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.