Chowder settled into its new home on Cartoon Network's "New Thursday Nights" with two episodes about leaving home and finding it again, so to speak. It's a hard life being a food geek -- real life keeps intruding. In "Sniffleball", our purple-and-lavender apprentice is enjoying a spirited conversation with his kitchen utensils when his mentor Mung Daal interrupts with the dreaded question: "When was the last time you went outside?"

Thus Chowder is dragged literally kicking and screaming into a sniffleball game. Now, it's difficult to pull off a good tantrum in any cartoon, yet somehow the young voice actor Nicky Jones and Clayton Morrow's fanciful storyboarding helped pull it off. The gags never stopped. From the moment Chowder's oversized glove is snapped on his head, we're treated to a silly romp around the bases that's part Charlie Brown (defense) and part Looney Tunes (offense).

As a casual baseball fan, I have to pronounce this a winner. Little details like the zinger ball (a sinker?) covered in goo ("hit the snot out of the ball!") satisfied my inner punster. The 1-2-3-you're-out slow pitch is one of the oldest gags in animation, yet it also surprised a laugh out of me. It's certainly a new take on the determined sports hero who can only hit that home run with the help of his friends.

Fans of Chowder can't blink, or they'll miss the wind-up and the pitch. The best episodes seem random at first. Then one realizes the show about getting out of the house has a claymation shout-out to Super Mario Bros., the original gaming time-sink. It's another one to re-watch!

The next episode, "Mung on the Rocks", rounds a different set of bases.