Sam and Ralph (aka The Club Tie, and The Firm Handshake)

I don't think there was a Looney Tunes series that struck as raw a nerve with me as that featuring Sam Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf. As a child, I was always captivated by the shorts, depicting the daily working lives of a dog and a wolf (both voiced by Mel Blanc), who every sunrise set out to the same field, each with very different objectives regarding the flock of sheep around which their respective jobs revolve. At the same time, I was always deeply unsettled as to how these two characters, who greeted one another with such warmth and cordiality during their initial morning encounters, could unleash such brutality on one another the second the working day began - only to drop everything and apparently be reconciled by the end of the day. It was an ingenious formula, and one more profoundly disturbing edge than the more traditional breed of Looney Tunes short in which the characters were at loggerheads for the full duration. The Sam and Ralph shorts were all about contrasts - the gentility of the opening and closing sequences versus the all-out savagery that lay between. Sam and Ralph are on warring sides in the occupational equation (although they both work for the same employer), yet the bookends of each short would indicate that neither takes this arrangement in the least bit personally. The characters are able to maintain their personal friendship, in spite of their professional enmity. And while the notion that two natural enemies could both embrace the conflict and be the best of friends in spite of it (or even because of it?) was nothing new to animation - it is, after all, the paradox at the heart of Tom and Jerry - what made Sam and Ralph such a unique example was that there were very clear distinctions between where one facet of their relationship ended and the other began. Their lives were governed by the whistle atop the punch clock they operated every morning and evening, which clearly signaled when they were to be friends and enemies.

Ralph is often mistakenly assumed to be the alter ego of a much more famous Looney Tunes creation, Wile E. Coyote - understandably so, as they share a near-identical character design (adding to the confusion, I could swear that I once rented a Wile E. Coyote VHS tape that included a Sam and Ralph short). They are, however, canonically separate characters. One way to tell them apart is by the coloration of their noses - Ralph has a red nose while Wile. E's is black. Also, when Ralph speaks, he does so without Wile E.'s refined Mid-Atlantic accent (Wile E. was, of course, completely silent in the Roadrunner shorts, but was always happy to speak up whenever Bugs Bunny was his nemesis). The real distinguishing feature, however, is one of simple tenacity. Wile E. Coyote is willing to endure non-stop pain and humiliation in his never-ending pursuit of the unobtainable Roadrunner, because he doesn't know when to quit. Ralph, on the other hand, knows precisely when to quit - at five o'clock every evening when the whistle blows. In this world, the whistle is king.

Production of the Sam and Ralph shorts spanned over a decade but the series as a whole was relatively brief. Only seven shorts were made in total, and it took multiple goes to get the formula right, meaning that even fewer deal with the characteristic theme of Sam and Ralph being friends in their personal lives but enemies on the job. It's interesting to watch the shorts in order and chart the evolution of the concept - from the beginning, the punch clock was the all-important prop that determined the unique flavour of the series, but the gag was initially quite limited, and it was a case of each subsequent short finding a way to expand on that gag, until finally we had landed on the familiar formula. The debut short, Don't Give Up The Sheep from 1953, establishes the basic conflict between the sheepdog and wolf but plays itself almost entirely straight. Here, only the sheepdog punches in and out and the wolf does indeed appear to be seeking a slab of freshly-killed mutton, and not a paycheck for his efforts. Adding to the confusion, the sheepdog is explicitly addressed by a peer as "Ralph", while the wolf is never named. The short ends with "Ralph" the sheepdog cornering the nameless wolf and proceeding to clobber him, whereupon Fred, a replacement sheepdog who works the night shift, shows up and takes over wolf-beating duties while "Ralph" goes home. The second short, Sheep Ahoy from 1954, follows a similar formula, only here the punchline with the clock is taken a full step further, so that not only does Sam (still referred to as "Ralph") hand evening duties over to Fred, but the wolf (addressed here as "George"), also punches out and exchanges pleasantries with his own nighttime replacement (addressed here as "Sam"!). A revolutionary idea that nevertheless did not go quite far enough. By the third short, Double or Mutton of 1955, however, the series really was cooking with gas. Not only had Sam and Ralph settled on their official monikers, but the central conceit of them behaving markedly different beside the punch clock to out on the field was also cemented. Here, we see Sam and Ralph walking to work, greeting each other, undertaking another day's worth of cartoon brutality, and finally bidding each other a cordial farewell when the whistle blew. Double or Mutton was the first to explore the idea that Sam and Ralph were a whole lot friendlier to one another when they weren't working, and it would only keep building from there until, by the seventh and final short, Woolen Under Where of 1963, Sam and Ralph were also roommates (or at the very least ate breakfast together).

Arguably, the intrinsically friendly relationship between Sam and Ralph ensured that there was always a safety net to the proceedings. We knew that, no matter how ugly the mayhem got throughout the day, the characters didn't really hate one another and were merely "acting" (although the trauma Sam inflicted on Ralph was certainly real enough). Nevertheless, there was something that I found intrinsically sinister about the arrangement. The two modes struck me as inherently incompatible, even if that was the joke. And while Ralph might have been the "villain" of the scenario, it was always Sam whom I found more terrifying. To a degree, this was an inevitable side-effect of showing the narratives predominantly from Ralph's point of view - as with the Wile E. Coyote shorts, we spend most of our time in the company of the hunter, and it is he who commands our sympathies. But whereas Wile E. Coyote's own worst enemy was ultimately himself (that and the biased cartoon physics of the Looney Tunes universe), the greatest threat to Ralph always lay with Sam. Any direct confrontation with Sam would put Ralph on the receiving end of a world of pain, so it was in Ralph's interests to avoid Sam altogether. And yet Sam was absolutely everywhere. He was omnipresent in the most mind-bending of ways. No matter where he ran, Ralph simply could not elude him, and since we shared Ralph's perspective of events we too came to dread the all-seeing, all-knowing sheepdog who was inexplicably always a step ahead. There was more to it than that, however. What made Sam such a startling creation was the contrast between the non-threatening dog we saw at the beginning and end of each short and the ominous, hulking brute who tormented Ralph in between. The gulf was so great that it was as if Sam had transformed into a different character altogether, a Pavlovian response upon hearing that whistle blow. This was true of Ralph too, to an extent - he would typically kick off the working day by twisting his face into a more malevolent expression, to better suit the demands of his role. With Sam, though, the contrast was more marked. Outside of work, not only is he an immensely more amicable character, but he's also depicted as something of a klutz, stumbling as he walks and intermittently bumping into trees (gags are often derived from the design quirk of having Sam's mop of red fur hang over his eyes - at the start of some shorts, he has to lift the fur to be sure that it is Ralph to whom he is speaking). He doesn't seem like he should present much in the way of opposition for the clever and efficient Ralph (who in the opening of one short, A Sheep In The Deep, uses an ingenious contraption to speed his way through his morning routine and make it to the punch clock ahead of Sam) and yet every day at 8:00 am he acquires a stealth and a killer instinct that far exceeds Ralph's. Another unnerving difference is that, for all of the harmonious small talk that Sam and Ralph happily indulge in around the punch clock, out on the field the only communication is delivered by tooth, claw and fist - neither character will speak to the other while on the job. This, in part, is to recreate a similar kind of non-verbal slapstick routine to that which worked so well for Ralph's coyote doppelganger, but it also reinforces the division. Not talking enables the characters to maintain a detachment, not merely from their opponent's individual identity, but also their own. They become less "Sam" and "Ralph" than "sheepdog" and "wolf", two long-standing adversaries enacting the same ongoing feud that has been waged by generations before them.

Again, we can look to that safety net for reassurance. The sheepdog and wolf are inevitably going to drop the warfare and go back to being Sam and Ralph at the end of the day, their diurnal savagery instantly mitigated by their crepuscular civility. There comes a point, however, at which we have to question if the reverse scenario is perhaps more persuasive - that is, if the brutal beatings Sam dishes out to Ralph all throughout the day actually serve to undermine the legitimacy of their friendship. A question the series never openly explores, but which always simmers uncomfortably beneath the surface, concerns how great a mate Sam is really, if he's willing to pound the snot out of his best friend every day in exchange for a paycheck.

I was thinking about this recently after reading an article by Russ Fischer of Birth Movies Death, who suggests that those of us who believed that Sam and Ralph always liked one another, in spite of everything, were reading it wrong, and it's in the opening and closing bookends, and the duo's apparent friendship, where the real insincerity lies. As per Fischer's reading, when Sam and Ralph go to work: "they allow their violent instincts to run wild. When the five-o’clock whistle blows, they slip the masks of society back on -- or they remove their bloodthirst." This, I have to admit, caught me slightly off guard. I always took it as a given that the Sam and Ralph we saw chatting amicably as they made their trek to work every morning were the "real" Sam and Ralph, and that the sheepdog-and-wolf routine was just an act to suit the demands of their respective jobs. The former, Fischer counters, is simply a ruse that our heroes live out in the interests of convincing themselves that they are fundamentally civilised, and the workplace is where they go to let it all hang loose. If Fischer is correct in his assessment, then the series just jumped up several points on the sinister meter, because the safety net is an illusion - Sam and Ralph do indeed hate one another, as primal instinct dictates they must, and the pleasantries around the punch clock are a thin facade that, at best, provide momentary reprieve from the bloodletting. And yet, by the end of the article, Fischer appears to concede, based on Chuck Jones' own commentary, that this was likely not the creator's intent - said Jones, “The story of Ralph and Sam comes down to Lewis Brown’s idea that there are no judges, only people judging, no tramps, only people tramping, and so on?”. Concludes Fischer, "I admire Jones’s optimism...The example of Sam and Ralph may be a fantasy, but I’m going to keep it in my pocket as an ideal. We’re always at one another’s throats, but the dream is that we don't have to be. We can find a space to explore and express our differences, but still shake hands across the aisle, and go home as colleagues, rather than cowering alone like animals."

The absurdity of wild animals attempting to mask their savage tendencies with gestures of  civility was the basis of a gag in an earlier Chuck Jones short, Operation: Rabbit (1952), in which Wile E. Coyote attempts to predate Bugs Bunny using nothing less than genteel (if egotistical) reasoning: "I am more muscular, more cunning, faster and larger than you are, and I'm a genius, while you could hardly pass the entrance examinations to kindergarten. So I'll give you the customary two minutes to say your prayers." When this fails to yield a positive response from Bugs, a bemused Wile E. retreats back to the drawing board, pondering, "Why do they always want to do it the hard way?" I wonder. The Sam and Ralph shorts operate on a similar kind of absurdity, of animals conducting their brutal business with apparent decorum, but what makes their relationship more complicated is that, although I have previously described them as "natural" enemies, arguably they are not. The sheepdog (like the sheep itself) is a man-made creation, the product of multiple generations' worth of selective breeding, and a descendant of the wolf. The sheepdog's natural instincts have been carefully honed and manipulated to suit the needs of their human masters, and the punchline to the original short, "Don't Give Up The Sheep", was derived from the notion that the sheepdog would go about his duties like any typical workaday stiff, disregarding his selectively bred inclinations the instant the whistle blew. The extension of the punch clock routine to Ralph takes it up a whole other level. It entails the added absurdity that a wolf would likewise drop its natural predatory inclinations at the end of the working day, and raises additional questions as to who would "employ" a wolf to pilfer sheep in the first place. But the kinship shared by Sam and Ralph when they are not working also conveys the poignant observation that, deep down, we are perhaps not so different, and there's more scope for common ground between people of all walks of life than we might assume.

Sam and Ralph's crepuscular friendship is based on the mutual recognition that they are each only acting on the hands that nurture and nature have respectively dealt them. And yet their shorts are dominated by the troubling fact that, every day, they willfully put their friendship aside and go to war with one another. And this is where I must disagree with Fischer's concluding assessment that Sam and Ralph are to be regarded as a kind of "ideal", as I, for one, never found the Sam and Ralph shorts to be all that optimistic. I think there is a darker narrative at play, although not quite the one that Fischer initially proposes. Perhaps it would be more accurate to suggest that both dimensions of the characters' lives are equally "real" - that Sam and Ralph do like one another, and yet what happens during the working day, when they are forced to suspend their emotional attachments, has visible ramifications. The fundamental fallacy underpinning Sam and Ralph's assumption that they can clearly differentiate their personal and professional lives is illustrated at the end of two shorts in particular,  Steal Wool (1957) and Ready, Woolen and Able (1960). Fischer correctly observes that, based on what we see of their domestic situations, both Sam and Ralph are "comfortable in success", inhabiting nice houses on the same street. In their crepuscular "reality" they both live and regard one another as equals (at the start of Steal Wool, Sam is a good neighbour, and throws a paper left outside Ralph's garden into his porch). And yet the two aforementioned shorts end on sour notes, in which Sam and Ralph do not walk home as equals, despite their efforts to cover the ugliness in plain sight with unflinching cordiality. Fischer's suggestion that Sam and Ralph have "a space to explore and express [their] differences", seems to gloss over the reality that, every day, Sam pounds Ralph into a pulp, the traumas of which inevitability spill over into their non-working existence. Sam always heads home happy and unharmed, whereas Ralph's dedication to his job is clearly having a detrimental effect on his health, both physically (as in Steal Wool) and mentally (as in Ready, Woolen and Able). Alright for some, in other words.

Steal Wool ends with Sam and Ralph returning home after another day's work, the latter bruised and in a sling. Sam, on noting his colleague's condition, makes the condescending observation that Ralph has been working too hard (condescending, because Sam is responsible for several of the day's injuries) and suggests that he take the following day off, assuring him that, "I can handle both jobs." "Thanks, Sam," says Ralph, as he staggers back toward his house. "You're a pal." The joke at the very end is based on Sam's ludicrous assertion that he can fulfill the roles of sheepdog and wolf simultaneously - how exactly this will play out is better left to our imaginations. And yet the short's final punchline comes from Ralph thanking his colleague and assuring him that he is a true friend when we have visible evidence to the contrary. The fact that this is the final line makes it feel as though we are being prompted to question, more so than in any other Sam and Ralph short, the authenticity of their friendship. If nothing else, it highlights the paradox behind their relationship, for it was, after all, Ralph's clashes with Sam that put him in that position in the first place. Ready, Woolen and Able, meanwhile, ends with Ralph suffering a mental breakdown (caused by Sam's apparent omnipresence) and being carted away in a straitjacket. Along the way, he passes Sam, who wishes him goodnight. Ralph regains his composure for long enough to respond with his own pleasantry: "See you tomorrow, Sam", before collapsing once again. That Sam doesn't bat an eyelid (or at least, it can be assumed he doesn't, under his mop of red hair), suggests that he's quite used to the working day sometimes concluding in this manner. Ralph's own response, meanwhile, carries an evident degree of resignation, acknowledging his entrapment in the endless cycle that is gradually throttling him. Neither character seems willing to acknowledge that anything is wrong, much less question if there are alternatives to their arrangement.

The ending of Steal Wool also underlines one of the series' other key absurdities, as Sam's closing proposition is based on the peculiar presumption that the wolf's presence is necessary in order for the sheepdog to do his own job. The implication could be that the conflict is so well-entrenched that the idea of going to work unopposed, even for one day, is unthinkable to Sam. But it draws attention to the troubling question hanging over the entirety of the series - namely, just who is employing these characters anyway? Hiring a dog to watch the sheep might make sense, but why then would you employ a sheep-killer to waltz in and cause mayhem? We probably can't pin this scenario on Mother Nature - after all, sheepdogs were not her idea. Which leads me to suspect that the higher powers employing Sam and Ralph and forcing them to duke it out every day are none other than the same purveyors of biased cartoon physics in Wile E.'s cartoons. Which is to say the cartoons' creators. Sam and Ralph undergo their grueling daily routine not for the benefit of anybody who has any use for a field full of sheep, but for the viewer's own entertainment. Wolf and Sheepdog are, therefore, both equally necessary in order to initiate conflict. To that end, I would argue that Sam and Ralph are really the logical extension of those shorts pitting Wile E. Coyote against the Roadrunner, or any number of Looney Tunes set-ups about two rival animals dueling. In all cases, the characters are trapped in an eternal struggle with no prospect of resolution, yet Sam and Ralph seem to possess a self-awareness that the others lack, being willing to break character and go home once they've fulfilled their quota for senseless mayhem, albeit in the knowledge that they'll have to come back and do it all over again the following day. And I suppose this is what I find so troubling, and so enthralling, about the Sam and Ralph shorts - they emphasise, more so than any other Looney Tunes series, the horrors, and perhaps some of the comforts, of inhabiting a routine that isn't quite brilliant but has nevertheless become familiar. The all-important punch clock, which enforces the boundaries between the characters' personal and professional lives, ends up reinforcing the monotony of the inescapable cycle, the whistle representing the screeching demands of whatever authority likes seeing them pitted against each other (be it man, nature or deity). The tragedy of Sam and Ralph is that they would sooner be friends, yet every day they go out and produce antipathy on demand in the interests of the roles ordained by their routine, with the lingering traumas endured by Ralph pointing toward a (not so hidden) cost.

Having said all of that, the last of the Sam and Ralph Shorts, Woolen Under Where (1963), ends with a glimpse of that genuine ideal of which Fischer speaks. In this short, Sam and Ralph do indeed walk home side by side, as equals, and with no visible injuries from their day's work, while making the following exchange: "Nice day, eh, Sam?" "Yeah, good to be alive, Ralph." Compared to other Sam and Ralph shorts, this ending feels less like a sour dig at the inherent cruelty and absurdity of the characters' routine, and more as if it's making a profound statement about the transitory nature of conflict - spats will come and ago, and yet their friendship endures, and each passing day brings the promise of new relish atop the renewed aggro. In that sense, it almost reminds me of the ending to The Big Snit, with the characters putting aside their personal differences in order to appreciate the mutual pleasures in life. As much as I wish that the Sam and Ralph series had yielded more than just seven shorts, I'm also glad that it ended with this particular installment. That final image of their silhouettes walking into the sunset, with Sam's arm around Ralph's shoulder, really does feel like the perfect place to leave these characters - it's charming, offbeat and more than a little poignant. We know they'll be back to squaring off against one another come 08:00 tomorrow, but for now their shared appreciation for the simple joys of another day could not be more awe-inspiring.

Sam and Ralph later had a cameo appearance in the 2003 feature film Looney Tunes: Back In Action. They show up in the backdrop of a restaurant scene, where Ralph opens up his lunch box to reveal that he's captured and hoarded one of the sheep, and Sam promptly clobbers him. While it's nice that the movie acknowledged their existence (a step up from Space Jam, where only Sam was seen), this scene never sat particularly well with me, as it flat-out violated the series rule that there are clear distinctions between how the characters behave when they are on the job and when they are undertaking casual pursuits such as dining out. If they were on their lunch break, then Ralph should not have been attempting to slaughter a sheep, nor should Sam have beaten him. My greatest disdain, however, is reserved for an episode of Taz-Mania (an otherwise fine show) which had Taz substituting for an absent Ralph through a temping agency called "Predators R Us". Here, Sam doesn't see fit to reference Ralph by name, acknowledging him only as "that coyote". In-universe, I should be absolutely appalled by the implication that Sam has been working with Ralph since 1953 and hasn't even memorised his species, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the writer of the episode in question was under the common misconception that Ralph and Wile E. Coyote are the same character. Which doesn't excuse the ending of the episode, in which Sam is apparently so impressed with Taz's temping that he wants to work with him on a regular basis, and I'm not sure where that leaves Ralph. Ugh, Sam, I know you make a living out of punching your best friend in the face every day, and that's already kind of questionable, but stabbing him in the back is a whole new low.