Confessions of a Family Dog Viewer: "Dog Days of Summer"

Original air date: 21st July 1993

It would no doubt be extremely generous of me to describe "Dog Days of Summer" as "Enemy Dog done right" (even in its finest moments, Family Dog could never quite get high up enough to grasp perfection) but, nevertheless, this is easily the more likeable and sweet-tempered of the show's twosome of episodes structured around what is essentially a very similar theme: namely, the Binfords butting heads with unwanted company whose enmity is epitmised in the brutish manner in which their dog terrorises the living snot out of our dog.  Unlike in "Enemy Dog", the Binfords aren't here totally indifferent or insensitive to the suffering of their dog (a scene in which he's nearly drowned notwithstanding); in fact, Skip and Bev are probably the most tolerable that they've ever been at this point in the series, and Buffy thankfully isn't given a whole lot to do, leaving Billy as the sole Binford who poses any kind of a problem.  In terms of the family's behaviour, "Dog Days of Summer" is certainly a whole lot easier to swallow.

The one area where "Dog Days of Summer" falls short compared to "Enemy Dog" is the central conflict, which feels a heck of a lot hokier than the Binfords' rivalry with the Mahoneys.  Shallow as it was, the antagonism between the two neighbouring clans was at least believable and clearly motivated, with the Mahoneys always feeling the need to rub their superiority in the Binfords' faces and the Binfords naturally resenting them for it.  The two families were essentially stuck with one another, so it followed that familiarity would have bred contempt on both sides of the street.  Here, the Binfords go to the beach and come to blows with a trio of pimply teenagers who are harassing Billy for no particular reason, other than, grrr, those dang Generation-Xers running wild, I guess?  There's never any explanation for why this bunch of total strangers should go so out of their way to upset the Binfords, beyond the episode assuming that unsupervised teenagers have nothing better to do with their time than to spoil the fun of suburban families who've come to enjoy a traditional day out at the beach.

One thing which I do really like about this episode are the dogs' dream sequences, which rank as some of the weirdest and intermittently most unsettling in the series' run.  The episode opens with one such sequence, in which the dog gathers bones from the night sky and assembles two canine skeletons upon the ground; in doing so, he's able to summon the ghosts of his departed parents (it seems safe to assume that those dead dogs are his parents, at any rate) in a manner which carries an almost vaguely Tim Burton vibe (think of the scene in which Scraps is resurrected in Corpse Bride).  The dog then proceeds to lead the ghosts around the house and garden, showing them each of the sleeping Binfords individually, and taking great pride in showing off his personal territory and how well he has done for himself.  This is swiftly shattered when K-10, making his first appearance since "Enemy Dog", suddenly looms over the fence and barks at our dog, sending him scurrying off to his kennel in terror.  As he sits there trembling, he becomes visibly ashamed at having shown his parents just how low down in the local pecking order he really is.

I'd say that this sequence is well-done, and a testament to just how weird, charming and inventive this series could be in its better moments with its non-dialogue narration.  It's oddly hilarious seeing the ghost dogs gazing at their son's food bowl in total awe, as if having one ranks among the greatest accomplishments a dog can boast, and the sequence as a whole is an effective way of communicating the dog's fears and anxieties and establishing a clear insecurity for him to overcome throughout the course of the episode.  He's puny and easily intimidated by other dogs, but he yearns to be able to stand up for himself, in spite of his stature.

The transition from this sequence into the main story is also fairly neat, with the glow from the two ghost dogs transforming into the glare of the morning sun.  We've joined the Binfords on Fathers' Day morning, and it happens to be a particularly scorching one, so Skip is intent upon lazing around and doing nothing; that is, until a busted air conditioner throws a wrench into his plans.  Much to his chagrin, Skip winds up conceding to take the family to the beach instead, which delights the children but not Bev, who's feeling insecure at the prospect of appearing in public in a bathing suit.  At first, the family are quite set upon leaving the dog behind (particularly Billy, who complains that he always gets stuck with him), but Bev changes her mind when she sees just how much he's also feeling the heat and convinces Skip to bring him along.  Of course, once at the beach the Binfords quickly tire of the dog's antics and, much as he predicted, Billy finds the dog hoisted off onto him to keep occupied.

Somewhat predictably, Billy doesn't take his pet-sitting responsibilities terribly seriously (although he's happy to grumble about them), and while he's off teasing a crab with a stick the dog is left to lollop around the sands completely unsupervised.  It's at this point that the dog encounters his nemesis-of-the-day, a snarling bulldog named Scud who's at the beach with his three spotty teenage cohorts.  As Scud lunges at him, our dog finds himself so terrified that he panics and bolts directly into the waves for safety, where he quickly finds himself overwhelmed by the tide and sinks beneath the surface of the water (all this happens without Billy noticing, it seems).  It's here that we get our second dream sequence, as the dog's lights slowly go out and his life starts to flash before his eyes.  A life of pitiful misery it is too - as the runt of the litter, our dog was constantly struggling just to reach one of his mother's teats, and when the puppies are offered up for sale in a pet shop, our dog quickly finds himself stagnating in solitude upon the shelf.  There's a particularly depressing moment during the pet shop sequence in which the dog, completely alone, sees a passing woman stop and apparently take an interest in him, but in a tragic twist it's revealed that she's only checking out her own reflection in the window and as such never even noticed the dog.

Confused, disappointed and above all, unwanted, our dog's next stop is the local animal shelter, where he seems doomed to rot away his days - that is, until fate plays a sinister trick on him, and the Binfords (sans Buffy, who presumably wasn't born at this point) show up in search of a mutt for their ankle-biting son.  A visibly younger Skip and Bev invite an audibly more pip-squeaked Billy to pick out any dog that he wants, and he quickly settles upon our dog.  At first, our dog seems delighted, until Billy moves closer and it becomes plain what a grotesque little monster he's about to be saddled with.  The dog's final hopes of a happy existence are smothered horrifically in Billy's malevolent laugh, which makes it all too plain that he went for the puniest-looking dog he could find so that he would have no problems in bullying it.  The joy in our dog's expression evaporates into total dread, and the sequence ends there, rounding off with a re-appearance from the two ghost dogs from earlier, who gaze forlornly at their drowning son from inside a couple of rising bubbles.

There are number of legitimate criticisms one could make of this sequence, namely that it goes on for much too long, that it's complete and utter padding that adds nothing to the overall story (other than emphasising that our dog's been an underdog all his life, which anyone who'd seen at least one episode of the show would certainly have picked up on by now), and that it focuses extensively upon the misery and suffering of the dog in a manner that's not exactly funny or endearing.  All very valid, but I find that I can't be too hard upon it.  It's far from pleasant viewing but it's got that genuinely unsettling, nightmarish quality that I find strangely entrancing, and above all it's nice to have some kind of backstory explaining how our dog came to be stuck the Binfords, and one that feels appropriately unsentimental at that.

Having sunk all the way down to the ocean floor, our dog suddenly regains consciousness and summons the will to claw his way back up to the surface.  With renewed determination, he attempts to fight his way back to the shore, but gets engulfed by another wave along the way, leaving him washed up on the sand in a crumpled, gasping heap.  Billy finds the dog and, apparently failing to notice that he's any worse for wear, begins reprimanding him for lazing around.  Just then the three teenagers reappear with their ferocious bulldog, whose huge, slavering jaws are enough to send even Billy's confidence racing for the hills.  The teenagers tauntingly suggest that he come and play with their dog, but Billy wisely declines and runs squealing back to the rest of the family, unaware that the teenagers are set upon following him.  Before the Binfords know what's hit them, these snotty-nosed punks have set up base right beside them, and are blasting their boombox at full volume down their ear-holes.  As a parody of the kind of ear-splitting garbage the Family Dog writers assume that kids of the early-mid 90s were into, the lyrics of the song are fairly witless, essentially just "This song is loud, it's really, really loud, it's not kind of loud, it's mega, mega loud..." over and over.  Bev and Skip become painfully aware that everyone else on the beach is starting at them, although Billy is impressed by their flagrantly offensive brand of noise pollution and starts dancing with the teenagers.  I'm not fond of how Billy behaves in this scene - no real surprise there, of course, but it bothers me how readily he goes from being visibly terrified of these jerks to voluntarily leaping up and shaking his tush with them.  Actually, I can't help but contemplate just how much better fleshed-out this scenario might have been if, instead of straight-up harassing the Binfords for no apparent reason, the teenagers had taken Billy under their wing and had him behave in ways that the rest of the Binford clan didn't approve of.  I wouldn't have expected anything particularly ground-breaking to come of it, but the conflict here is just so meagre.

Skip decides to intervene and marches up to two of the teens to demand that they take their boombox and move further down the beach, unaware that the third teen is preparing to sic Scud on him from behind (side-note - Skip says "crap" in this scene, which might be Family Dog's only instance so far of using mildly "edgy" language).  Bev attempts to warn him, but Skip is too caught up in his lecture to hear.  Our dog is also surveying the scene in horror, but suddenly has a flash of inspiration, and just as Scud is all poised to chow upon Skip's bare leg, all attentions turn to the sound of the boombox malfunctioning, as our dog pushes it down the shore and into the waves.  As the offending item is consumed by the seawaters, the crowd on the beach erupts with cheers and even the Binfords are showering their dog with praise for a change.  Naturally, though, the teenagers aren't quite so appreciative - the girl teen (who addresses her two male companions as Shaggy and Quasi, but herself goes unnamed for the entirety of the episode) sees red and finally unleashes Scud.  Our dog may have had the audacity to do away with the teenagers' stereo, but he recognises that he's no match for Scud in direct combat and beats a hasty retreat across the beach, although Scud gets him in a pincer movement and very soon has the hapless mutt wedged nose-first between his jaws.

A key factor enabling "Dog Days of Summer" to avoid the pitfalls that made "Enemy Dog" such an unpleasant episode to watch is that the Binfords do here seem genuinely distressed at the thought of their dog being messily devoured by a bigger dog, and actually make the effort to help him this time around.  Skip seizes the beach umbrella and attempts to beat the bulldog into submission, but Scud doesn't so much as bat an eyelid.  Meanwhile, Bev has the good sense to race off to alert the authorities (taking Buffy with her, so I don't have cause to accuse her of shoddy parenting), with the result that a medic shows up on the scene and, reassuring Skip that the most their dog will suffer from the ordeal is a little brain damage, shoots Scud with a tranquilizer dart and knocks him unconscious.  Skip pries his chewed-up dog from the bulldog's jaws, before the sleeping Scud is banished from the beach along with his teenage masters (who vow to stick to the water slides on future outings).

For our final scene, we see Billy tormenting Buffy by demolishing her sandcastle, as the sun sets over the beach and Bev asks Skip (who's too far gone to answer) if he enjoyed his Father's Day.  The dog (now bearing bandages around his snout), looks up at the evening sky and sees the clouds momentarily morphing into the shapes of his own departed parents, who smile down upon him warmly before disappearing again.  Satisfied that he's proved his protective mettle and done his parents proud, the dog too smiles and rests his head down contentedly upon the beach towel.  It's one of show's most genuinely touching final images, closing off what is, on the whole, a pretty solid instalment of Family Dog.  Torturous near-death experience notwithstanding, it feels warmer in tone than the majority of its predecessors, and certainly that's half the battle.

The obvious weakness of "Dog Days of Summer" lies in just how altogether skinny it is.  There's not a lot going on story-wise, and the episode struggles to stretch itself out for a full twenty minutes (hence the drawn-out, incidental dream sequence we get midway through), while the antagonists are entirely one-dimensional and, one suspects, reflect some rather nasty prejudices on the part of the writers.  Really, for this episode's assumptions that unsupervised teens represent the natural enemy of everything good, pure and decent about the suburban nuclear family, Billy still comes across as being a thousand times more repugnant than any of those pimply punks (the episode ends with him kicking sand in his sister's eyes, for Pete's sake).  Still, I enjoy the fact that our dog manages to get the better of them in a more resourceful manner than simply (and implausibly) summoning the strength to confront Scud head-on (much like how he ultimately one-upped K-10 in "Enemy Dog") and it's refreshing to see the family go out of their way to help their much-neglected pet for a change.  Sure, there are numerous problems in here if you're intent on finding them, but I'm not left with such an uneasy aftertaste this time around, and for that reason I'm inclined to show this one a little clemency.