VHS Verve: Alvin & The Chipmunks - Cookie Chomper

"The Chipmunks learn about the loss of a loved one and find a compassionate way to make amends."

(No, Mark's not me.  This was a second-hand purchase.)

If you wondered what (if anything) would be replacing "Farthing Wood Deaths Revisited" as my long-running retrospective on the cartoon carnage that left me with psychological skid marks as a nipper, then this is probably the closest that you're going to get for now.  I had given thought to doing a similar retrospective on a different series, but immediately ran into a brick wall in that I couldn't think of another cartoon, at least from my own childhood,that killed off its characters with such merciless frequency.  The Animals of Farthing Wood was truly one of a kind in that regard.  I got to thinking that perhaps I might have more luck if I didn't limit myself to just one series, and then recalled how fascinated I've always been with children's media that deals very explicitly with the subject of death.  I don't mean in the Farthing Wood sense, mind, where characters die left, right and centre but it's treated as a simple fact of life that nobody has the time nor energy to dwell on beyond a basic, "oh, well, that was undesirable."  I'm thinking more about cartoons which are blatantly looking to teach their young audience a lesson about the nature of loss and bereavement.  A lot of people have this assumption that death in children's entertainment is a taboo, at least in the traditional Saturday morning kids' cartoon (I'm told that those technically don't exist any more, but I'm not sure what the modern terminology would be), where people still raise eyebrows if characters so much as utter the words "kill" or "die".  Traditionally, kids' cartoons are supposed to be mindless, frenetic junk designed to fill in a few gaps in between ads for fast food and sugary cereal - the notion that they'd even consider tackling something as weighty as death and the grieving process seems entirely incongruous.  And yet, the issue of loss is one which most children are going to have to deal with at some point in their lifetime, be it for a pet, friend or family member, and I have to admire the audacious few which are willing to set aside an episode in order to help their young audience understand what they're going through and to see that hope, acceptance and renewal can eventually come out of grief.

We'll start by focusing on the "death episode" which affected me the most deeply in my own childhood - namely, the Alvin & The Chipmunks episode "Cookie Chomper".  It's handy, because I've also been meaning to start a new series centering on some of the VHS tapes from my personal collection, and this means I get to kill two birds with one stone.  "Cookie Chomper" shows up on a UK VHS release from Castle Vision in 1990.  There have been a few Alvin & The Chipmunks incarnations over time, so I do want to make it clear that I am, of course, referring to the animated series which began in 1983, ran until 1990 and moved through quite a few production companies before finally ending up with our good friends at DiC Entertainment.  This VHS contains three episodes of said series - in addition to "Cookie Chomper", we also get "The Wall" and "Theodore's Life as a Dog".  "The Wall" is another slightly curious one since it involves the Chipmunks traveling to the Berlin Wall and literally bringing it down with an impromptu rock concert, but we'll get to that in due course.  "Theodore's Life as a Dog" is curious only in the sense that it's a silly, slice-of-life episode paired up with two extremely weighty ones.  I guess they felt the need to round off on something a bit frivolous in order to lighten the overall load.

"Cookie Chomper" first aired in the US on 23rd September 1989.  In this episode, Alvin, Simon and Theodore find a stray kitten and decide to take him in but, sensing that their manager/adopted father Dave Seville might not approve, try to keep him a secret, which is easier said than done with Dave having a cat allergy.  Wacky hi-jinks ensue.  Eventually, Dave learns about the cat, whom the boys have dubbed Cookie Chomper III, and allows them to keep him, despite the adverse effect the tiny creature is having on his nostrils.  More wacky hi-jinks ensue.  Then one night Cookie Chomper III gets out of the house and goes for a wander, only to be struck down and killed by a car (off-screen) in the early hours of the morning.  If you watched the episode without knowing that was coming, you might feel like you've been hit by something too.

Apparently this episode was inspired by the true-life experiences of Ross Bagdasarian Jr and Janice Karman (owners of the Chipmunks' production company, Bagdasarian Productions) whose dog Tiger Lilly was killed in a similar manner to Cookie Chomper III and receives a dedication at the start of the 1987 feature film The Chipmunk Adventure.  Clearly, they were left with a deep sensitivity to how difficult an experience it can be to lose a beloved pet, and were motivated to create an episode which might help children in a similar situation.  Personally, I think they succeeded very well - as much as this episode shocked and upset me when I first saw it as a kid, I later found myself referring back to it when my pet rabbit died and was able to draw strength from its messages.  The episode handles the subject of pet loss in a very sensitive and non-condescending way, and by golly will you shed a few tears in the process over the fate of the chipmunks' own cherished friend.

The "Cookie Chomper" VHS release contains no opening trailers, but the Castle Vision logo is as delectably nightmarish as you would hope for a video distribution company from this era:

The episode opens with the three chipmunk brothers home alone in their living room.  I doubt that I need to specify who each of the chipmunks are individually, but if you came to this episode blind then you'd very quickly pick up that Alvin is the reckless rebel, Simon the precocious intellectual and Theodore the emotionally sensitive softie of the group.  Theodore is distressed because Alvin is pounding the snot out of his favourite stuffed dinosaur, Muffin, which Alvin has re-imagined as "Terrible Tex", a professional wrestler with "poisonous eyes and retractable brain cells."  Meanwhile, Simon grumbles about having to contemplate the fact that he's related to the two of them.  Dave then rings from the Chipmunks' mixing studio and announces that he's going to have work overtime and won't be home until late, so he puts Simon in charge of the household.  Simon specifies his role as being a "surrogate parent" or "substitute authority figure" and that night, as he tries to get everyone to bed, Alvin proceeds to pester him by asking if there are such things as ghosts with suction cups on their eyes and toes which can jump out and bite them in the dark.  The very image is enough to have Theodore quaking in his sheets, but Simon reassures him that he's made a point of ensuring that all doors and windows are secured and that nothing can get in.  The chipmunks hear a strange wailing noise, however, and quickly establish that something very sinister is making its way up the stairs.  The three of them huddle together in fear, as Alvin points out that, as the surrogate parent, it's Simon's duty to head the response.

Reluctantly, Simon leads them outside into the corridor, where they spot an unidentified lump in pillow case crawling across the floor in their direction.  Alvin and Simon immediately dart back inside the bedroom and secure the door, but Theodore, who isn't fast enough, is left to his fate.  "Don't kill me" he begs the phantom pillow case, "I'm just a kid."  Fortunately for him, the intruder turns out to be nothing more than a harmless stray kitten, which he immediately takes a shine to.  Inside the bedroom, Alvin and Simon realise that Theodore didn't make it and wonder if the monster ate him, but soon cotton onto the truth.  Simon realises that, contrary to his earlier reassurances, he did leave a window open, which is how the cat likely gained entry.  I'm left thinking that, actually, Simon made a pretty shoddy surrogate parent.  Not only did he overlook that open window, but he left his brother shut outside and at the mercy of a potential aggressor.  Anyhow, Theodore has his heart set upon keeping the kitten, but Simon points out that Dave will likely not approve, so the brothers resolve to keep their new friend a secret.  Naturally, Alvin can't afford to appear too sentimental, so he slips in some scatological remark about cute little kittens leaving cute little surprises all over rugs and how he doesn't plan on being the one to clean them up.  Just then, Dave arrives back home, so the chipmunks jump back in bed and Theodore tries to conceal the kitten under the covers.  Dave comes in to check on them, and Theodore frankly does a rather terrible job of not acting in any way suspicious, but I guess that Dave's too tired to pick up on this.  He does start sneezing as he exits the room, but puts this down to hay fever season starting earlier each year.

The following morning, Simon catches Alvin "cleaning" the dishes by having the kitten lick them and and has him do them again, highlighting the vile implications of having to eat off plates laced with kitten saliva.  The chipmunks then start clashing over what they're going to name their new pet.  Mirroring the dinosaur debate from earlier, Theodore favours something cute-sounding derived from a sugary snack (Cookie), while Alvin wants something to make the cat sound vicious and fearsome (Chomper).  In the end, Simon works out a compromise by proposing that the cat's name be Cookie Chomper and then adds his own touch by sticking "III" on the end.  I know that the idea is for all three of them to have a hand in naming the cat, and naturally Simon would be the one to throw in an element of sophistication, but what makes Cookie Chomper the third in a line, specifically?  Is there a joke in there I'm not getting?  Dave walks in, still sneezing, and gets suspicious when he notices that Theodore appears to be concealing something up his sleeve, only the chipmunks are able to convince him that they're simply practicing the new Jane Fonda work-out routine.  Very 1980s, eh?

That evening, Dave has a date lined up with a woman named Roxanne, and the chipmunks are happy about this, as it means they'll get the house to themselves and can play freely with Cookie Chomper.  Unfortunately, Dave announces that he doesn't feel up to eating at a restaurant due to his allergies playing up, so he's decided to have the date at the house and implores the chipmunks to be on their best behaviour.  Obviously, it's not going to work out.  Cookie Chomper sneaks downstairs during the dinner and quickly has all three chipmunks ducking and diving under the table in an effort to grab him.  At this point, the cat's pretty much out of the bag (literally and figuratively) as far as Dave's concerned, but Roxanne, happily, turns out to be a big cat person and Cookie Chomper proves a hit with her.  Dave is apparently so relieved that he ends up giving Cookie Chomper his blessing, allergy or no allergy.

As Cookie Chomper settles into the Seville household (and Alvin has to grapple with the task of cleaning out the cat's litter box), Simon becomes convinced that Dave's allergies are psychosomatic and attempts to reprogram them by presenting him with flashcards of a cat and a dog and mixing up their corresponding words so that Dave subconsciously accepts Cookie Chomper as a dog.  Well, it does the trick, because Dave stops sneezing over Cookie Chomper and happily embraces the cat.  I'll warn you here that, if either yourself your children should require a happy ending, then this is definitely the point to switch off your VHS machine or fast forward to the next episode.  Maybe you'd be better off with that one about the Berlin Wall.

Simon, who doesn't approve of Cookie Chomper continuing to sleep in Theodore's bed, has prepared a special nest for the kitten in the chipmunks' bedroom, and Theodore gives Cookie Chomper his teddy so that he'll have something to snuggle up to in the night if he gets scared.  Alvin, who's still intent on the cat growing up to be a fearsome monster, confiscates the teddy while his brothers are sleeping and places it on the bedroom window sill.  Unfortunately, the chipmunks have once again overlooked the importance of ensuring that all windows are fastened before they sleep, and Cookie Chomper crawls up onto the window during the night to chase a fly and promptly topples out.  Ostensibly, this all looks perfectly cute and harmless, only the music suddenly swells up dramatically at this point, giving us fair warning that whatever comes of Cookie's little escapade won't be anything good.

The following morning, a stranger shows up at the Seville's door, bearing Cookie Chomper's collar and terrible news.  "I tried to stop my car in time," he tells Dave, "but the kitten was in the street."  Given that the collar is all he returns, I do have wonder what became of Cookie Chomper's bodily remains - surely he wasn't just left in the gutter to decompose?  Dave worries about how he'll break the news to the boys, only to turn around and find them standing right behind him.  As I've indicated, this represents rather an abrupt change of pace for the episode, and it may be a bit much for some viewers to handle, but it's very effective in underscoring just how shocking and unexpected some such losses can be, along with the sheer bluntness of the emotional impact that loss entails.

The remainder of the episode is structured around the five stages of grief, and we rejoin the chipmunks to find them all at different stages of the grieving process.  Theodore, who still goes out into the street and calls for Cookie in the hopes that this has all just been a case of mistaken identity, is in Denial.  Alvin, who throws out all of the family's houseplants on the realisation that they too will die on him one day, is in Anger.  Simon, who no longer has any interest in doing the things he would have positively leapt at in happier days, is in Depression.  Dave attempts to console each of them, but ultimately has to allow them time to work through their respective feelings.  All three chipmunks move into the Searching/Bargaining stage together when they begin to discuss the circumstances leading up to Cookie Chomper's death and what they could have done to have prevented it.  Each chipmunk believes that he is intrinsically to blame - Theodore neglected to close the window through which Cookie Chomper escaped, Simon regrets not letting Cookie Chomper sleep where he was most contented in Theodore's bed, while Alvin, for once not bothering to conceal his his emotions, feels that Cookie Chomper only went to the window in the first place because he put the teddy there (I can only assume that the Bagdasarians went through a similar bit of soul-searching following the death of Tiger Lilly).  Dave overhears their conversation and assures them that sometimes these things happen and that none of them are truly to blame.  Finally, he helps them to move into the ultimate stage of the grieving process - Acceptance - by urging them to remember Cookie Chomper for the joy he brought them in the short time they had together.  It's here that we get a song, "Beautiful Memories", which plays over a montage of clips showing the Chipmunks interacting with Cookie Chomper.  It's not the most amazingly written song in the world, although I defy you not to start sobbing during this sequence all the same.  It closes with Dave hanging up Cookie Chomper's collar upon a plaque dedicated to his memory, a symbol of his enduring place within the family's lives.

In the final scene, we see Dave surprising the chipmunks by taking them to an animal shelter to adopt a new pet.  Theodore is reluctant at first, pointing out that no other pet could be the same as Cookie Chomper.  I appreciate that the episode addresses this point, with Dave agreeing and admitting that Cookie Chomper can never be replaced; obviously, life must go on and the chipmunks getting a new pet would be one such symbol of renewal, but I like that the episode doesn't shy away from the fact that it will not, in itself, prevent them from from missing Cookie Chomper.  Instead, Dave tells them that a new pet would be "just as special, in a different way."  The chipmunks find a Cavalier King Charles spaniel-type dog and decide to adopt her, and although Simon finds the notion a bit overwhelming at first, it isn't long before the playful pup has won him over with her feisty antics.  Although Alvin has a couple of characteristic recommendations for names, ("Buzzsaw", "Crusher") they end up naming the dog Lilly, in an obvious nod to the Bagdasarian's own aforementioned Tiger Lilly (thus, giving her a sort of immortality in cartoon form).  Unfortunately, as the family lead their new pet home, they shortly discover that, as a side-effect of Simon's earlier re-programming, Dave is now allergic to dogs.  Simon attempts to re-program Dave into having a hippopotamus allergy instead, only Dave isn't quite so willing to go along with it this time around.

We'll close with a final word of tribute to Cookie Chomper III, the cartoon cat from the Saturday morning kids' show about singing chipmunks who, just shy of three decades on, still has the power to make grown adults cry.  Thanks for all the heartbreak, Cookie - it proved very helpful down the road of life.

NEXT UP: The Wall

When The Wind Blows (1986)

As my blogging tendencies might indicate, I'm deeply affected by cartoon carnage of all shapes and sizes, but if you were to ask me which animated death stands out as being the singularly most traumatic of my own childhood, I would vote without hesitation for the titular character from the 1982 adaptation of Raymond Briggs' The Snowman.  Just so there's no misunderstanding here, I love The Snowman dearly and consider it to be one of the finest animated films ever made (it is certainly the finest seasonal animated film).  But as a small kid, I never got why adults were so keen on shoving this incredibly distressing story down our throats at every opportunity.  The Snowman was everywhere when I was a kid - books, toys, jigsaw puzzles, the works (this actually hasn't changed much, only these days he's typically accompanied by that odious coattail-rider The Snowdog).  Not only was it a fixture of seasonal viewing, they frequently rolled it out for us to watch at school at absolutely any time of year.  I sat and watched in silence, but I was extremely grateful to the one child who commented, with vague undertones of protest, that it was "a sad story".  No fooling.  The Snowman broke my heart as a four year old (what it left intact of my childhood innocence was subsequently finished off when we rented the VHS of Benji The Hunted) and it still breaks my heart today as a full-grown adult.  I fervently maintain that it's the saddest ending of all-time, way sadder than E.T. the Extra Terrestrial or whatever topped the most recent poll of tearjerker moments.

Of course, as I got older I also gained a greater appreciation for the aesthetic and atmospheric merits of the film, which are beyond wonderful.  But what really helped to take the sting off that ending, for a while, was that enchantingly bizarre live-action opening in which David Bowie walks in and introduces the film as something that happened to him as a child - really now, if we were supposed to conclude that the young child in the story grew up to be DAVID BOWIE, then suddenly the ending doesn't seem quite so glum after all.  That Bowie was possibly just supposed be in character, as the young protagonist's grown-up counterpart, didn't occur to me until years later, when some spoilsport pointed out that the present he receives from Father Christmas bears a name tag reading "James" - actually, I think I'd always willfully overlooked that detail because it didn't exactly mesh with my fantasies (regardless, which of those two interpretations would you rather have as the official one?).  Nevertheless, I've always held the Bowie opening close very to my heart, and I'll never forget how fuming I was when I tuned in one year, in the early 00s, and discovered that they'd replaced it with one featuring Briggs' version of Father Christmas (with no disrespect to Mel Smith, who always did a charming job voicing him), which rubbed further salt into my wounds by very explicitly calling the boy "James".  I recently tuned in again for the 2016 broadcast and was delighted to see that the Bowie opening had returned, but...um, yeah, obviously that came with its own very heavy dash of poignancy this time around.  Actually, it's safe to say that the 2016 broadcast of The Snowman left me even more weepy-eyed than usual.

We'll talk more about The Snowman, the profound effect it had on my life and my petty resentment toward The Snowdog at a later date.  I bring it up now because it never ceases to surprise me how many people, when discussing Jimmy T. Murakami's other adaptation of a classic Raymond Briggs tearjerker (also with Bowie's fingers somewhere in the pie), will utter something along the lines of, "Hard to believe that something as harrowing as this came from the very same mind as The Snowman".  Actually, I don't find it hard to believe at all; not when I look back and recall how many buckets of tears I've shed over that damned Snowman film.  Raymond Briggs absolutely loved to tear at his readers' heartstrings - it's something he did pretty consistently throughout his career.  When The Wind Blows may well be the darkest, most terror-inducing entry in his canon, but it's by no means an anomaly on the grimness front (see also - The Man, Ethel & Ernest, the screenplay for Ivor The Invisible).  Father Christmas and its sequel, Father Christmas Goes On Holiday, are actually quite unusual among Briggs' output for containing no real horror or heartbreak of any variety.

First published in 1982, When The Wind Blows tells the tragic story of Jim and Hilda, an elderly English couple who survive a nuclear attack by constructing a lean-to shelter in their living room, only to find themselves helpless and left to fend for their ill-equipped selves when faced with the prospect of long-term survival in a devastated Sussex.  One of the book's stranger attributes is that it is, technically, a sequel to a book published two years prior, titled Gentleman Jim, although thematically there's not much to link the two, other than Jim's pitiful ignorance on surviving in a world that's quite a bit harsher than he anticipates.  With not so much a hint of impending nuclear annihilation in the air, Gentleman Jim sees Jim ditching his dead-end job as a public convenience janitor in favour of pursuing his boyhood dreams of being a highwayman.  It never skirts anywhere close to When The Wind Blows' levels of bleakness, but it still doesn't end terribly well for Jim, with his painfully naive, if well-intentioned antics ultimately landing him behind bars.  No reference is made to any of this in When The Wind Blows, leaving me a bit unclear as to whether the two stories are actually supposed to take place within the same timeline or if Briggs was merely recycling the characters in a brand new context.  Now out of jail and retired, Jim spends most of his days at the public library, keeping up to speed on the deteriorating international situation with the Soviet Union.  Hilda, meanwhile, refuses to immerse herself in her husband's growing fear of nuclear warfare, preferring to carry on as normal under the assumption that it will all blow over (and besides, nothing can get too out of control as long as she's able to keep the home in order).  Their son, Ron, whom we never actually meet first-hand, is resistant to Jim's instructions that he likewise prepare for nuclear attack, insisting that if the bomb does fall then there could be no hope of survival either way (note: anyone who's read Ethel & Ernest will twig that Jim and Hilda were clearly modeled on Briggs' own parents, with Ron being a stand-in for Briggs himself - he went to art college and was corrupted by some "blessed beatniks", according to Hilda).

Broadly, When The Wind Blows was Briggs' searing critique of government-issued civil defence materials on nuclear warfare, notably the infamous Protect and Survive pamphlet published in 1980, with Jim's blatantly misplaced trust in the directions therein (and in authorities in general) providing much of the story's pathos.  The title of the book is lifted directly from the traditional lullaby "Rock-a-bye Baby" (its references to the breaking bough here signifying the fragility of life and civilisation in the face of nuclear attack), but it also echoes the warning found in Protect and Survive that "radioactive dust, falling where the wind blows it, will bring the most widespread dangers of all."  What makes Protect and Survive such a chilling read, thirty-seven years on, are its distressingly unconvincing attempts to graft a sense of order and control onto a backdrop of sheer apocalyptic chaos; the notion that you could survive by hiding under a heap of doors and bin-bags and cleaning your plates in a box of sand when the wind was blowing deadly poison in all directions.  Occasionally, there's a slight slip-up which betrays just how dire such a predicament would truly be; notably, the warning that the sick and injured within your party should not expect to receive medical treatment for quite some time, and the subtle hint that if you live in a caravan, then you're basically screwed - contact your local authority for advice because we're pretty much clueless on this one.  Jim does his best to follow the government instructions to the letter, although he struggles to understand the reasoning behind a large chunk of them and is frequently bewildered by the strange and sometimes contradictory advice.  Whenever the situation becomes too dislocating for them, Jim and Hilda remedy their confusion by falling back on their nostalgia for the wartime spirit and optimism of their youth - a recurring source of both humour and horror throughout the story is the manner in which their memories of growing up during World War II have coloured their perception of the present conflict and how they anticipate things will play out (Briggs is keen to highlight the perils of such nostalgia, along with the irony that, once upon a time, Britain regarded Stalin as one of the good guys).  Despite Jim's steadfast confidence in The Powers That Be endeavouring to keep the general populace informed and united in the event of emergency, and providing assistance and leadership in the aftermath of attack, it's painfully obvious that once the bomb goes down it'll be every man and woman for themselves.  And a stiff upper lip is a very poor defence when there's fall-out in the air.

Murakami's film, which debuted in 1986, is enormously faithful to Briggs' book - not only is the original plot recreated in painstaking detail, but the screenplay (written by Briggs himself) replicates much of the book's dialogue word-for-word.  Jim and Hilda are voiced by John Mills and Peggy Ashcroft, respectively, and each is imbued with all the right levels of naivety, vulnerability and charm (Robert Houston, meanwhile, provides the voice of the radio announcer).  Where Marukami's film differs from the book is in expanding upon the level of visual narration, adding in a handful of non-dialogue sequences which create an additional fantasy life for Jim and Hilda while also revealing more of the local devastation in the aftermath of attack.  Whereas the book remained very tightly focused upon Jim and Hilda's perspective, the film intermittently pans away to show the rows of smoking rubble and charred sheep carcasses just a stone's throw from their doorstep.  In the book, the nuclear blast is represented, hauntingly, by a double page of stark whiteness with pink around the edges, with the images of Jim and Hilda huddled inside their lean-to shelter gradually regaining visibility over the following two pages.  The film, by contrast, contains an entire sequence showing the surrounding environs completely unraveling in what looks like an unnaturally strong wind.  Another particularly striking aspect of the original book is its use of colour throughout, the warm reds and greens of earlier pages being replaced by colder, grimier colours once the bomb has been dropped, and the pale, washed-out sickliness of the final pages mirroring the couple's slow deterioration and eventual death from radiation poisoning. This isn't strictly replicated in the film, where the post-blast world is instead characterised by a dark, persistent smogginess.  It also creates its own unique visual identity by combining traditional animation with three dimensional props and backgrounds, giving the picture a curiously quaint aesthetic; the kitchen-sink banality of Jim and Hilda's life at once beguiling but also eerie, as we anticipate its inevitable and irrevocable destruction.  The film's soundtrack, which includes a title track by David Bowie and a score by Roger Waters, likewise adds immeasurably to the mood and character of the overall piece, the opening Bowie contribution being a stirring torrent of loss, desperation and dread, and the Waters score evoking a harrowing sense of a wide-eyed innocence giving out its last dying flickers amid the turmoil.

This inkling of a waning hopefulness and purity is given greater emphasis in Murakami's film, with the film-exclusive fantasy sequences providing a gentle, mournful representation of Jim and Hilda's inner hopes and dreams, as well as glimpses into their bygone years as a younger, more carefree couple.  Featured in these sequences is a recurring image of Hilda blowing down upon a dandelion and causing the seeds to scatter - naturally, there are ominous echoes here of the nuclear blast and its dispersing radiation all around, but it also shows a more wistful, childlike side to the fussy and pedantic Hilda, as she immerses herself in an escapist fantasy characterised by imagery evocative of illustrations from fairy tale storybooks.  There are occasional disturbances within these fantasies - for example, a group of angelic children surrounding a stain glass lamb which is subsequently shown roasted and carved up on a dinner table (tying in with the images of dead, scorched sheep we later see in the fields surrounding Jim and Hilda's house), but overall there's a genuine sense of visual beauty and emotional transcendence to these interludes which provides a welcome catharsis to the starkness of the surrounding picture.  Much like Jim and Hilda, the viewer is submerged in so much pain and desolation throughout that they'll too find themselves gasping for the occasional fresh breath of oxygen.

The film retains the book's notoriously bleak conclusion, as Jim and Hilda, now covered in bruises and severely emaciated, finally resign themselves to fate by slipping into their paper bags (a measure which even Jim had previously been inclined to dismiss as a joke) and staggering back into the lean-to shelter to wait for death.  Neither character seems willing to admit to the other that all hope is lost, with Jim still reassuring Hilda that The Powers That Be will know what to do when they find them, but there is a definite air of retreat and resignation to this final move, not least with Hilda ensuring that the box containing the couples' medical cards and birth certificates is safe and to hand.  At the very end, Jim and Hilda consider praying, in what seems like a curious cry of desperation from two characters who have not, up until now, indicated that they have any kind of religious leanings.  The book and film both close with Jim attempting to recite the Lord's Prayer, but even then, Briggs insists upon one final disturbance, with Jim, in his confused and weakened state, mixing in lines from "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and Hilda feebly begging him to stop.  The film takes this anguish up a whole extra level by throwing in a chilling visual metaphor, in which the camera slowly pans away from a light being cast against the lean-to shelter and sees it disappear into a live-action shot of clouds sweeping across a darkened sky.  Some might find this final imagery comforting, an indication that Jim and Hilda have been freed of their decaying bodies and carried up to Heaven, but to my mind the film offers no such reassurance - the fading Jim and Hilda are merely lost amid a merciless and chaotic wind that continues to blow death and destruction wherever it goes, the rays of sunlight which overwhelm the screen in the closing moments being eerily reminiscent of the same overpowering brightness that accompanied the blast.

When The Wind Blows undoubtedly earns its place as one of the all-time heart-breakers in the history of animation, almost on a par to the ending of The Snowman, in fact.  But then as we discussed, cheerfulness was never exactly Briggs' thing.

Finally, When The Wind Blows contains one of my all-time favourite end-credits stingers - as the last of the credits roll, we catch the eerie sounds of "MAD" being tapped out repeatedly in Morse code.  This stands for Mutual Assured Destruction, the principles of which Jim had previously attempted to explain to Hilda whilst killing time inside the shelter.  Here, it seems like yet another cry of desperation in the darkness; a third lost soul trying frantically to establish if there's anybody left alive out there to hear them.  And, of course, lamenting the overwhelming insanity of it all.

We'll close this review by taking it back to where it began (more or less), with David Bowie, on the first anniversary of his passing.  This dark and scary world is an infinitely brighter place for having had you, Starman.

The Reality Clock (2011)

The Reality Clock is an animated short by US film-maker Amanda Tasse, depicting the struggles of an elderly watchmaker (voice of J Louis Reid) to maintain a grip on his sense of space, time and personal identity during the onset of early stage Dementia.  While undertaking the Reality Comprehension Clock Test, an assessment in which patients are tasked with replicating a drawing of a clock face from memory, he misplaces his favourite pocket watch - an ostensibly trivial occurrence which causes him to become cast adrift in a crisis of temporal and spatial confusion.  In the midst of this, he is forced to grapple with his most pressing fear - namely, that the person he once was is slipping between his fingers and that the person he is now becoming is effectively a stranger to him.

Shot in stereoscopic 3D, The Reality Clock uses a hybrid of stop-motion animation, time-lapse photography and live action to create an affecting portrait of deterioration, both mental and physical, which poses the question as to what, if anything, remains of the being when so much of what once defined them in mind and body has been stripped and eroded by time.  This deterioration is shown from the perspective of the subject, and the film sets out to immerse the viewer in their peeling internal world.  The result makes for challenging but also tremendously powerful viewing.

As a watchmaker, the protagonist has a particularly pronounced relationship with time, and the separation from his pocket watch comes as a double-edged blow.  To him, the watch signifies everything that makes reality fixed and comprehensible - it embodies certainty and linearity, while its circular shape serves as an illustration of everything being connected in an unending cycle.  To have "lost the hours", as the protagonist puts it, is to have been severed from this comprehension, and the flurry of time-lapse photography depicting the day/night cycle and changing seasons in a distorted and fragmented succession reflects his tortured attempts relocate where he stands in this unraveling reality.  Even more cripplingly, a broken relationship with time marks a further detachment from his former self.  Time, his former ally, has tricked and betrayed him by facilitating his decline, signified by a sequence in which the watch is seen to be buried in the grasses of a metaphorical garden, and he now finds himself abandoned and forced to continue his way alone.

Overwhelmingly, the film captures the protagonist's sense of disconnect, not so much from time itself, but from who he is in relation to the passage of time.  At the heart of the short is the tension between the man he recalls he used to be and the man who now remains, whom the protagonist regards with an equal sense of suspicion and disconnect.  This is reflected, hauntingly, in the contrasting selection of medium used to represent the man at different stages of his life.  Initially, the stop-motion animation gives off an endearingly hand-crafted charm, but it becomes more troubling as we delve deeper into the film and see the confrontation play out between these discordant figures.  The younger man who haunts the protagonist's visions is a human being of flesh and blood (Marco Tazioli), while the man in the present is a puppet, indicative of his fears that he is less "real", a husk of his former self and, most frighteningly of all, no longer the driving force behind his own actions.  The protagonist finds himself stranded in a no man's land between two states of being - his former self little more than a spectral memory which gazes back at him with horror and despair, and he feels only loss and uncertainty when contemplating the man he is becoming.  It is in this state of estrangement from everything that he feels has defined him that he ultimately attains clarity, realising that as long as his life continues to endure, then he still has some firm footing on which to stand and locate himself as a person.  At the end of the film the man is reunited with his watch, although it is through his interactions with another circular object that has featured prominently throughout, a gramophone record, that he is finally able to reaffirm his sense of self.  We see him wind the gramophone in the manner of his younger counterpart, thus restarting the cycle and restoring his confidence that he remains connected to the ongoing circles and processes of life.

Tasse, who drew inspiration for The Reality Clock from her own interactions with dementia patients while volunteering at a hospice and from witnessing her father's decline from ill-health, has indicated that the purpose of the film is to give weight to the emotional potency lurking beneath the pains and challenges of deterioration - in the words of Student Academy Awards, "to value all stages of the human experience on a very basic level."  It is a deeply harrowing film, but ultimately rewarding in the poetic beauty it finds in the protagonist's endurance and his willingness to live and survive in the present moment, even when staring into inevitable decline.

Availability: You can watch the short on Vimeo.  Unfortunately, the privacy settings prevent me from embedding the video here.

Official website: http://therealityclock.com/

Don't Tell Santa You're Jewish! (2010)

Don't Tell Santa You're Jewish! from The Juki Museum on Vimeo.

Jody is a lonely Jew; she's apprehensive about the things that mark her out as different from her peers and she'd sooner not be drawing attention to herself when there are Christmas festivities afoot.  When her domineering mother pushes her into sitting on Santa's lap in order to get a present at her hockey club's Christmas party, Jody is fearful that Santa will expose her as a fraud, but instead she finds solidarity from an unexpected source.

Don't Tell Santa You're Jewish! is the work of Canadian independent animator Jody Kramer, and tells the charming story of a perceived outsider struggling with the sting of not fitting in during the festive season.  Jody's anxieties about meeting Santa and having to conceal her Jewishness are depicted in a manner that's instantly relatable, no matter what your religious or cultural affinities, while Kramer's soft but squirmy pastel-coloured art style captures a sense of childhood angst that's by turns squeamish and beguiling.  Owing largely to Jody's uneasiness about being forced into the Christmas festivities, the film's take on the holiday is refreshingly non-sentimental; indeed, there's a wry underpinning throughout in how Christmas is predominantly represented as a time of great self-interest and material gain, as exemplified by the girl who beleaguers Santa with her ridiculously long list of wants.  To the majority of party-goers, the tradition of sitting on Santa's lap is not regarded as anything other than a means of getting one's mitz upon a free present, the real joy and excitement of Christmas day being in finally getting to rip the paper off the damned thing.  Jody cares far less about such things that she does about trying to make it through the day with her social dignity intact, and we sympathise with her in having to traverse this crass little wasteland for the sake of a box with chintzy wrapping, the contents of which, we suspect, aren't actually all that amazing in the first place. 

In many respects, Kramer's film is a subversion of the traditional coming of age story in which a child is forced to confront the reality (or non-reality) of Santa.  Here, it's the destruction of Santa's mystique - the peeling away of the beard to reveal a mere human hiding behind a bulky suit - that makes him accessible to Jody.  For much of the film, Jody's view of Santa is as the embodiment of everything that makes her feel different and isolated in the world, but her anxieties subside the instant that she's able to see past that and identify with the man underneath.  She walks away with a newfound confidence, lifted by the realisation that she's not so alone in trying to get by in a world that's not intrinsically understanding or sympathetic, and maybe not as bound by labels or convention as she always assumed.  Jody's social unease also seems to have lessened by the end - compared to the sneering suspicion of the two girls who confronted her in the queue, the two girls who greet her post-Santa seem much more accepting (perhaps because Jody is now holding a present and can be safely recognised as one of them), leading to a humorous exchange in which Jody, awkwardly but more self-assured than before, attempts to return their seasonal greetings using her own more inclusive vernacular.

Notably, Jody leaves the party with a freedom which would surely make her the envy of her impatient, present-craving peers, in that she is not bound by any tradition which forbids her from opening her gift before Christmas day.  Only we know that this isn't really important to Jody, and it's no surprise that the the tangible present doesn't even come up during the final scene showing the ride home.  Instead, Jody's mind is elsewhere - now much more open to the notion that limitations can be challenged and, no longer feeling inhibited by either her religion or her gender, she ponders if she too can assume the role of Santa one day.  This sureness in her own adaptability is the real gift that Santa (ahem, Adam Steinbauer) has bestowed on her, and Jody's desire to inspire those same feelings of support and solidarity in others has a gentle wholesomeness that far transcends the commercialism unfolding around her.  Ultimately, it's a joyous ode to the simple human connections that remind us that we always belong in the world, no matter what kinds of barriers it seems intent on erecting, and that we can figure out how to survive and play our part in it.

Happy seasonal holidays, everyone.  And be sure to check out Jody Kramer's official website.  She has some really neat stuff tucked away in there.

Confessions of a Family Dog Viewer: "Family Dog Gets Good and Sick"

Original air date: 28th July 1993

Baby, we made it.  We've reached the tenth and final episode of Family Dog - once this particular instalment had aired, the character's career was at a total dead-end and the series was immediately consigned to the scrapheap of ill-fated and ill-advised ventures into television animation, where it had Fish Police, Capitol Critters and the Hollywood Dog pilot for company.  The really pressing question, of course, is does it at least enable the series to go out on a high note?  Yeah, I'd say so, in that "Family Dog Gets Good and Sick" is easily the outright weirdest episode in all the series, and that's not such a bad way of wrapping things up.  Not to mention that it actually works pretty effectively as a finale.  If you read the introductory post I wrote on the series back in June, you might recall me mentioning that there were originally intended to be thirteen episodes of Family Dog, although production difficulties meant that three of those episodes never saw the light of the day.  As essentially nothing is known about the three discarded episodes, I cannot say definitively if "Family Dog Gets Good and Sick" was actually intended to be the series finale, but if you'd presented it to me as such then I could certainly buy it.  The closing images have a surprisingly poignant sense of finality to them - in fact, for each and every flaw I've picked at over the course of this retrospective I do have to give the series props for rounding things off as sweetly as it does.  If there's a totally, 100% sincere complement I can pay Family Dog, it's that the specific scene it bows out upon actually ranks as one of my all-time favourite series closers.  There's a lovely, delicate sense of subtly and sensitivity in the final moments that was totally absent from just about everywhere else in the series.  It's so beautiful and yet it also frustrates the hell out of me, because it hints at what Family Dog might have been with just a dose more heart and sharper scripting.

The biggest weakness of "Family Dog Gets Good and Sick" is, as has so often been the case with this series, story structure.  This episode feels, more than any other before it, like two back-to-back shorts which happen to be linked upon a common theme; namely, the dog feeling out of sorts for various reasons.  In the first half, the dog has his first encounter with canine mortality when he comes face-to-face with the corpse of a neighbourhood dog who was struck down by a car, and descends into a state of feverish paranoia upon realising that he could be next.  In the second, the dog gets bitten by a radioactive mosquito (no kidding) and becomes a feverish, now perpetually-vomiting wreck (no doggy vomit appears onscreen, but he gets up to some first-rate gagging).  In both cases, a certain female chihuahua from Family Dog's past plays a vital role in leading him down the road to recovery.  "Family Dog Gets Good and Sick" sees the return of Al and Katie from "Doggone Girl Is Mine", which also adds to the sense of finality - Al's long list of misfortunes have been intermittently alluded to over the course of series, so there is a sense here of an underlying subplot coming full circle.

As I say, "Family Dog Gets Good and Sick" is a weird little episode, which is largely due to the state of stomach-churning delirium in which the dog spends most of its running time (be warned that this may be a bit much to handle if you happen to have a particularly sensitive stomach yourself).  The whole radioactive mosquito thing is pretty far-out, although it's honestly nice to see the show wandering into somewhat freakier territory - a dash more of this kind of warped insanity might have enabled it to overcome some of tedium which weighed down a number of episodes.

The episode opens with the dog crying out mournfully as a plane passes overhead and Skip observing that he does that every time he notices a plane in the sky.  This behaviour mystifies the Binfords, who are happy to write it off as another symptom of their pet's perceived stupidity, although the episode is at pains to remind the viewer that it's because the dog is thinking about his loved and lost, Katie, from whom he was cruelly separated at the end of "Doggone Girl Is Mine".  We get a lengthy flashback to that episode, which lasts for over a minute and is another example of this series either being really desperate to fill out the time or simply not recognising when a sequence is dragging on too long (did we really need reminding that the dogs "made fireworks" in that episode, for instance?).  Obviously, the idea is to ensure that viewers will remember who Katie is, but they could have pulled it off a lot more concisely.  Included at the end of the flashback is a moment between our dog and Katie which wasn't actually part of the original episode, in which our dog shoots a really cheesy, distinctly anthropomorphic grin at Katie shortly before being tossed off the plane by the airline stewardess - turns out that the dog is actually dreaming this portion of the flashback, so I guess that some artistic license can be taken.

The dog awakes with a start to the sounds of an extremely nasty-sounding thud, coupled with an ominous whine coming from the real world, and slowly rises to his feet as a neighbourhood woman can be overheard arguing with a priest about why he failed to stop in time.  The dog casually strolls over to the garden fence and, through a tiny crack observes a few more of the neighbours rushing over to the scene in question - among them the Mahoneys, making their last ever appearance.  The dog gets excited, thinking that a really fun adventure is happening further up the street and that he needs to be a part of it too, so he goes inside the house to grab his leash and gesture that he wants to be taken for a walk.  Inside the house, Bev can be heard ordering Billy to stay put while she goes out to investigate with Skip, but Billy happily disregards that when he sees the dog with the leash in his mouth - "I'll take you", he tells the dog, a little too gleefully, "but I don't think you're gonna like it."

Billy and the dog head over to the gathering crowd, some of whom are wailing out in horror, but most of whom are complaining angrily about the lack of a stop sign on the street and how an accident like this had been inevitable for months.  It takes a while for the dog to get past them, but the instant he gets a gander of what they're all gathered around - the crumpled body of Noodles, the beloved dog of another local family - as Billy predicted, the wag goes right out of his tail.  There's a particularly morbid bit where our dog walks right up to Noodles' corpse and, not quite understanding the situation, attempts to nudge him back to life, but gets nowhere and resorts to barking in desperation.

At this point, Skip and Bev get wise to the fact that Billy has snuck out to the accident scene against their wishes, and it suddenly occurs me that Buffy must be all alone inside the house without any form of supervision.  Surely Skip and Bev weren't stupid enough to suppose that Billy would make a responsible babysitter?  Oh well, one more negligence point for them, I suppose.  Billy attempts to drag the dog back home but has difficulty keeping him under control - suddenly, the dog has become a jittery bag who jumps at the sight of everything on wheels (this leads to a rather nice sight gag in which a car whizzes by bearing the license plate DOGETR).  Billy of course isn't terribly sympathetic, but there is a fleeting moment in which he does seem genuinely concerned for the dog.

Back at the house, the dog's nerves still refuse to settle, as he discovers that his fear of being struck down by anything on wheels has generalised into a fear of just about everything around him that can be construed as vaguely threatening.  The sight of Bev chopping up a watermelon for dinner becomes the stuff of nightmares, as does Skip munching on a cooked chicken, and Billy digging ravenously into a box of - what else? - noodles.  Be warned that this particular sequence isn't for the faint of heart - not because it's scary in any way, shape or form (although does succeed in being sufficiently uncomfortable) but because the sight of Billy scarfing down those noodles is rendered in stomach-churning detail (this is coming from somebody who has a thing about seeing other people eat, but nevertheless, I defy you not to start grappling with your own gag reflexes while watching this scene).  Billy notices that the dog is staring uneasily at him and tauntingly asks if he would like some noodles (Billy is a terrible person, but then I'm sure that you get that point by now).  Bev orders Billy to leave the dog alone but then goes ahead and pours a whole tub of noodles into his bowl, which the dog, unsurprisingly, has no appetite for.  Buffy is overheard chanting, "Kill the eggroll!" over and over - this is the only Buffy moment in the entire series that I'd say comes halfway-close to working, in that it does set you somewhat on edge.  The dog finally decides that his had enough of the Binfords' culinary horrors and retreats outside to the yard, but even there finds no peace of mind, thanks to a couple of neighbourhood kids on the other side of the fence who are playing catch and dissecting the Noodles occurence with morbid fascination.  The dog has a disturbing vision in which Skip and Billy invite him to play catch with them, but are actually conspiring to kill him by throwing the ball out into the street and having him chase out after it into the path of a speeding car.  Actually, given Tim Burton's involvement in the series, I suspect that this may even be a reference to the original Frankenweenie - at any rate, this grisly method of doggy execution seems to be a recurring motif in his projects.

The dog may be paranoid, but that doesn't mean that the Binfords aren't actually a bunch of callous creeps out to get him.  The absolute low point of "Family Dog Gets Good and Sick" is a scene in which Billy and Buffy are tormenting dog by hurling lumps of play clay at him inside his kennel, and Skip, instead of chastising the little demons he sired, encourages them to switch to tormenting the dog by pelting him with kibble, on the grounds that "at least he can eat it".  At this late in the game I shouldn't really be shocked by the Binfords' casual cruelty, but I've always seriously disliked how this series tries to have it both ways with regards to the family's treatment of their dog.  We're supposed to believe that the Binfords really care about their pet and that, if he were to disappear from home (as we saw in the previous episode) or become deeply, horrendously ill (as we'll see later on in this episode) they'd be devastated, but the notion that that somehow nullifies unpleasant and utterly pointless acts of abuse such as this really doesn't wash.

Bev, thankfully, has the decency to stand up for the dog, commenting that he appears to be unwell, as dog gazes down upon the pieces of kibble Skip just threw at him and, in his paranoid frenzy, sees them morph into an array of bugs and earthworms which start crawling around at his feet. Skip and Bev continue to argue over the dog's health as the family retires to the house for the evening - Skip asserts that the dog is simply having an odd mood, but this is really just an excuse to start mooing at Bev and give us our final reference to the couple's barnyard-themed sex life.  They leave the dog in the midst of yet another nightmare, this time involving his kennel being destroyed by a car and him being knocked into a bizarre fantasy land populated by hordes of rolling care tyres.  It's a pretty tame sequence for the most part, the most eye-poppingly surreal element being that we to see the dog in unusually anthropomorphic poses that at times seem almost Wile E. Coyote-esque.

Things take an unexpected turn when the dog feels a friendly tongue licking his face and looks up to see Katie standing above him.  Suddenly, all his fears and anxieties fade away and it transforms into a very pleasant dream sequence indeed, the dog getting to romp around with Katie through a picturesque green park.

The dog wakes up in considerably better spirits and, seeing a butterfly, leaps up to chase it playfully around the yard.  The Binfords observe their reinvigorated pet from their bedroom windows and remark that he appears to be over his period of sickness/low mood.  Thus ends the first half of the episode, and the incident with Noodles ceases to be an issue from this point onward.  As I say, this episode feels even bittier and more disjointed than usual, the second half relating to the first in only a thematic sense - in retrospect, the entire Noodles scenario seems like little more than a drawn-out means of establishing the magical healing influence of Katie, since it's the only really direct continuation that we have between the two halves.  One can't help but wonder if it started life as a separate episode altogether but got merged into another because the writers couldn't figure out how to make it stand up on its own.

The second half has distinctly odd beginnings, as we fade in to find ourselves in the entirely alien environs of a heavily polluted river languishing within the outskirts of a nuclear power plant.  A water rat is seen swimming around in the toxic waste-filled depths and emerges to reveal that it's actually a hideous rodent-fish mutation, while a sickly-looking frog perches upon a nuclear waste drum and belches out incessantly.  None of these sight gags are as endearingly warped as Blinky, the three-eyed fish who inhabits the river beyond the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant in The Simpsons, but there is nevertheless something vaguely disconcerting about this entire sequence, underscored by the jarring absence of any background music.  A mosquito hovers above the polluted waters and drinks its fill before flying off, all poised to inflict a bellyful of toxins into the bloodstream of an unsuspecting suburbanite.

The mosquito has its own leitmotif, this really twangy, incessant little tune that's not exactly threatening, but does add neatly to the overall sense of confusion and delirium that runs throughout the episode.  We see the world from the mosquito's perspective as it hovers around the Binfords' back yard, approaching each member of the human family for a sneaky nibble but repeatedly being repelled before it can get quite close enough, until finally it finds an easy target in the sleeping dog.  The dog cries out in pain as the mosquito chomps down upon his muzzle, but the instant he tries to leap to his feet he finds his senses dissolving in a dizzying whirl.  As he staggers feebly across the yard, we hear more of that eerie, twangy guitar music, only this time drawn-out and with a heavily disorientating vibe.  One thing that this episode pulls off very effectively is in giving us a convincing sense of the dog's sickness, perhaps a little too much for comfort - indeed, by the time the dog reaches to the grass clippings bag and proceeds to unload the contents of his digestive system therein, I suspect that you'll already be halfway reaching for a barf bag yourself.

The Binfords can't deny that there's something seriously, life-threateningly wrong with their dog on this occasion, so in the very next scene they're all gathered in the living room, Bev clutching the woozy dog upon her lap while Skip leafs through the phone book in search of a cheap vet who's open Sundays (leave it to the Binfords not to spring for any particularly expensive veterinary care for their pet, even in the event of an emergency).  Just as Skip stumbles upon a promising ad, the dog's gag reflexes start going berserk and the family quickly twig that he's going to barf yet again.  This leads to a wonderful moment in which Bev drops the retching dog on Buffy's lap and, as Buffy erupts in a horrified scream, I kept thinking about how glorious it would be to end the series with the dog vomiting all over this ghastly little hellspawn.  Alas, no such scene occurs; Bev grabs a hold of the dog yet again and manages to get him successfully upstairs and above the toilet bowl before he unloads.  Again, no canine vomit appears onscreen, but it you're the easily grossed-out sort then odds are that you won't appreciate just how nauseatingly graphic some of the sound effects are.

The following morning, Skip takes the dog to the vet and it's worth noting that, from this point onward, he's the only human Binford to appear onscreen for the remainder of the episode.  We do hear Billy and Buffy's voices at the very end of the episode, but their ugly mugs are now out of the picture forever, and it gives me immense gratification to be able to type that.  The dog has a tough time of it on the way to the vet's, owing to the number of potholes in the road and his still very-fragile stomach.  He's also none-too-happy when Skip pulls up outside the building and he recognises the veterinary building which, being a fairly typical dog, he associates with being poked and prodded in uncomfortable places.  Once Skip's actually dragged the dog inside the building however, we see a dramatic transformation in his demeanor, his sickness and anxieties ceasing to be the instant he gets wind of a delightfully familiar scent lingering around the waiting room.  Yep, Katie was here, and the dog just missed seeing her before she was taken away into a veterinary room for a check-up.  Skip is rather put out that the dog appears to have made a miraculous recovery just as he's managed to get him to the vet's, and insists that he's going to get a shot regardless.

As the dog is taken away by the vet and subjected to a highly unpleasant-looking anal probing, Skip runs into Al, who explains that he's now a qualified pilot and able to fly back and forth between South Dakota and his former stomping ground on weekends, so he's brought Katie back for her annual check-up (apparently having failed to register her with a local vet in South Dakota).  Al claims that his donut shop has been a success and that his break-up with Vina was the best thing that ever happened to him, but lets it slip that he's still very much fixated on her.  Meanwhile Skip, who's no better-disposed toward Al than he was in "Doggone Girl Is Mine", struggles to feign any degree of interest or sympathy.  The dog receives a shot, which the vet informs Skip will leave him unconscious for the rest of the day, but before it can fully take effect the dog makes one last desperate effort to be reunited with Katie, managing to make it as far as her carrier before completely keeling over.

Outside in the veterinary parking lot, Skip shakes hands with Al, wishing him a safe flight back home, but can be heard muttering "Buddy Holly, Patsy Kline and Al..." as he turns to walk away (yeah, Skip's a jerk, what else is new?).  Back at the house, Skip carries the unconscious dog out to his kennel and leaves him sleeping peacefully on his side (he strokes the dog fondly before finally leaving him, which is a pretty sweet touch).  The dog is so heavily sedated that not even in the sounds of a plane crashing down upon the Binfords' roof mere moments later are enough to rouse him.  As the Binfords all cry out in confusion, we hear Al nervously explaining that he forgot to put fuel in his tank and might need to stay with them for the weekend.  Meanwhile, a blackened Katie lands beside the kennel and, escaping her disintegrating carrier, is thrilled to pieces to find herself unexpectedly reunited with the love of her life.  She attempts to wake our dog but is unable to do so; alas, the effects of the drugs are simply too strong.  This saddens Katie, but she resigns herself to settling down and sleeping alongside him.  As the two animals lie huddled together, we see a thought bubble revealing what the dog is dreaming, and with it, our final image of the series - poignantly, his dream involves himself sleeping peacefully inside his kennel with Katie right there at his side.  He sleeps on, unaware that his dream has become reality.

Call me sentimental, but I actually do get a slight tear in my eye during this scene.  Family Dog did succeed in bringing out my inner sop, even if was literally at the very last second.

Anyway, this being the end of our Family Dog saga, I thought I'd round off with a general overview of the series and how I rank each episode individually.  Here are my collective impressions:

Best of a Runty Litter: Doggone Girl Is Mine, Eye on The Sparrow, Party Animal, Family Dog Gets Good and Sick

Decent Enough: Dog Days of Summer

Somewhat Tedious: Call of The Mild

Pretty Fricking Tedious: Show Dog, Hot Dog at the Zoo

Broken: Family Dog Goes Homeless

So Fucked It's Art: Enemy Dog

Oh, and hang tight because there is still an epilogue (or should that be prologue?) to come for this retrospective.  I couldn't possibly bid farewell to the character without also taking a look at the original Amazing Stories episode, now could I?

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.