with her beloved friend, but they are never explored upon aside from a couple of vague sentences.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: An episode explores in detail what happens when Melody feels depressed/useless. Her cheery, tsundere-like mood is replaced by an unhappy, almost anti-social disposition and it is not pretty.
- What makes this especially jarring is that the episode in question is a whole Out-of-Character Moment for her. In all other episodes, she is shown to be musically inclined, singing, dancing and even pouring down expositions while waltzing through the monorail. In this episode, though, she becomes so completely inept she can't even manage to play the cymbals to the rythm of a song. It's almost like the producers were searching for any excuse to make her not useful in this particular episode, and it came back wrong.
- Put on a Bus: Subverted. One episode revolved around stuff mysteriously disappearing. At first, it looked like Francis was a thief, but then the crew noticed he was seemingly gathering mementos and that he was going to quit. Even Arnoldo dropped his narcissism a few notches and begged him not to leave. Turns out, Francis was just making a photo scrapbook to commemorate his friendship with the crew, and wasn't gonna leave at all.
- Played Straight with Melody and Doris
- Running Gag: Played with. Most characters have certain quirks they tend to perform for comedy, and they get visibly aggravated whenever they either cannot do it or when they're interrupted.
- Melody tends to perform her twirls and bombastic hand gestures everytime she's called, and she mostly dismisses herself after she deems the problem solved, also while twirling excessively. She does not take kindly to being interrupted while doing so, and she will attempt to perform her twirls even when she's inside a cramped space with no conceivable way of doing them without having to outright phase through other people. Doesn't help she presents herself if someone just so whispers the word "help", and she won't leave until the "problem is resolved", whether you like it or not.
- Doris, as discussed above, is a real motormouth. Except when it's crucial for her to do so. In a particular episode, Topa was trying to make time for Arnoldo and basically implored Doris to tell them about her friend. That was one of the only times where Doris said a sentence about her and then outrght stated she didn't want to speak more.
- Speaking of Doris, she also tends to speak with strange inflections, almost like she's trying to reach a high note while singing. You know things are going down when she drops this gag.
- Carlos' gag is being almost devoid of emotions, with any expression on her behalf coming out as forced and feigned. While he tries to tell jokes and the such, they mostly fall flat on their faces. On the rare occassions where he manages to show emotions, the rest of the crew visibly cringes, after which he dismisses the whole ordeal and tells them to "carry on".
- Carlos also seems to think he and his brothers are completely identical. While Rolando and Ricardo can be mistaken for twins, Carlos is too different to consider: not only his hair is a lighter tone, but he´s the only one with an associal behaviour, and he doesn't even wear the same shirt as his brothers. When someone manages to prove this is not the case, Carlos gets frustrated, and immediately theorizes someone must have told them.
- Arnoldo is a master chef, mightier than the mightiest. No questions asked. He naturally went completely ballistic the episode Francis made food for the crew and they actually liked it.
- Lila has too much in common with Hallie the Hippo, specially her tendency to quote idioms. Even when she's alone and/or her phrases make no conceivable sense.
- Francis keeps a charade of submissiveness around Arnoldo while manipulating the situation to his advantage, mostly to keep things in check. Arnoldo never realizes he's being herded. One of the few times he dropped this charade and outright dissed Arnoldo was when he thought himself as a great chef himself.
- Odd Name Out: Rulo Rolando, Rulo Ricardo... And Carlos.
- Simpleton Voice: Rulo Ricardo has this.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: "El tesoro pirata" It's about topa and los rulos going in a treasure hunt, at the end of the episode,they find The treasure,just to find that it was a prank Made up by lila.
- Stylistic Suck: "vida musical" is a Show Within a Show where the Main cast is interviewed, with a lot of Bad "Bad Acting".
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Los rulos became more and more Mischievous in Season 4 and 5.
