Confessions of a Family Dog Viewer: "Family Dog Goes Homeless"

Original air date: 28th July 1993

My first question, on reading the title of this episode, isn't didn't Family Dog "go homeless" once before?  In many respects this episode, the series' penultimate, is a direct retread of "Call of the Mild", in that the dog gives up his pathetic yet materially comfortable home life in exchange for a life out on the streets, only discover that he's forever doomed to be a house dog.  In fact, this is technically the third episode in which the dog's loyalties to the Binfords are tested by the allure of an external influence, given that he was prepared to give up everything and board a plane to South Dakota just to be with Katie in "Doggone Girl Is Mine".  In this particular instance, the dog befriends a bag lady who moves into his doghouse and takes to stealing groceries from the Binfords in order to sustain her, before finally opting to accompany her as she returns to the city streets in search of an erstwhile lover.  Much like "Call of The Mild" before it, it's a generally very "meh" episode that struggles to stretch the scenario out to the full twenty-two minutes, which does undermine what I said in my coverage of "Party Animal" about the series possibly starting to get its act together as it neared its demise.

"Family Dog Goes Homeless" is also the closest that this series ever comes to tackling to an "issue" episode, in that it touches upon a serious social problem, albeit not with any especially amazing depth or insight.  Clearly, this rubbed some viewers the wrong way - roasting the series in the Chicago Tribune on June 23rd 1993, Rick Kogan singled out this episode on the charge that it "comes close to making fun of homelessness." (Reviews of this series were not kind.  I suspect that I've written just about the kindest Family Dog reviews that you're ever likely to find on the web.  My favourite review was written by Scott Blakely on the VHS release of "Enemy Dog", purely because it includes this line: "Supper turns out to be a disaster, and the Family Dog, locked in the laundry room with K-10, is nearly eaten alive. His eyes look like this: OO.")  Kogan's specific complaint strikes me as being a bit off the mark; the problem isn't so much that the episode "makes fun" of homelessness (although it does mine at least a couple of visual gags from the implication that Lulu doesn't smell too fresh) as that it raises the issue and then ultimately proves quite toothless on the matter.  The closest thing that this episode has to any especially scathing social commentary comes during a dinner table scene where Bev delivers a condescending speech about homelessness and how everyone's eyes are closed to the issue that barely disguises her contempt for the affected.  Bev, one suspects, is more upset by the fact that she's being made to witness homelessness first-hand than she is that the problem exists and, disappointingly, the conclusion the episode comes to doesn't seem terribly more progressive than that.  Homelessness, ultimately, is treated as an issue that middle class suburbanites shouldn't be expected to get their hands dirty over.

Part of the problem is that Lulu the bag lady, though clearly intended to be a sympathetic character, ultimately isn't, owing to the visibly exploitative nature of her relationship with the dog.  She's nice to the dog while he's bringing her food but immediately abandons him when her boyfriend doesn't take to him, leading to a surprisingly frosty conclusion, perhaps the most unpleasant and unsettling we've had since "Enemy Dog".  More problematic still is the deliberate contrast between the Binfords' life of plenty and Lulu's harsher life of scavenging which, while it does show up the Binfords as shallow and unappreciative of what they have, ultimately favours them as offering the proper companionship for our four-legged protagonist.  Lulu is very blatantly an intruder in this pristine suburban world, and the balance of the Family Dog universe is restored when she retreats back to the alleyways of the grungy city where she belongs and the dog realises that his true place is among a middle class family who yell at him, abuse him and call him a "stupid dog".  I can't help but really despise the ending to this episode, more so than "Enemy Dog", which did at least end on a momentary high for the dog.  But hey, I'm getting ahead of things here - let's go back and take a look at how the episode gets to this most dispiriting of points.

The episode opens with the dog feeling a bit starved for attention but, as per usual, getting none of it from the Binfords.  Bev is getting into a heated debate with a telemarketer, Skip is doing a cock-up job on repairing the car, and Billy and Buffy are being Billy and Buffy, and thus not worthy company.  Actually, the moment with Biffy does start out fairly promisingly, with him doing some kind of old-school mad scientist parody, but turns sour the instant he threatens to electrocute the dog.  The dog retreats outside, where he discovers an old discarded ham hock in the trash and heads off into the backyard to devour it. ,He's interrupted, however, by a strange voice from up above and an odor that has him wrinkling his nose, and looks up to see a ragged bag lady peering over the fence and eying up his hock of ham.  This makes the dog intensely uncomfortable, to the extent that he surrenders the hock and, through a crack in the fence, watches with nervous fascination as as she scarfs the whole thing down.  Billy shows up a lobs a couple of balls at the dog's head and, in a moment that's totally out of character but awesome nonetheless, the dog turns and takes a wet bite out of Billy.  I will give this episode credit for being one of the very few where Billy has to face any kind of direct consequences for his casual cruelty to the dog.  I wish there were a lot more moments like this throughout the series.

That night, the mysterious woman sneaks into the backyard and attempts to snuggle up beside the sleeping dog, whereupon his nose starts wrinkling yet again and he bolts into the house in fear.  The bag lady calls to him from outside the house, imploring him to not be afraid and calling him her "knight in furry armor."  Cautiously, the dog tiptoes back outside and the bag lady thanks him for his kindness and rewards him with a thorough petting.  Not used to being on the receiving end of such lavish affection, the dog immediately warms up to the stranger and allows her to stay with him inside his doghouse.

Lulu: "Poor old poochie got fleas.  Yeah, me too honey.  Ain't they a bitch?"

They used the word "bitch" in an animated series.  Edgy stuff, no?

You'll notice that there is this vaguely animalistic quality to Lulu the bag lady, also manifested in the rather wolfish manner in which she downs the ham hock from earlier and her willingness to spend the night inside a dog kennel, which might be what Kogan was getting at when he accused the episode of mocking the homeless.  I suspect that the intention was mainly just to set Lulu up as being a kind of kindred spirit to the dog (ostensibly anyway), so as to have her bond with him seem all the more meaningful; a case of Lulu respecting the dog enough that she's not too proud to meet him at his level.  It's not too hard to see the affinity here - both of them are downtrodden souls who are well used to being ignored, despised and mistreated, and who have learned to survive right at the bottom of their respective hierarchies.  I'd say that the potential was definitely there for something quite sweet.

The dog wakes up to find himself alone in the kennel and is sad because he thinks that Lulu has left him.  In actuality, she's just nipped out to the dumpsters behind the local convenience store in order to raid up a gourmet breakfast for them both; this consists of a half-eaten apple, a banana skin and a few mangled old french fries.  The dog isn't even prepared to humour Lulu into thinking that he'll accept her offering; certainly not when there are fresher pickings to be scavenged from the Binfords' breakfast table.  He heads inside the house and finds the Binfords being typically unappreciative of Bev's cooking (this is also where we overhear Bev's condescending speech about the homeless) and is able to pick up a couple of breakfast items to take back to Lulu.  Lulu is so grateful that she happily shares it with the dog.

That evening, the dog once again scavenges scraps from the Binfords table and becomes uncharacteristically aggressive with Bev when he suspects that she might take the food off him - his allegiances have switched to a brand new master it seems.  While Bev ponders what's prompting so much aggression from the dog (Skip suggests that he's been negatively influenced by an episode of Hard Copy about pets that kill their owners), the dog heads back outside with his bounty and shares an evening meal with Lulu, who opens up a bit about her past.  Apparently, she was a performer in the 1960s who had a plate-spinning act with her partner Saul.  The highlight of their career was an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show ("You know, The Beatles, Topo Gigio - uh-uh, c'mon, you were a kid, you don't remember"), but by the 1980s they had fallen on hard times.

The days slip by, and as the dog's bond with Lulu grows ever deeper he takes to pilfering supplies directly from the Binfords' larder, while the stupid family never realise that there's a bag lady living in their backyard (although Bev does cotton on to all the food going missing, but jumps to the conclusion that Billy has parasites of his own).

Eventually, the dog turns to stealing more than table scraps and honours his new human friend with a gift lifted straight from Bev's jewelry box - a tacky-ass cat broach which he carries outside and presents to her.  Her response:

"Well, merci Mr. Trump, I won't tell Marla."

Fuuuuu.  Let's move right along.

Lulu attaches the broach close to her heart and then revels in how much more sophisticated she looks.

"Oh, look at me honey, I'm as pretty as a princess.  And I mean Fergie before the divorce."

Ow.

Lulu announces that she now feels confident to return to the city in the hope of finding and reconciling with her erstwhile partner Saul, and asks the dog if he's willing to accompany her.  The dog leaps devotedly into her outstretched arms and away they go, leaving Bev to freak out when she realises what kind of mischief has been practiced upon her jewelry box.

As they enter the city, Lulu explains to the dog that she's been on her own ever since she and Saul had an argument and she awoke the following day to find that he had left her.  The city is portrayed as a screwy place full of uptights, eccentrics and oddballs, although the majority of gags (which include a nerdy-looking vegetarian screaming at a butcher, and some overly enthusiastic rush hour businessmen) are kind of lame.  Meanwhile, the dog sees an advertising billboard featuring a cheery, clean-cut family and has his first pangs of unease about abandoning his own grotesque clan.  Eventually, Lulu reaches her old alleyway and finds Saul already waiting for her.  They shout one another's names back and forth for a bit before running toward one another in cliched slow-motion - it's a moment which goes on for tortuously long, but I guess they still had a lot of time to fill out.

Lulu and Saul are happy to see one another again, although Saul becomes a lot less jubilant when he spies what's been tagging along at his sweetheart's ankles.  Turns out, he doesn't much care for dogs (although he's not convinced that the specimen in question actually is a dog, as opposed to a rat in a collar) because he's allergic to them, so he's not prepared to welcome Lulu's new friend into the equation, threatening to up and leave again if Lulu doesn't comply.  Lulu feels she has no choice but to give up the dog, and while she's very tender and affectionate in her goodbyes, even returning the cat broach to the dog as a token of their relationship, it bugs the snot out of me that she basically just turns him away into the streets of the city, not even bothering to take him back home after dragging him out there in the first place. And bloody hell, does the dog look as if he's just had a dagger driven right through his heart.  It's not a pleasant scene by any stretch.

Left to wander the streets with only the cat broach for company, the dog gets caught in a heavy downpour and is forced to take shelter under a dumpster.  He's wet, cold, miserable and clearly deeply repentant about walking out on his family.  After the rain ceases, the dog continues his directionless wandering and passes a wall which, unbeknownst to him, is plastered with "Lost Dog" fliers bearing his likeness.  Could it really be?

That's right, it appears that the Binfords have come through on this one and are actually very serious about being reunited with their dog.  As the dog turns a corner, he sees Skip up ahead, fixing yet another flier to a wall and looking pretty darned downhearted about things too.  So Skip really does care for the dog, who'd have thought?  Not far behind him are the rest of the Binfords, with Bev trying to explain to Billy and Buffy that the dog just went away on vacation.  It's a scene which comes very close to working only to then insist upon shooting itself in the foot - Skip's quiet display of emotion, which includes tenderly stroking the flier, is genuinely affecting, but swiftly undermined by the sounds of Billy positively reveling in the thought that the dog may already have been crushed beneath someone's tyre.  If not for the events of "Eye on the Sparrow" and the fact that Buffy can frankly be even more annoying at times, I'd be all poised to write Billy off as the worst character ever by now.

Naturally, the dog goes racing toward his jilted masters and a happy reunion is had - that is, until Bev notices that the dog has her cat broach in his mouth and realises that he was the one who raided her jewelry box earlier.  Suddenly she's not so happy, and it isn't long before the entire family has lapsed right back into their old habits of hurling angry abuse at the dog, while the dog just sits there and merrily laps it up, as if he's had the epiphany that this is his rightful lot in life and boy, is he ever glad to be back where he belongs.  Did I mention that I really despise the ending to this episode?

Part of the problem with these "dog runs away from home to answer an alternative calling" episodes that the series keeps on insisting on doing is that, inevitably, we have to deal with the question as to whether we actually want to see the dog reunited with the Binfords in the end.  Let's face it, he's a cute, smart and friendly dog and he could certainly do a lot better than a clan as mean, negligent and witless as the Binfords.  Naturally, the status quo must be respected (we do still have one more episode to go, after all) so there was never any reason to believe that he wouldn't end up right back where he started upon reaching the twenty-two minute mark, but there's something downright disquieting about how he seems to willingly embrace the Binfords' scorn as being nothing more than the natural order of things at the end.  It's a shame, because "Family Dog Goes Homeless" does have a few genuinely nice ideas and moments (for one, it is nice to have some solid evidence that the family cares about the dog, even it immediately unravels), and the dog's relationship with Lulu could have been a real heart-string tugger had it been handled with a bit more sensitivity (particularly in its conclusion, which as it stands feels bitter and abrupt as hell).  All in all, the episode comes off as tonally misjudged (more so than usual), and as one of the most searingly cynical in all the series, although not in the weirdly, gut-wrenchingly fascinating way that "Enemy Dog" was.  Frankly, it just leaves you feeling a bit wet, cold and miserable, much like the dog as he crawled under that dumpster earlier.

Still, for all my grousing, I do only have one more episode of Family Dog left to review, which means that very soon this retrospective will be done and dusted, and I find myself feeling strangely sentimental about that fact.  I'm really going to miss picking through this series - how genuinely mad it's made me at me at times and yet how weirdly affectionate I always wind up feeling toward it.  It's a screwy relationship we have alright.