Confessions of a Family Dog Viewer: "Eye on the Sparrow"

 Original air date: 7th July 1993

If you've been keeping up with my Family Dog reviews to date, then you've no doubt figured out by now that my least favourite aspect of the series has to do with its representation of the two youngest Binfords, Billy and Buffy, both of whom are highly unpleasant characters and not at all fun to watch.  The last episode, "Enemy Dog", had them both at their utmost worst - Billy as a sadistic, hyperactive brat who gets his kicks from the suffering he routinely inflicts on the dog and Buffy as a babbling, inane little terror whose shrill preschool prattlings tend to be more teeth-gritting than endearing.  It's somewhat ironic, then, that "Eye on the Sparrow", by far the most Billy-centric episode of the series, should wind up being one of its better instalments - it has a dash more heart than your typical Family Dog outing, and it's also one of the very few to attempt to do anything with Billy other than portray him as a rambunctious, one-dimensional hellraiser.  The little rotter actually gets something resembling character development here, even if the odds of it sticking in subsequent episodes are frightfully glum.  The bad news is that "Eye on the Sparrow" does take a while to get going, and we have to sit through a number of early scenes of Billy being his typically unendearing self, all while showing an increasingly callous and disturbing attitude toward the dog, as Skip and Bev sit nonchalantly back and barely lift a finger to intervene.

(Oh, and on the flip side, this episode does such a wonderful job of sidelining the other Binford child that for the most part I'm able to forget that she even exists altogether.  Buffy only appears in a very tiny handful of scenes in this one, for which I am very appreciative.)

The opening sequence is fairly effective, in showing the dog prancing around the garden and taking curious sniffs at various smaller animals (including a red sparrow, whom the shot lingers upon for long enough for us to determine that it will be of great significance later on) while gradual changes in the natural scenery indicate a transition through the seasons, the dog becoming less active and more lethargic as we shift through late autumn into winter.  The one constant throughout this sequence is the overheard bickering in the backdrop, as Billy continually butts heads with his parents over his reluctance to get off the couch and engage in any kind of strenuous physical activity outside.

The second sequence is pure filler, and follows the dog as he attempts to find a warm and comfortable resting place after being driven into the house by heavy snowfall.  Bev isn't willing to give up her armchair while her soaps are on, the heater makes incessant buzzing noises, and sleeping too close to the fireplace results in his fur getting singed; it's all quite dull.  Still, one gains an appreciation for the dreary calmness of this sequence when Billy appears and starts screaming, upset because his parents now won't allow him to play outside as a heavy blizzard has been forecast.  When he gets as far as threatening to feast on human flesh (albeit his own leg) a la the Donner Party, Bev relents and gives him a water gun in order to shut him up, although Skip foresees the inevitable disaster and questions her decision.  Meanwhile, Billy delves deep into some raucous fantasy where he's cast himself as "Mercenary Boy", hell-bent upon eliminating evil enemies "El Lardo" and "Thunder Thighs", whereupon we get this exchange between Skip and Bev:

Skip: Arghh! Alright, he shot me!
Bev: It's only water, honey.
Skip: The boy shot his father!  Do you know what that means?  Do you read the literature?

This?  This is actually a pretty well-written gag.  All credit for that.

Billy's behaviour quickly attracts ire from the rest of the family, including the dog, who does not appreciate the disturbance, so they corner him in his bedroom and gather around to watch his water gun melt on the fireplace.  This merely prompts the little brat to seek out even nastier weapons, however, and before the dog can get a decent moment's rest he finds himself being repeatedly fired upon with a pea shooter.  The harassed mutt attempts to flee but, finding himself pursued by the little wart all over the house, finally decides to resort to sneaky, underhanded tactics and tricks Billy into firing a pea at his mother (again, we see the dog exhibit some fairly advanced cognitive reasoning in this scene - not to mention some seriously exaggerated facial expressions - which really push at the boundaries of his generally non-anthropomorphic portrayal).  Predictably, Bev is none too appreciative about being hit square in the buttocks with a dried pea, so she confiscates the toy and banishes Billy to his bedroom to read a book (an activity which is incomprehensible to Billy).

Just when you thought that Billy's cruelty couldn't get any more casual, he reappears in the following scene, now armed with a slingshot and a bag of marbles, and proceeds to exact his disproportionate vengeance upon the dog.  We're getting to the point where Billy could easily do some genuinely quite appalling damage if he's not careful, so it's downright galling when Skip and Bev become aware of the situation and jadedly shrug it off as something they'd sooner not acknowledge.  I appreciate that the whole purpose here is to show Billy's recklessness getting increasingly exaggerated and out of control, so as to make the upcoming dramatic turning point all the more impacting when it arrives, but the Binfords' all-round utter indifference toward the suffering of their pet still isn't making for enjoyable viewing.

The dog flees outside into the shelter of his kennel, but is flushed out by Billy, who proceeds to stalk him wherever he tries to hide around the garden.  As the dog seeks refuge atop the porch, the red sparrow from earlier suddenly reappears and perches upon the garden fence.  Unfortunate, because Billy's blood is up and he's prepared to settle for whatever moving target he can get.  He fires one marble at the sparrow and misses, but as the sparrow tries to escape he takes a second shot and knocks it clean out of the sky (we don't actually see the moment of impact, just an image of the lifeless bird flopping ominously down behind the back of the fence as the dog looks on in horror).  Billy leaps around triumphantly, delighted to have finally taken something out with his marble-shooting blood lust.  But when he peers over the garden fence and sees the tiny sparrow lying stiffly in the snow with its legs in the air, he suddenly has a change of heart, apparently shocked by the realisation that his actions might actually have killed the bird.

This sudden change in demeanor from Billy is abrupt, startling, and perhaps not entirely convincing.  After all, it's not as if Billy had shown any prior indication, in either this episode or anywhere else in the series, that he's capable of feeling compassion toward other forms of life.  Heck, in the previous episode he was positively thrilled by the implication that his own dog might have been devoured by the Mahoneys' dog.  It's also not as if Billy hit that sparrow by accident - he knew exactly what he was doing when he fired the marble, so what did he think would happen if he hit it?  I suppose the best interpretation is that Billy has finally woken up to the fact that life is not a game and that terrible actions will often reap terrible consequences - being confronted by such a consequence may finally have knocked some sense into him.  I could buy it, although I do wish that there had been a bit more foreshadowing, even if it had been something as slight as one of his parents warning him that if he didn't take care he might end up doing something which couldn't be reversed.

As Billy runs off crying for help from Skip and Bev, the dog burrows under the fence and goes to the body of the sparrow, which he discovers is still alive, merely stunned.  As he carries the injured sparrow back to his kennel, Billy reappears with Skip and begins to panic, believing that the bird has been buried beneath the snow.  Skip tries to get him to return to the house, telling him that, if nothing else,  he might take this as an opportunity to learn a valuable lesson, namely that, "once something's gone, it's gone."  Very perceptive, Skip, although perhaps you should have attempted to impart that same lesson earlier on instead of turning a blind eye and then lecturing him after the fact.  Billy sees the sparrow in the dog's kennel, whereupon Skip makes a grim remark which merely underscores the level of negligence quite typical to the dog's daily routine - "Don't look, I don't think we fed the dog today."

Billy brings the wounded sparrow a mug of hot cocoa - which, honestly, doesn't strike me as the most sensible substance to be feeding a bird under any circumstances, but I suppose I should at least appreciate the sudden display of tenderness on Billy's part.  Billy's jerkass streak hasn't totally subsided, however; certainly not toward the dog, who is sharply commanded to get back when he begins sniffing at the cocoa.  Regardless, the cocoa appears to do the trick, because the sparrow suddenly recovers the strength to stand upright.  Billy then attempts to release the sparrow in the garden, but it still has difficulty flying, and fails to reach its nest in a nearby tree before collapsing again.  Bev and Skip call to Billy to return to the house as the blizzard is on the way, but Billy refuses to give up on the bird and leaves the garden along with the dog in order to retrieve it.  Upon finding the sparrow, Billy resolves to take it back to the house, but the dog suddenly realises that the sparrow has babies in her nest whom she was trying to get back to, and barks to get Billy to stop.  Billy's contempt for the dog is still so strong that initially he brushes it off, but finally becomes aware of the baby birds and decides to climb up the tree and get them.  This alarms the dog, who immediately starts barking.  Meanwhile, the blizzard arrives in full force and, realising that Billy still hasn't made it back to the house, Skip and Bev go outside looking for him.  They fail to notice that Buffy has also escaped from the house and, in a particularly grim (albeit clearly deliberate) display of their parental negligence, Bev steps on her daughter's snow-covered body twice without realising that anything's up.

In the meantime, Billy's tree-climbing heroics don't go so well; he merely slips down the trunk and lies in a screaming, crumpled heap as the dog tries to climb the tree and retrieve the nest in his stead.  Bev and Skip successfully locate Billy (having been pulled in his direction by the dog's barking) and debate about whether or not his leg is really broken, whereupon Billy seizes the opportunity to ask if he can stay home from school tomorrow and is angrily ordered back to the house.  Amid all this, I couldn't help but feel that the drama with the sparrow family had been completely forgotten.  Certainly, I did not see Billy pick up the red sparrow again, nor does he refer to her or her babies as his parents lead him away.  As for the dog, Skip questions his whereabouts once, but as the family head back to the house, absolutely nothing else is said about him.  Once again, it seems that the Binfords are quite happy to abandon their dog to his unhappy fate.  At least they're confronted with a brutal reminder of their negligence when they return to the house and discover a Buffy-popsicle on their doorstep.  Oh, and it turns out that Billy does have the red sparrow on him after all - he places it beside the fire and speaks tenderly to it once again, although he says nothing of the babies she's been forced to leave behind.

Thankfully, the dog manages to successfully retrieve the nest and transport the baby birds back to the house, where they're reunited with their mother beside the fireplace.  At this point, the mother sparrow suddenly regains her ability to fly as the baby sparrows discover theirs, and the entire Binford family gathers around to watch this wonderful outcome.

The red sparrow then proceeds to lead her babies in making a hasty exit from the house (yep, I certainly wouldn't want to be stuck with the Binfords for a moment longer than I had to), but Bev notices that they are heading for the sliding screen door and begins to panic.  Skip is totally clueless on what to do, so it falls upon Billy's devious ingenuity to save the day (for once) - he pulls out his slingshot and fires another marble, thus smashing a hole through the glass and enabling the birds to safely fly through.  A happy ending for the sparrows, then, although Skip and Bev are none too appreciative about the damage caused to their door and force Billy to surrender his slingshot to the fireplace.  The final moments involve the dog curling up contently beside the fireplace, using the freshly-abandoned birds' nest as a pillow.

I actually really like the ending of this episode, as it shows Billy using his destructive tendencies for a benevolent purpose and ties in pretty neatly with the earlier narrative thread about his reckless impulse for firing upon everything in sight. All in all, "Eye on the Sparrow" builds into quite a solid outing after a fairly shaky first act, although that's not to say that those latter stages are without their share of problems.  There are some weak aspects to the script - I'm not a fan of how Billy seems to completely forget about the baby sparrows after falling from the tree, or of how the Binfords as a whole show little concern for their dog when he's apparently lost out in the storm.  Make no mistake, nestled beneath this ostensible display of warmth and concern over the fate of a family of wild animals is the usual underlying story thread about the Binfords basically not giving a toss about what becomes of their own family pet. While it's nice that Billy comes to regret his casual cruelty toward the sparrow, it's not clear whether or not he's made the connection between same reckless behaviour and what he might potentially have done to the dog if he'd actually hit him with one of those marbles.  The dog also receives no thanks or credit for any of his heroic actions, be it preventing the wounded sparrow from freezing to death, helping Skip and Bev to locate Billy (Skip does talk about wanting to personally pin a medal upon the dog if he leads him to Billy, only to later abandon him in the blizzard) and actually rescuing the baby sparrows in the end when the humans have all but given up.  Still, any effort to add more than one dimension to Billy is so rare and precious that it should be cherished, and the episode does do a good job of making me genuinely care about the bird (then again, it would take a very special effort to make one not care about a tiny, wounded and innocuous animal who's only trying to make it back to her babies).

Oh yes, and while it certainly isn't my intention to keep on comparing this series to The Simpsons in every review (some comparisons are inevitable, but I'm sure that you all get the picture by now), "Eye on the Sparrow" does have a very obvious Simpsons counterpart in the Season 10 episode "Bart the Mother" (which came along a number of years after Family Dog), in which Bart kills a mother bird and decides to atone for his unpleasant actions by caring for her nest.  As these comparisons go, I'd say that the two episodes are about neck and neck - Bart's remorse and desire to take responsibility are a lot more convincing than Billy's, but that episode ultimately doesn't hold together well and disappears down a weird and rather unsettling rabbit hole in its final act.  In fact, I might even be inclined to give Family Dog the edge on this particular occasion.  Its heart's in the right place, even if it's as frustratingly blind as ever to just how bitter and twisted its basic underlying scenario truly is.