Confessions of a Family Dog Viewer: "Hot Dog at the Zoo"

Original air date: 23rd June 1993

"Show Dog" represented fairly dull beginnings for Family Dog's stand-alone series, and I've already stated that the nine episodes that followed couldn't help but be a step-up in some way.  Still, with "Hot Dog at the Zoo", that's not overwhelming the case - following the sheer tedium of "Show Dog", it's a relief to have a script that's a bit more action-orientated and all-round less of a bore than its predecessor, but overall it still rates one of my least favourites of the series.  Despite climaxing in a showdown with a wild snarling predator, the narrative as a whole still flows along surprisingly lifelessly.  The callousness and idiocy of the Binfords, meanwhile, remains a persistent issue, and even the dog himself behaves rather bafflingly at times.

"Hot Dog at the Zoo" is the only Family Dog episode to give any kind of substantial focus to Buffy, the youngest member of the Binford family, in that she plays a significant role in the episode's climax.  I mentioned in my introduction that Buffy is the one member of the Binfords household with no particularly obvious Simpson counterpart - beyond the obvious distinctions of being young and female, she has little in common with either Lisa or Maggie, and if I were to compare her to a character from The Simpsons at all, it would have to be Ralph Wiggum, only minus the inspired, non-sequitur oddness that makes his character such a joy.  I also hinted that, although Buffy acts like a pre-schooler, it's not exactly clear how old the show intends for her to be.  A huge problem with Family Dog is that the human figures, particularly the younger ones, are painted with such broad strokes that they end up looking more like grotesque caricatures than identifiable characters - much as Billy can't be depicted as a rambunctious brat without making him seem like a complete sociopath (on the scale of young sociopaths of the early 90s, I'd rate him as being slightly above Henry Evans from The Good Son but below Kevin McCallister from Home Alone), so too Buffy can't be depicted as a happy, naive and carefree youngster without appearing like a crude stereotype of intellectual disability.

It also occurs to me that, for a show revolving around the misadventures of a cartoon dog, there is a surprising shortage of cats in Family Dog.  The titular character tended to find more enemies among his own species than he did among that species' traditional cartoon rival, which is refreshing at the very least.  "Hot Dog at the Zoo" is notable for containing the only feline antagonist of the series, and even then it's not typical house cat that we're up against.

"Hot Dog at the Zoo" opens with Buffy watching a show about her favourite character, Happy Bunny, a purple singing rabbit which I assume is intended to be a jab at Barney the Dinosaur.  There were over a million Barney the Dinosaur parodies throughout the 1990s, and this one isn't anything too special, so let's move right along.  The dog, noticing that Buffy is patting her Happy Bunny plush toy in a transfixed state, tries to slip in and take the place of the toy without her knowing (thus simulating the rare experience of being on the receiving end of affection), but she gets wise and rejects him rather pointedly.  Dejected, the dog retreats into the kitchen, where Skip and Bev are discussing where the former intends to take the latter for their wedding anniversary.  After a protracted round of guessing games ("Do they have caged animals and their accompanying stench?") Bev is more than a little disappointed to learn that Skip intends to take her to the zoo, apparently in a half-baked, pseudo-romantic attempt to recreate their first date.  In all this grumbling, the dog gets meagre enough attention for Bev to deduce that he hasn't been fed, although his intense aversion to the specific brand of dog food that Skip drops into his bowl is completely ignored.

Somehow or other, Skip ends up misplacing his wedding ring, which gets dropped into the dog's bowl and accidentally devoured.  We're then treated to a freaky perspective shot showing the ring making its way down the dog's oseophagus and into his stomach (among other things the dog has swallowed are a purple crayon and one of those plastic green army men), the contents of which are then seen going up in an ominous gassy eruption, whereupon the sequence tastefully fades out.  As we fade back in, the dog is standing beside a tree in the backyard, with a tell-tale sparkle emitting from the base of the tree.  This isn't the only reference to animals shitting we'll be getting this episode - later on at the zoo, we'll see an elephant raising its tail ominously as Skip and Bev instruct their children to stand well back.  Evidently, this did strike some audiences as crude and distasteful back in 1993, as this reviewer from Entertainment Weekly attests, although the manner in which this kind of scatological humour is executed in Family Dog seems so quaint and cautious now.  It's not as if we actually see any excrement onscreen, or if any of the characters even explicitly mention it.  These days, you're liable to encounter far crasser bodily function gags in whatever number Ice Age film Blue Sky is currently onto.

The dog returns to the house to find Skip freaking out because he can't find his ring, and Bev annoyed that he could lose something so important in the first place.  When Bev shows her own ring to Billy (who's joined us in an unusually clement mood) to give him an idea of what the missing ring looks like, the dog connects a few mental dots and races outside to retrieve the ring from the base of the tree.  Honestly, I'm not too fond of the implication here that the dog can apparently understand exactly what the humans are saying, largely because it seems to detract from the whole concept of showing the world from the perspective of an animal who's not supposed to be excessively anthropomorphised, and has little to no appreciation for the mundane trivialities of their suburban lifestyle.  I appreciate that plot convenience has to factor in somewhere, and that the dog, inevitably, is going to possess a few cognitive abilities exceeding those of your typical canine, but the notion that he somehow has a perfect comprehension of the English language strikes me as a contrivance too far.  Anyway, the dog returns the ring to Skip naively thinking that it will earn him praise, only to find himself chastised by both Skip and Bev, who assume that he took the ring.  Skip and Bev clearly have no idea what kind of journey that ring has actually been on and presumably don't think to clean it, so I derive some consolation that Skip presumably has a wealth of disease-causing microbes spreading across his hand throughout the rest of the episode.

Ever-dejected, the dog seeks solace from the TV set, which is currently playing a Lassie knock-off called Super Dog Sampson, featuring a collie who wrestles grizzly bears, leaps aboard high-speed trains and rescues children from burning forests.  Our dog enjoys playing along and pretending to be Sampson, only to get a rude awakening when he realises that the Binfords have played a fast one on him, and quietly snuck out the house so that he doesn't twig until too late that he's being left behind.  The desperate dog escapes, however, and emulating skills displayed by Super Dog Sampson, leaps onto the back of the Binfords car and manages to cling on for dear life.  Thus, he also makes it to the zoo and slips in without any of the Binfords and, initially, the zoo security staff (with appears to consist of only one individual anyway) noticing.

After an extended and disappointingly gag-free panning shot showing various snack vendors and kitschy zoo merchandise stalls, we find the dog prowling past an array of cages, deep in the delusion that he's Super Dog Sampson.  His confidence is no doubt bolstered by the assumption that none of the animals behind bars can actually get to him, but it only takes a bit of aggressive posturing from a couple of mandrills and a hippo to shatter that facade of boldness.  It's during this sequence that we get some of the more inventive perspective shots of the episode, including a particularly nice one in which the arcade ceiling and an endless parade of bars and greenery are displayed from the level of the dog.  They're enjoyable, and the episode could have benefited from having a few more shots of this ilk.  It's also here that the dog runs into seemingly the only employee at the zoo, a heavy-set man with a stereotypical Indian accent who immediately takes pursuit.  Along the way, the keeper meets the Binfords, who are just recovering from their aforementioned elephant encounter, and informs them that some irresponsible family has let their dog loose in the zoo.  Skip then delivers what could be the subconscious motto of the entire series - "I always say jerks who can't take care of pets shouldn't have them" - before the dog leaps devotedly into his arms.

As Bev and Skip bicker about their anniversary not going to plan, the dog sees a young girl crying because she's dropped her ice cream cone, upon which he races over, snarling, and latches onto her dress.  I have to admit that it took me a moment or two to figure out exactly what the dog thinks he's doing here - presumably, it's a call-back the earlier scene in which Super Dog Sampson was seen rescuing a crying girl from a forest fire, but it's not executed terribly well, making it initially seem as if the dog went momentarily berserk and attacked an innocent girl for no reason.  This is precisely how it looks to the girl's father too, who deals out a blow to Skip's eye for failing to keep his dog under control.  Naturally, there's a lot of crying from Skip of "stupid dog!", which merely fuels the dog's desire to prove his heroic mettle all the more.  His next solution is to attack Moldy, the zoo's resident grizzly bear, who's apparently elderly and infirm and only capable of posing a hazard to very small children.  As the deeply confused bear gets clump upon clump of his fur ripped out by the scrappy little assailant, the Indian-accented zookeeper races over to remove the dog and, in his haste, neglects to ensure that the door to the panther enclosure is properly shut.  Surely this won't backfire in some way?

The Binfords, meanwhile, have dropped an idiot ball of their own in neglecting to ensure that Buffy is safely where they can see her.  Having now secured the dog, Skip and Bev head off to look for her while a predictably reluctant Billy is tasked with ensuring that the dog causes no more havoc.  At this point, the zoo patrons become aware of a panther roaming free around zoo grounds, and the resulting panic causes Billy to drop his guard.  Although the zookeeper is able to capture the panther (albeit not without a bit of underpants-wetting hesitation) and return it to its cage, only the dog is aware that Buffy has already wandered into the same cage (believing it to be Happy Bunny's Secret Bunny House) and is now trapped in there.  Breaking free of his tether, the dog slips through the bars of the cage and distracts the panther, who proceeds to chase after him.

At this point, Skip and Bev return and become aware of the dog's predicament.  Bev panics and insists that Skip comes up with a solution, while Billy enjoys the spectacle and the prospect of the dog being killed in one bite, before Buffy wanders into view and demands that everybody be quiet as Happy Bunny is trying to sleep.  The revelation that their precious daughter, and not just their much-neglected dog, is in immediate danger of being messily disemboweled by a hungry panther is enough to send Bev and Skip's panic into hyper-drive.  The zookeeper, who's just decided to quit his job and accept a role at a post office, isn't much help, so Skip takes his keys from him and fumbles around desperately trying to decide which one unlocks the door to the panther cage.  Finally, he gets the door open and, with the panther still fixated upon the dog, gestures that Buffy run to him, only she refuses to leave without her Happy Bunny plush and goes back.  Skip tries to run in after her, but immediately flees when the panther turns on him (brilliant display of parental heroism there, Skip).  It's all up to the dog, then, who regains the panther's attention with a valiant display of vocal aggression, giving Buffy enough time to exit the cage with her toy bunny in tow.  Skip and Bev then promptly shut the cage door and leave the dog to his fate.

Now, I'm sure that many viewers, parents or otherwise, might sympathise with the Binfords' willingness to prioritise both their daughter's safety and their own over that of their dog, but given that the dog is the character with whom we're overwhelmingly encouraged to identify, it does have the effect of making the world he inhabits seem that much colder and lonelier.

Skip then calls Buffy his "brave little girl", although frankly "idiotic little girl" would be a far more appropriate description.  Bev laments about the fate of "the poor dog", although it's clear that the dog is very much on his own if he wishes to make it out of this intact.

In one of the episode's least well-executed moments, the panther obligingly pauses for long enough for the dog to race straight beneath its legs and latch onto its tail.  The panther then thrashes around furiously while swiping at the dog, swinging him with enough force to send him flying through the bars of the cage and into the relative safety of a trash can.  In his crumpled and foul-smelling state, the dog is retrieved by the Binfords, who declare him a hero.  The episode ends with Buffy demanding to hold and pet the dog, which at least brings the story back full-cycle to the opening scene where she bluntly denied his motions for a petting.

Although the panther climax is leagues more enthralling than the subdued third act of "Show Dog" and offered the opportunity for an exciting final sequence, weak execution ultimately prevents it from being all that it could be - instead, we get a string of scenes in which the Binfords fumble around like idiots and the dog only survives because the panther apparently wasn't capable of going in for the kill when it so blatantly had the chance (all the same, the panther remains one of the more appealingly designed and animated creatures in the series, and one can only imagine how beautiful it might have looked with the kind of budget on display in the original Amazing Stories episode).  The episode also ends on a much more dour note that it perhaps comprehends - while it's nice that the Binfords are willing to acknowledge their dog as a worthy being after all, the fact remains that they didn't lift a finger to help him during the showdown with the panther, hammering home just how inferior and expendable he'll ultimately always be in this particular dynamic.  Not to mention that some of the dog's own actions throughout the episode, particularly his unprovoked attack upon poor Moldy the bear, don't exactly render him consistently endearing.  I give it points for being a much more colourful episode than its predecessor (and for the slick design of the panther), but it's still lacking.  Happily, the next episode is one that I'm altogether better disposed toward, and the one after that is at least a lot juicier - if anything, it's been a relief to get these first two clunkers out of the way early on.

The Animals of Farthing Wood Do America: Part 4

Let's pick up where we left off with Journey Home, with Fox having been separated from the rest of the Farthing crew, and the animals having resolved to continue the journey in his absence.

44.14 - Fox gets a rude awakening when he discovers that the boat he's taken refuge in has been heading toward a town and that he's now surrounded by a mass of gawking humans.  We see the frightened Fox escape and race through the streets, crossing paths with various startled townspeople and narrowly avoiding getting hit by vehicles.  In the original series, Fox eventually found shelter from the humans in an alley behind a supermarket, where he encountered Tom, the tough but diplomatic cat in charge of the building's pest control, who allowed him to stay the night in exchange for doing his duties for him.  Tom does not appear in Journey Home - instead, we go into another montage and get the film's second insert song, "Follow Your Heart".  The lyrics are cheesy and generic as hell (see below), but it gets points merely for being tolerable, which is more than I can say for the film's two other insert songs.  A sample:

Things can go from bad to worse, you've begun to learn,
It's hard to know what to believe, or which way to turn,
There's a voice that's deep inside, it's saying to hang on,
You may be on you're own but you're not alone.

Follow your heart, follow your dreams,
The road may not be as long as it seems,
Home's where the heart is, wherever you roam,
Follow your heart, follow your heart and love will lead you home.

The reference to "love" seems a bit out of place in this particular context, but whatever.

The montage alternates between scenes showing Fox traveling on his own and the other animals without him, which come from all across the series.  Notably, the dead baby field-mice put in an appearance during this sequence - at 45.18, we see Fox wandering into the Butcher Bird's territory and gazing up uneasily at their rotting carcasses.  It's a pretty horrific sight, although given the total lack of context I do have to wonder if viewers only familiar with the story via Journey Home would have quite appreciated what they were seeing there.

45.36 - We see a sequence in which Fox is chased by a couple of bulldogs after raiding a dustbin, and is forced to flee across the path of a train.  This was actually taken from much later on in the series, in Episode 11, long after Fox had successfully rejoined the other animals (and is one of the very few scenes from Episode 11 which makes it into Journey Home at all).  Vixen was also involved in the bulldog chase, but has been edited out here.

46.22 - The montage closes with Fox sleeping in a box in the supermarket alley, and being accidentally loaded into the back of a delivery truck.  Again, the original context is removed, including Tom looking on slyly as he is taken away.

46.45 - Journey Home now has to deal with the matter of the Mice and Voles voting to opt out of the journey, and I feel that this is one of the occurrences from the original series which it really struggles to incorporate fluently and coherently.  The inclusion of this particular incident was somewhat necessitated by it later impacting upon Fox and Vixen's search for the other animals (they deduce that the animals might have split into two groups and are forced to search separately), but it's evident that Journey Home doesn't want to include any implications of infanticide in the story, so all references to the baby field-mice have been cut (the out-of-context glimpse we got of their bodies during the "Follow Your Heart" montage notwithstanding).  This does make the Mice and Voles' insistence upon staying behind a bit confusing, as there seems to be no really obvious motivation for it whatsoever.  In the original series, this followed on from an incident in which Toad had temporarily forgotten the route to White Deer Park and started leading the animals back in the opposite direction, so some of the party were beginning to lose faith in him, but that additional factor is gone too.  In Journey Home the smaller animals insist on dropping out because...well, why not?

We cut to Vole and Mr. Field-Mouse confronting Badger with their decision.  The resulting debate has been trimmed, partly to cut down on the amount of stalling that Mr. Field-Mouse does in this scene, but mainly to remove any references to those ill-fated babies that Journey Home does not care to include in the story.  The most confusing line of dialogue comes from Owl, who's had a pretty crucial aspect of her opinion on the matter removed.  Bolding indicates what was cut:

Owl:  Whether Fox is here or not is of little consequence.  WE must decide what is best. Clearly the Field-Mice, as good parents, must do the best they can for their children, and if that means staying here, that is what they must do.

Confusing, because Journey Home never establishes why staying behind is so good for the Mice and Voles and for nobody else.  It really isn't clear what Owl's supposed to be arguing for here.

47.57 - Cut back to Fox, who is seen escaping from the back of the truck.  Included is his encounter with the grazing horse, who allows him to rest in his field before revealing, much to Fox's distaste, that he is an ex-hunter.  Their conversation has been trimmed somewhat - excluded are the snippets of dialogue in which the horse admits that it was never anything personal on his part and that he finds human behaviour a bit baffling.

49.06 - As with the original series, we cut directly from Fox wondering how his friends are getting on to a shot of the Butcher Bird flying overhead with a dead mouse in his beak.  As the babies have not been mentioned, I assume that Journey Home wants us to believe that this is one of the adult mice (or possibly not even one of the Farthing mice at all).  This is our only glimpse of the Butcher Bird in Journey Home - gone is that particularly gruesome shot of him standing beside his bloody collection of impaled mouse corpses.  Fox's later encounter with him is also cut.

The second half of Fox's meeting with the horse, in which the horse recalls having heard a story about the Farthing animals from a crow, does not feature.

Vole apologises to Badger for his poor decision, whereupon Badger reassures him that it was brave of him to have wanted to stay with the others - a statement which no doubt perplexed the film's viewers in the absence of any particularly pressing need for "the others" to have stayed behind at all.

50.14 - Fox encounters Vixen who, like most of the characters in Journey Home, keeps her original British voice.  Also included is Fox's bizarre fourth wall-breaking moment, in which he comments that "things are looking up" while winking at the camera, here seen fading into the opening shot of Episode 8.

Included in Journey Home is Fox and Vixen's encounter with a male owl who reports having spoken to the Farthing Owl.  Vixen's encounter with the mother thrush, who advises her on her dilemma as to whether or not to return to Fox, is cut however.

52.50 - We then cut to a shot of the main party of animals climbing up a hill, only to cut, bizarrely, to another shot of them in an open field and visibly turning in a circle.  This, of course, came from Episode 6, during Toad's aforementioned memory loss arc.  No idea why it was mixed in here.

53.54 - Badger is seen reaching the top of the hill, whereupon he addresses Mole.  Sharp-eyed viewers might have noticed, however, that Mole is visibly absent from his back at this point.  In the original series, Mole had fallen from Badger's back without his noticing, leading to a small subplot in which Mole was required to climb the hill by himself.  This is all cut from Journey Home.

54.03 - Cut to a shot of the lead huntsman sounding his horn, as a hunt gets underway.  As Vixen panics and begins to flee, missing from Journey Home is a scene in which she runs past the Butcher Bird (in his final appearance in the series), who advises her, somewhat mockingly, to run for her life.

In the original series, Fox's attempt to draw the hounds off Vixen's scent by crossing her trail was not entirely successful, as it merely caused the hounds to separate into two groups, but this is not brought up in Journey Home.

57.03 - Journey Home adds an additional line of dialogue for Weasel ("I'm outta here!") as she takes cover in the bushes.

Although Journey Home retains a shot in which Kestrel is seen attacking a hound and inflicting an obvious head wound upon it, a later shot showing the same hound with a large red gash on its head is removed.

58.12 - Fox finally rejoins the other animals and frets when he realises that the hunt is now back on Vixen's trail.  Journey Home leaves out the portion of the scene in which Badger realises that Fox had been trying to save Vixen's life because he was in love with her, and regrets his interference.  A side-note, but I never really liked how ridiculously obtuse Badger was on that point - he'd recognised prior that the strange fox was a female and that Fox was risking his life to keep the hounds off her trail, and yet it never occurred to him that there might be a very obvious motivating factor for that?  Jeez, Badger.

59.07 - As Vixen flees up the hill and Fox encourages her on, we're missing the exact moment in which Vixen is seen to collapse with exhaustion.

After Adder attacks the hunter's horse, causing it to rear and the hunter to fall, gone is the scene in which the hounds are seen sniffing around his motionless body.  Personally, I never got the impression that he was killed or anything, but I'm guessing that Journey Home didn't want to so much as risk putting the idea into anyone's heads.

Journey Home excludes the scene in which an embarrassed Adder tries to avoid being credited for having saved Vixen's life, and faces a teasing from Weasel.

1.00.01 - Vixen finally accepts Fox as her mate and Fox declares that, "I'm so happy!"  Again, I prefer Farley's delivery of that line over Macchio's because of the utterly giddy joy with which the former manages to infuse it.

Confessions of a Family Dog Viewer: "Show Dog"

Original air date: 23rd June 1993

Following production difficulties which set the series back for more than two years, Family Dog's first episode, "Show Dog", finally aired on CBS on 23rd June 1993, to the general scorn of television critics and to the general indifference of everyone else.  I do not blame either camp for their reaction - simply put, "Show Dog" is not a good piece of television.  It's a strong contender for the weakest of the series' ten-episode run, taking numerous shortcomings which would continue to dog the show throughout (the gross negligence of the Binfords, the frequently unpleasant focus upon the suffering of the dog, the family's inconsistent attitude toward their dog, which often seems to fall in line with whatever the script demands at a given moment) and playing them up at their very worst.  There are some small mercies - Billy may be an obnoxious brat right from the go, but he doesn't here show much of the outright sociopathic streak that would emerge in later episodes - but overall the episode simply isn't that fun to watch, suffers from multiple pacing issues and virtually none of the gags fall into place.  Family Dog was not off to the best of starts, in other words.

As "Show Dog" opens, we join the Binfords in the middle of a scorching heatwave, with them locked in a petty squabble over Bev's unsuccessful attempts to appease the family with a brunch consisting of homemade three bean quiche (we see here the origins of a running gag in which Bev's efforts to feed her family nutritious homemade vegetarian cuisine are rebuffed by their preference for take-out junk food - it's a standard cliche of 90s comedy, and this isn't the most engaging or refreshing example that you're likely to find).  In all this bickering, it seems that nobody has taken the trouble to ensure that the dog is adequately watered.  Desperately parched and faced with an empty water dish, he wanders into the house in the hopes of alerting one of the humans to his dire need for refreshment, to find them all either too dense or too self-absorbed to so much as notice. The first third of the episode is taken up with drawn-out sequences of the dog being taunted by various sources of liquid which remain painfully out of reach - a water cooler, the kitchen sink, a toilet, etc (in one particularly uneasy scene he even ends up inside a washing machine in operation, a scenario which, in reality, would likely result in a dead dog). Obviously it's important to establish the extent of the dog's desperation, but this portion of the episode is at worst a bit mean-spirited and at best a bit dull. Only when Buffy sees a TV commercial promoting a local dog show and is compelled to start dressing the dog up in a bra and lipstick does the plot really begin to get underway.  News of the show appears to stroke something in Skip's ego, as he recalls the "crowning moment of [his] boyhood" when his dog King took second place in the tri-county finals.  Before long, the dehydrated dog of present suddenly finds himself at the centre of attention, as the family prepare him for entry in the dog show, all while still failing to recognise that he's in urgent need of a good thirst-quenching.

Thus, we have the aforementioned problem regarding inconsistencies in how the Binfords treat their dog, as "Show Dog" hinges upon the rather dubious notion that, no matter how much contempt and indifference the Binfords may heap on their dog on a daily basis, they apparently consider him worthy of competing with prestigious pedigrees in a dog show.  I suspect that the irony was at least somewhat intentional - we have a scenario in which the Binfords clamour around their wretched pet, in a forlorn and obviously ill-fated attempt to dispel their own feelings of middle-class inadequacy, all while failing to address its most basic of needs.  The potential for biting observations and sharp humour is definitely there, but nothing connects as it should.

It's here that we're introduced to the Mahoneys, the Binfords' insufferably perfect neighbours and the bane of their tedious middle-class existences. The Mahoneys are also planning on entering their hulking dog Buster into the show, where he has reportedly taken the Best of Breed trophy for three years running (note that this is Buster's only appearance on the show - when we next see the Mahoneys, in Episode 4, he's been replaced by a different, albeit totally identical-looking dog named K-10). This merely intensifies Skip's desire to throw his own hat into the ring. As the family pile into the car and make their way to the show grounds, the dog's attempts at getting some liquid into his puny body become increasingly frenzied and pathetic, to the point where he's licking the windscreen from inside the car at the sight of the wipers at work on the outside. Little of this behaviour seems to render the Binfords any wiser.

By the time we actually reach the show promised in the episode's title, the episode itself is way past the halfway mark, and very little of interest happens there. The Binfords run into the Mahoneys again and, in unison, call them "buttheads" behind their backs (I assume that this is an attempt to show the Binfords as a close-knit family unit, in spite of their dysfunctionalities), but mostly we just get more sequences of the dog being tormented by potential sources of liquid, causing him to hang his mouth open ever more forlornly.  Virtually no interest is shown in the culture and procedures of the dog showing community itself, suggesting that the writing staff weren't too deeply enthused by this subject matter - its purpose is simply as a logical setting in which to involve a canine character and little else.  Something is made of the dog's dislike of having his nether-regions prodded, which causes him to react badly to the inspection process, but this merely filler material before the big dramatic climax, when an enormous ice sculpture in the shape of a dog is paraded around the show ring. At this point, our dog loses all control and lunges at it, causing the sculpture to topple and shatter, but finally getting some water in his belly in the process.

The Binfords are mortified by the behaviour of their dog (save for Billy who, being the mindless brat that he is, revels in the chaos) and are even more chagrined when the Mahoneys and Buster take Best of Breed for the fourth year in a row. There follows a slight fake-out in which the judges announce that an honorary prize will be awarded to a dog whose determination embodies the competitive spirit integral to the ethos of the show, only for it to be handed to a rather fragile-looking chihuahua (it's here that we get the one joke which I actually think works in this episode, a visual gag in which the chihuahua is flattened under the weight of its rosette). It looks as if the Binfords are about to unleash all manner of fury upon their dog but, in an unexpected, borderline inexplicable turn, Skip treats him with total sympathy, acknowledging that you can't win them all. Possibly Skip does see how his own gross negligence as a pet owner was the cause of this humiliation and is willing to shoulder responsibility for that, although it seems rather improbable.

As the Binfords exit the show grounds in their car, Bev suggests to Skip that they consider getting a second dog, one more competition-worthy like King, but Skip declines, admitting that the crowning moment of his boyhood was actually owed to there being a grand total of two dogs in the show. Despite Skip's apparent acceptance of his dog, in spite of his failings, we see the story come full cycle in the final scene, as the family once again fail to address the basic needs of their dog. Having swallowed his fill of ice water, the dog now rather desperately wants to step outside and unload his bursting bladder, only for Skip to grumble that he's never satisfied (if it's any consolation, the dog surely can't be expected to endure this torment as he did the thirst problem - if Skip doesn't pull over, then something will certainly give). As the episode fades out, the family yet again descend into petty squabbling (this time regarding Bev's distrust of Skip's driving skills). The only disruption to the cycle comes in the form of a sudden downpour, signifying that the heatwave, at the very least, has been alleviated.

Humble beginnings, then, for a series which would never achieve any genuine heights of greatness in its very brief run.  The dog's quest for satiation might have worked as a five minute short but feels awkwardly drawn-out at twenty one minutes and, while the humour does occasionally border upon the mean and unpleasant, overall I'd say that "Show Dog" suffers from the sin of just being predominantly rather dull.  While the series never really overcomes a number of the problems present from the outset, just about every episode that follows does represent a step up from "Show Dog" in some form or another, and that's a reassuring enough thought.

Confessions of a Family Dog Viewer: An Introduction

If you've heard of Family Dog at all, then odds are that it's by way of a visual gag in The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror III" from Season 4, in which Bart and Lisa visit a pet cemetery and the camera pans past a collection of tombstones bearing the inscriptions "Fish Police", "Capitol Critters" and "Family Dog".  Anyone well-versed in the history of US animated television might recognise this as The Simpsons' backhanded memorial to a trio of prime-time cartoons which were spawned in the wake of its own success, and which all failed miserably to provide even the mildest of competition (on the DVD audio commentary for the episode, Al Jean comments upon what good fortune it was, from The Simpsons' perspective, that all three shows happened to be about animals, so that the joke actually made sense in a pet cemetery setting).  Fish Police, produced by Hanna-Barbera and adapted (albeit very loosely) from a series of comic books by Steve Moncuse (note: Moncuse himself is not a fan), aired on CBS in 1992 and lasted a measly six episodes.  Capitol Critters, the work of Steven Bochco Productions and Hanna-Barbera again, aired on ABC in 1992 but was pulled after just seven episodes (the remaining six would later see the light of day on Cartoon Network in 1995).  Family Dog, which aired on CBS in June 1993, was the last of this early wave of 90s prime-time animations and proved every bit as unfortunate.  CBS quickly twigged that viewers were widely dismissing the show, if they noticed it at all, as an ersatz Simpsons, and burned through all ten episodes of its first and only season as hurriedly as possible.

Ironically, the characters in Family Dog actually predated the Simpson family, albeit by only a very narrow margin - the show had its origins in an episode of the Steven Spielberg-produced anthology series Amazing Stories (entitled "The Family Dog"), which aired a good month and a half (16th February 1987) before the Simpsons made their grand debut in the first episode of The Tracey Ullman Show on 5th April 1987.  In addition to Spielberg, the Amazing Stories episode boasts some pretty impressive names in its credits.  It was written and directed by Brad Bird, who went on to work for The Simpsons and is now most famous for directing cult animated feature The Iron Giant (1999) and the Academy Award-winning Pixar films The Incredibles (2004) and Ratatouille (2007).  Character designs, meanwhile, were contributed by Tim Burton (no coincidence that Sparky, the dog from Burton's 2012 stop-motion animated feature Frankenweenie - a film which disappointed me immensely, by the way - bears more than a passing resemblance to Family Dog's four-legged hero), while Danny Elfman provided music with Steve Bartek.  It depicted the daily life of a dysfunctional family, the Binfords, from the perspective of their unnamed dog, a runty, rat-like terrier who was constantly having to endure their negligence and misdirected anger.  A family who continuously mistreat their dog aren't likely to be the most sympathetic of characters (an issue which always boded quite badly for the scenario's potential as an ongoing TV series), but it worked well as a one-off installment, with "The Family Dog" being one of the most popular and best-remembered episodes of Amazing Stories.  Compared to the notorious early crudeness of the Simpsons shorts featured on The Tracey Ullman Show, the animation of the original "The Family Dog" episode was also quite expensively budgeted and looked absolutely stunning, a rarity for television animation at the time.

Six years after the original Amazing Stories episode, the Binfords and their still-unnamed dog returned with their own spin-off TV series, which was produced by Spielberg and Burton, but Bird, sensing that the project was doomed from the outset, was notably absent.  Although originally scheduled to air in March 1991, the series was beset with production problems which set it back for over two years.  Animation was initially provided by Taiwanese animation studio Wang Film Productions, but dissatisfaction with the results led to delays as episodes were outsourced to Canadian studio Nelvana for retooling (The Simpsons experienced similar troubles with their very first episode, "Some Enchanted Evening", which came back from the AKOM studio in South Korea looking little like the show that the producers envisioned and had to be redone, but fortunately they were a lot happier with how the rest of the series turned out).  Despite the extensive retooling, the animation was still an obvious step-down from the quality of the original Amazing Stories episode.  Of the thirteen episodes initially ordered, only ten ever completed production, meaning that Family Dog does have three "lost episodes" that I've yet to uncover any information on.  By the time the series received its belated debut on 23rd June 1993, it appeared that goodwill toward the original Amazing Stories episode had all but petered out, and that the Simpsons had completely stolen the thunder of the Binfords, who seemed like such a shallow and insufferable bunch by comparison.  The show received weak reviews and was quickly gone, although a LaserDisc box set was released with all ten episodes, and six of the ten saw the light of day again on VHS (there has been no DVD release to date, however).  Also noteworthy is that The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror III" first aired on 29th October 1992, a substantial number of months before the Family Dog spin-off series had even debuted.  Clearly, The Simpsons writers had the good intuition to recognise that this show would be dead on arrival.

The triple failure of Fish Police, Capitol Critters and Family Dog ensured that animation was banished back to Saturday mornings, or at most to cult viewership for a number of years.  The Simpsons continued to thrive on prime-time, of course, but for a long time was seen as the exception.  There were a few more attempts made at adult animations throughout the middle of the decade, with varying degrees of success - Mike Judge's Beavis and Butt-Head was a big hit with the MTV crowd, Everett Peck's Duckman: Private Dick/Family Man (produced by Klasky Csupo) attained cult status and enjoyed a fairly decent run on USA Network, while Al Jean and Mike Reiss's The Critic failed to gain any kind of substantial viewership on ABC or Fox, despite a crossover episode with The Simpsons on the latter.  It wasn't until the late 90s that a fresh new wave of adult animation arrived, in the form of King of the Hill, South Park and Family Guy, and really helped to push the concept into the mainstream.

Part of the problem with those early attempts at churning out animated competition for The Simpsons is that they clearly had very limited insights into what had made The Simpsons such a break-out success in the first place.  It wasn't simply a case of "huh, adults these days like to watch cartoons apparently."  Audiences of all ages were drawn to The Simpsons because of its smart writing, sharp observations about modern suburban life and because it was genuinely very fresh, innovative and offbeat.  Two shows from that triad of would-be Simpsons competitors tripped up because they were essentially bland and ordinary children's cartoons trying, unconvincingly, to get into an adults' club.  To say that Fish Police was far from the worst thing that Hanna-Barbera ever produced would surely be damning it with faint praise, but there honestly isn't a lot else you that can say about it.  It's not an atrociously awful cartoon but has very little to recommend it, the only particularly stand-out feature being that they managed to snag some amazingly big talent for its voice cast.  Capitol Critters, on the other hand, has to be one of the most astonishingly misguided attempts at creating an "adult" cartoon that I've ever come across.  It looks and feels, for all intents and purposes, like your typical late 80s/early 90s Saturday morning kids' cartoon, only with stories structured around heavy-handed political allegories about race, drugs, guns, etc (it also takes itself ridiculously seriously for a cartoon about anthropomorphic rats and cockroaches living in in the White House - Fish Police at least had the good sense to see that it was silly).  Really, it's not clear to whom exactly they expected the end-result to appeal.  That leaves Family Dog as the sole entry with anything remotely zestful going for it.  Likewise, the show has some very distinctive flaws, although it's flawed in a very different way to the two series that it's destined to forever be lumped with, and does offer up a few intriguing moments and ideas along the way.

I'm not trying to suggest that Family Dog is legitimately a good show, mind.  At its very worst, it serves as a chilling vision of how The Simpsons might have turned out in lesser hands.  It's certainly the case that the humans in Family Dog are not particularly well-defined or likeable characters, and that three of the four Binfords are built upon much the same kinds of archetypes as we see in the Simpson family, only considerably flatter - the father, Skip, is a pot-bellied oaf, the mother, Bev, is long-suffering and privately dissatisfied with her lot in life, the son, Billy, is a hell-raising brat (is this all sounding familiar?), while daughter Buffy, the only Binford with no particularly obvious Simpson counterpart (she's too one-dimensional to invite comparisons with either Lisa or Maggie), is a mindless preschooler (one hopes, anyway) who can barely construct sentences meaningfully or coherently.  Unlike the Simpsons, the family in Family Dog really are a deeply unpleasant bunch, the kind of neighbours you pray you don't get stuck with, as opposed to being hilariously relatable like Homer and his clan.  Like the Simpsons, the Binfords also have a one-sided rivalry going on with their own neighbours, the Mahoneys, an insufferably cocky and well-presented family who nevertheless feel like they'd be infinitely better companions to be seated next to at any social event.  Family Dog's take upon modern suburban life is decidedly colder and more nihilistic than that of The Simpsons, which didn't necessarily have to be a bad thing (a purposefully darker or drier series might have been able to pull that degree of cynicism off just fine), but the show blatantly has no idea just how overwhelmingly drab its outlook is, let alone how to use that to its advantage.

And yet, in spite of its many, many failings, I actually quite like Family Dog.  Unlike Fish Police and Capitol Critters, it doesn't play like a generic kids' cartoon with adult gags and themes forced awkwardly in, and it does have traces of its own style and character.  For one thing, cartoons revolving around animal characters who don't talk and who act recognisably like the animals they're meant to be are rare beasts indeed, and there's something about the show's reliance upon visual storytelling and the physical mannerisms of the titular dog that I find to be immensely charming. The dog, for lack of a better expression, is the most "human" character of the lot, and whenever the focus is on his perspective (and when the human dialogue is regulated, appropriately, to being little more than inane chatter in the backdrop) the show assumes a life of its own and becomes rather enjoyable.  Certainly, I think the series does a decent job of bringing us into the world of the dog and making us identify with and feel for him.  The tripping point, again, proves to be the humans, who are so unpleasant toward their meek and totally innocuous pet that it merely decreases their likeability factor even further.  Clearly, we are supposed to accept that the Binfords love and care about their dog (and one another) deep down inside, and that's why not only the dog is able to tolerate them but why the audience is expected to do so too - only, I don't think that comes across for much of the time.  Fundamentally, the Binfords are jerks.  In some respects, the show's depiction of suburban bitterness and banality, shown from the perspective of a character who's squarely at the bottom-most rung of this particular hierarchy and has no means of overcoming that, makes it nightmarish in ways that prove strangely alluring.  What a gut-wrenchingly bleak - if totally unintentional - depiction of all-out suburban hell the production team have crafted.

All in all, I think of Family Dog as being more of an interesting show than a great one, the mistakes it made being every bit as fascinating, if not more so, than what it managed to do right.  Ultimately, Brad Bird was proven correct in his intuition that the concept wouldn't work as a TV series proper, in part because the Binfords are simply too tedious and unpleasant to spend a prolonged amount of time with, although I do wonder if an additional season might actually have enabled it to fix some of those bigger issues.  Perhaps the humans could have been fleshed out a bit more, given time, although it's hard to envision the show offering a huge variety of different adventures with the dog always at the forefront.  Obviously, the main character was never going to partake in a great deal of development - his charm was in his simplicity, in the fact that he was, at heart, always a dog, with distinctly canine desires and motivations, and as such I think that there were definite limits as to what could be done with him.  Blatantly, this thing was never destined for the same (at this point, downright insane) kind of longevity as The Simpsons, and as such, I think that the ten episodes we got are more than sufficient (although I would still be curious to learn what was planned for the three unproduced episodes).  Combing through all ten of those episodes, as I intend to do for my upcoming retrospective, promises to be a fun experience, for, as this introduction has hopefully demonstrated, I can be so very critical of this series and yet so warmly-disposed toward it at the same time.  There are some lovely (if slightly soiled) bones buried in this drab suburban wasteland, and unearthing them upon these pages will be my laborious mission for the coming months.

Farthing Wood Deaths Revisited: An Overview

Now that I've completed the main body of work for my "Farthing Wood Deaths Revisited" retrospective, I thought that it might be interesting to survey the results and produce a list of the ten deaths which, as per the (admittedly quite chaotic) ratings system I've applied, rank as the most memorable and powerful of the series.  They are as follows:

1) Bold - Series 2 (30)
2) The Hedgehogs - Series 1 (29)
3) Badger - Series 2 (25)
4) Mole  - Series 2 (25)
5) Baby Rabbit - Series 1 (21)
6) Mrs. Pheasant - Series 1 (21)
7) Scarface - Series 2 (21)
8) Baby Field-Mice x3 - Series 1 (20)
9) Dreamer - Series 2 (19)
10) Mrs. Hare - Series 2 (18)

As brutal as so much of The Animals of Farthing Wood might have been, it had plenty to teach its viewers about the vulnerability of life, the harshness of nature, the impact of human activity upon the animal kingdom and the continuous cycle of birth, death and renewal.  Once Series 2 had come and gone, there was certainly never a children’s show quite like it ever again, at least not for as long as I continued to keep tabs on children’s TV schedules.  Series 3 wasn't far behind, but as I’ve clearly established by now, I didn't care for it at all.  A few years later, there was Noah’s Island, a sort of spiritual successor to The Animals of Farthing Wood, also commissioned by the European Broadcasting Union and also focusing upon an unlikely brand of inter-species unity, but with a much more exotic cast of animals this time around.  Unfortunately, the tone felt more akin to Series 3 of Farthing Wood than to the two series prior, and I was never quite able to get into it.  Later, there was the 1999 TV adaptation of Watership Down on CITV, which I had high hopes for at the time, but which disappointed many.  Among other problems, and unlike Farthing Wood, Water[ed]-ship Down: The TV Series was extremely cautious when it came to subject of death, to the point where it ultimately couldn’t commit to the killing off of a major character - Campion died at the end of Series 2, only to be brought back to life via bullshit means in the subsequent series.  In Farthing Wood, whenever a character was killed off, they actually stayed dead (the occasional animation error notwithstanding).  Like it or lump it, it seems that every so many years we're destined to get a new adaptation of Watership Down, and only time will tell what kind of stance the upcoming BBC/Netflix will take on the issue.

For now, I’ll wrap up things up with a quote from Speedy, which contains probably the wisest possible lesson to be taken from all of this: "Makes you think, doesn't it?  One minute you're here, the next you're not.  Far better enjoy life while you can.  That's what I say."