Children's Lessons in Mortality: Paz The Penguin - "Things Change"

If you think that death is a subject that no pre-school show would ever touch with a 50-ft pole, then think again.  Because we have Paz to demonstrate otherwise.

Paz The Penguin, also known as The Paz Show, was a Canadian/British co-production that debuted in 2003, and aired on Discovery Kids in the US as part of the Ready, Set, Learn! block.  Based on a series of picture books by Irish author Mary Murphy, it follows the adventures of an inquisitive young penguin named Paz as he explores the world around him, learning how to make sense of various concepts and the emotions they evoke in him.  Paz is often accompanied by three friends of assorted species and accent - Pig (Italian), Dog (Irish) and Rabbit (English) - and is parented by an adult penguin whom he only ever addresses as "Big Penguin", leaving me a bit unclear as to what her actual relation is to Paz.  The other prominent adult in Paz's life is his grandfather, Pappy, a seasoned globe-trotter whose many anecdotes and pearls of wisdom from his exploration days are nectar to Paz's adventurous spirit.

As pre-school cartoons go, Paz The Penguin definitely leans on the underappreciated side - it's every bit as cute and colourful as you would expect from a show about a playful, pint-sized penguin and his motley crew of animal friends, but there's a surprisingly sharp layer of poignancy to numerous episodes which makes watching these endearing tykes going through their struggles and overcoming personal obstacles a fair bit more affecting than you might expect at first glance.  Certainly, there were none more affecting than "Things Change", the episode in which Paz must come to terms with death for the very first time in his life.  Hard-bitten adults with an aversion to letting their sorrow show are advised to approach this one with extreme caution, because it's an absolute tearjerker; unassuming, yet unflinchingly blunt in its examination of a young child's budding awareness of the reality of death.  I cannot overstate just how thoroughly this simple but elegantly-told little tale will succeed in ripping your heartstrings apart.

Compared to "Cookie Chomper", the Alvin & The Chipmunks episode on the subject of death, "Things Change" doesn't deal with personal loss or bereavement so much as the basic concept of death and the necessity of coming to terms with its place in the cycle of life.  It does so in an admirably stark manner which makes no bones about what death is - the permanence and the irreversibility of the state - but it also ends on an uplifting note which points to the ultimate resilience of life, a reminder that the cycle of life must keep on moving no matter what kinds of loss or hardship it's forced to endure.  "Things Change" acknowledges that when death occurs it's sad and, potentially, unfair, but that it is nevertheless an inescapable part of the order of things.  Paz doesn't get an easy answer to some of the questions he poses - in fact, Pappy flat-out tells him at one point that there are no answers when he asks him why a death had to happen - and while in the end he has little choice but to accept the disturbance and to learn to live with sadness, when he becomes aware that the world around him is healing and moving forward, he too learns to find solace in the hope and promise of a new day.

"Things Change" opens with Paz, Dog, Pig and Rabbit playing up a tree when Paz stumbles across a birds' nest home to three baby robins.  The four friends coo benignly over the tiny nestlings, only to be driven away by the angry mother bird who, Paz correctly deduces, doesn't appreciate them getting so close to her offspring.  Later, we rejoin Paz on a particularly stormy night; Paz is looking forward to going on a fishing trip with Pappy the following morning and worries that the weather might spoil their plans, but Big Penguin assures him that stormy weather is part of the natural cycle of life and enables things to grow.  Unfortunately, it also comes with a more destructive side that Paz is totally unprepared for.

The following morning, as Paz and Pappy are making their way toward fishing grounds, they pass the birds' tree and notice the nest lying in a crumpled wreck upon the ground.  The mother robin is standing nearby, visibly distressed and huddled protectively over her babies, although only two of them are actually in sight.  Inspecting the scene more closely, Pappy finds the body of the third baby bird concealed in the wreckage of the nest.  Paz, who has never seen anything like this before, is startled and confused, and struggles to comprehend the nature and permanence of death.  Below is a transcript of the ensuing discussion between Paz and Pappy:

Paz: Pappy, is he hurt?  Is he okay?

Pappy: No Paz, he's not okay.

Paz: Can we help him?

Pappy: I'm sorry, Paz, we can't help him.  He's dead.

Paz: What do you mean?

Pappy: Well, the winds from the storm must have blown the nest from the tree.  When the bird fell, his body was hurt so badly that he died.

Paz: He looks like he's asleep.  Maybe he's going to wake up and wanna play again.

Pappy: No Paz, no, he's not going to wake up again.  He can't play any more.  His body has stopped working.

Paz: Oh...why did it have to happen?

Pappy: Oh, Paz, I wish I had an answer.  Things happen.  Good things, bad things, happy things...

Paz: Sad things.

There follows a tender scene in which Paz and Pappy bury the dead baby bird by covering his body with leaves and then salvage the nest, allowing the mother bird space to return her two surviving babies before restoring it to its original spot in the tree.  Afterwards, Paz tells Pappy that he doesn't feel like going fishing any more, which Pappy understands, assuring Paz that sometimes there is no other way forward than to allow yourself time to be sad.

A short while passes and Paz remains very affected by the experience, expressing concern that the two remaining baby birds might suffer a similar fate.  Big Penguin assures him that birds are well-adapted to living outside and know how to protect themselves, but this bothers Paz, who questions how the baby bird could have died anyway.  Big Penguin explains that sometimes accidents simply happen, which doesn't exactly put to rest Paz's concerns.  He remains troubled, but ultimately takes comfort in the sight of the mother robin flying overhead with her two surviving babies in tow - they, now, are capable of flight, a development which delights and amazes Paz.  The cycle of life continues to turn, and although Paz has learned that this has its cruel and painful side, he takes joy in the beauty and pleasure it equally brings.

The episode closes with a sense of renewed optimism, evoking the fragility of life but also its tremendous strength, and the will and energy which enable it to keep on moving in that continuous cycle of growth, change and replenishment.  This is definitely the most understated lesson of the episode, as Paz never explicitly acknowledges it - he simply sees the baby birds flying and becomes happy again - but it's communicated very effectively.  The episode title, "Things Change", encapsulates both aspects of this, alluding to the inevitability of death and loss as an aspect of life, but also to the necessity of life to carry on and to bring renewal, and to the hope and happiness that will eventually follow on from sorrow.  Birth, death, growth, change - nothing in life can possibly stay the same, and learning to accept and understand all stages of that cycle, and how they connect to one another, is an integral part of figuring out how to thrive in the world.

Hound Town (1989)

In my review of Hollywood Dog, I lumped Hound Town in with a list of failed animated pilots looking to capitalise upon Fox's unexpected runaway success with The Simpsons.  I realise that was probably a mite unfair of me, given that IMDb has Hound Town's air date listed as 1st September 1989, well ahead of the initial airing of the debut Simpsons episode, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", on 17th December 1989.  So it's probably safe to say that this wasn't a reaction to the Simpsons' success so much as a coincidental attempt from around the same time to restart the prime-time animated sitcom.  Hound Town was directed by indie animation whizz Ralph Bakshi, most famous for the feature films Fritz The Cat (1972) and The Lord of the Rings (1978), the former of which was a landmark in the history of adult animation, it being the very first cartoon to be rated X (time has not been especially kind to it, though if you ask me it still holds up infinitely better after 45 years than Sausage Party does after less than one).  In the late 1980s, he'd found success (and a share of controversy) in children's television with the series Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, and Hound Town was an attempt to expand that craft into the prime-time adult market that had eluded animation for so long.  A pilot was created for NBC, although it failed to impress the powers-that-be, who reportedly aired it only once before canning it forever.  As a result, Hound Town is another of those obscure animated projects that's proved devilishly hard to find over the years.  The recording making the rounds on YouTube right now is of very poor quality, which is tolerable enough if you're really determined to see this thing, but not at all ideal for image sourcing - meaning that, aside from the above title card, this is going to be an all-text review.

Update April 2017: A better quality version of the pilot has since surfaced, so I've added in a few images.

Hound Town wasn't the only discarded Bakshi series from the same era to live on as a solitary pilot - the 1988 special Christmas In Tattertown was originally intended as the launching pad for a series called Junktown on Nickelodeon, which didn't happen, though we'll get to that one at a later date.  Unlike Christmas In Tattertown, Bakshi did not write Hound Town, with scripting credits going to Prudence Fraser and Robert Sternin, who also wrote for the fairy tale-inspired sitcom The Charmings.  Bakshi also apparently wasn't very fond of the finished product - in fact, he went so far as to denounce it as an "embarrassing piece of shit."  Harsh words, but certainly, compared to the offbeat sharpness of The Simpsons, there's something distinctly naive and outmoded about Hound Town's efforts to appear hip and daring (it uses a laugh track, for eff's sake). We can tell that they were courting an adult audience because the characters drop a shit-ton of sexual innuendo throughout, but the script lacks bite, and the resulting cartoon feels like a weird hybrid of a somewhat off-kilter children's show and the hoariest sitcom imaginable.  It's not helped along by the presence of that infernal laugh track, which goes off at numerous points where I frankly don't even see what the joke was supposed be.

Hound Town's premise is essentially very similar to that of Illumination's recent merchandise spinner, The Secret Life of Pets, in that it follows the exploits of an assorted group of domestic mutts, here living in an ostensibly pristine suburban neighbourhood, and what they get up to when their owners aren't around.  Our main trio of dogs are the timid, pint-sized Rusty (Michael Manasseri), cocksure womaniser Napoleon (Christopher Rich) and a despairing bulldog named Patton (Charlie Alder, doing a telltale Harvey Fierstein impersonation), whose chaotic household is a hotbed of psychological torture in ways that make Family Dog's life seem luxurious by comparison.  In the pilot, Rusty's life is turned upside down by the arrival of Sasha (Miriam Flynn), an alluring and mysterious saluki whose uptight family have recently moved in up the street.  Napoleon offers to play matchmaker between the two, but is secretly looking to score with Sasha himself (via an elaborate scheme which involves throwing a wild party at Rusty's house while his owners are out of town), all while having to fend off the advances of Muffin (Jennifer Darling) a morbidly obese basset hound who fancies herself and Napoleon as a couple.

Hound Town has a barrage of issues that make much of it unappealing - first and foremost being that Napoleon is a thoroughly despicable character (why does a nice dog like Rusty even choose to hang around with such a manipulative and self-serving creep?), and the whole business between him and Muffin is pretty fucking obnoxious.  The viewer is blatantly intended to sympathise with Napoleon in being repulsed by Muffin because she's fat, ungainly and everything that Sasha isn't, which as a dynamic is odious enough, but it gets even more problematic toward the end when Napoleon gets liquored up and Muffin is heavily implied to have taken advantage of him in his severely drunken state - as in, she carried him off and fucked him in the bushes.  Yikes, that's seriously uncool.

Secondly, there's the utterly tone-deaf manner in which Patton's miserable home life is played for laughs.  I gave Family Dog quite the roasting for its casual depiction of a dysfunctional household in which the dog suffers constant ill-treatment at the hands of a family we're expected to believe are ultimately good for him, but Hound Town takes it up a whole extra level of unbearable by making Patton's family much more flagrantly abusive to one another.  In addition to being harassed by a pair of eight year old psychopaths, Patton has to contend with being caught in the crossfires of constant screaming matches between the mismatched mom and pop of the household, who each have very different ideas about how to treat their dog.  We don't see that much of the humans in this story, but for what little we do they seem to do an awful lot of screeching at one another - there's a scene where we see Rusty's family drive by in a car and they're likewise going at each other's throats.  Like Family Dog, Hound Town appears to fatally misjudge what viewers will find hilariously relatable about the chaos of everyday family life and what just looks like a bunch of humans being incredibly obnoxious.

Is there anything that Hound Town does right, then?  Yes - once you get past her fanboy-baiting character design and her somewhat ridiculous backstory (she's an ex-show dog who harpooned her showing career because she once ate a hot dog), Sasha the saluki is actually fairly likeable, and her interactions with Rusty in the latter half of the story do offer one or two genuinely heartfelt moments amid the inanity.  Outcast from the show dog circuit, Sasha fears that she's nothing more than a "bad investment" to her humans, but Rusty convinces her that being a faithful family pet is a worthy occupation.  Sasha's home life is troubled in a way that's sadder and more understated than Patton's, and she's able to convey a air of vulnerability lurking beneath her aloof exterior that's rather affecting.  Rusty makes for a fairly bland hero, but up against an insufferable jerk like Napoleon it's nevertheless gratifying to see him come out on top.


Scatological/Gross-out Factor:

Scatological gags are few and far between, the rude humour being more heavily focused upon the dogs' reproductive urges, but obviously in a show revolving around the finer points of day-to-day canine existence, it's going to figure somewhere.  So, Napoleon sticks his nose (albeit inadvertently) up Muffin's butt crack, Patton takes a leak over his owners' carpet (off-screen, but we hear the noises plainly enough) and Napoleon threatens to shit in a flower bed.


Disturbing/Inappropriate Humour Factor:

As noted, Napoleon is a lecherous womaniser, and he doesn't just restrict this to his own species.  There are a couple of scenes in which he's implied to get sexually aroused by the sight of his human mistress in a bikini and by staring at her butt while she's doing aerobics. Sorry, but that's all just a little too weird and creepy for my tastes.  I know that cartoon bestiality was in in 1989, what with the "Opposites Attract" video and all, but then MC Skat Kat didn't also happen to be Paula Abdul's house pet.

There's also a painfully misjudged gag where Patton's human mistress asks him if her children were scaring him and he thinks in response, "They should be taken to the pediatrician and put to sleep."  The kids in question may be utter sociopaths, and I certainly pity that poor cockroach they're last seen racing after, but DUDE!


Random Observations:

• The pilot doesn't make a huge deal of it, but Patton is blatantly intended to be gay.  His voice being modeled upon that of Harvey Fierstein (one of the few openly gay celebrities of the time) is a big enough hint, but the dead giveaway occurs during a scene where Sasha walks into the party and the guys all Tex Avery over her, while Patton can be glimpsed sitting nonchalantly with the unimpressed females.
• The script may be lowbrow as sin, but it does throw in a Mephistopheles reference to appease any literary boffins who may be watching.
• Somewhat dodgy scripting...as Sasha tries to leave the party, Rusty mutters to himself, "Oh great, Rusty, you blew it already."  Sasha overhears this, then immediately asks Rusty for his name.
• There are a couple of cats who show up in the latter half of the episode and look for a fleeting moment like they're going to become the villains of this scenario (there is an air about them that's vaguely reminiscent of Si and Am from Lady and The Tramp), but nope, turns out that, as characters, they're pretty incidental.  We never learn their names or where the heck they even stand in this particular dynamic; they're just a pair of random cats thrown in as a plot device to send Rusty's party off the rails.  Oh, and speaking of Lady and The Tramp, there's a scene where Rusty and Sasha are dining at the back of a Mexican restaurant that's so reminiscent of that film's most famous scene that it has to be deliberate.

Laugh Track Bafflers:

The inclusion of a laugh track was one of Hound Town's biggest technical misjudgements, making it reminiscent of the old Hanna-Barbera sitcoms in a way that no cutting-edge cartoon at the dawn of the 90s ever wanted to be.  It also makes watching it a greatly more confusing experience.  The laugh track is plastered all over the shop, to the extent that the characters can't seem to do or say anything without the damned thing erupting, irrespective of whether it actually makes sense or not.  Below are some of the most baffling moments where the laugh track indicates that there should be a real knee-slapper here but I just don't see it:


(As Napoleon leads Rusty and Patton across the road, having just caused a pile-up with his carelessness.)
Patton: "Oh, I'm going to be road pizza."
"Pizza" is a quirkier term than "kill", I suppose.


(At the party, as Patton begins to suspect that Napoleon is planning something underhanded.)
Patton: "How long have you known Napoleon?"
Rusty: "People years or dog years?"
Dogs age at a different rate to humans, of course...but what's the joke here, exactly?


(As Rusty tells Sasha that he shares her love of junk food, including hot dogs, cheeseburgers and tacos.)
Sasha: "Tacos?  Qu'est-ce que c'est...tacos?"
This one in particular vexes me.  Is the joke really that Sasha doesn't know what tacos are, or is there something more to it than that?


(As Rusty explains to Sasha why being a family dog isn't so bad.)
Rusty: "Don't get me wrong, now, as a species, humans have their problems.  I think it all stems from too little hair."
And the joke here is that humans have less hair than dogs, and from a dog's perspective that looks weird?


(As Rusty shows Sasha around the neighbourhood.)
Rusty: "Hey, see this maple over here? That's where I tree'd my first mailman."
Yes, I know that dogs have this thing about postal workers.  Maybe I'm being nitpicky but, as with a lot of these gags revolving around canine behaviour and impulses, I don't get what's automatically so damned funny about it.

The Verdict:

If not for one or two genuinely sweet moments between Sasha and Rusty and the agreeable quality of the animation, I'd be inclined to dismiss Hound Town, much as Bakshi did himself, as an all-out disaster.  The characters are largely unlikeable, the humour is crass and unfunny and the story hinges upon one of the most hackneyed sitcom plots of all-time, with the narrative thread involving the party at Rusty's house playing out note-for-note as you would expect it to (of course the house will get trashed, and of course Rusty will clear it up in a madcap frenzy right before his humans return, and of course he'll overlook one tiny incriminating detail which will have him in the doghouse).  In the end, I would recommend Hound Town only if you're a Bakshi completist, a hardcore animation buff or simply pathologically obsessed with failure.

All the same, I would sooner subject myself to this again than Sausage Party.  At least Hound Town doesn't waste half as much of your time with its tedious sexual fixations.

Hollywood Dog (1990)

 
We've already touched on the misfortunes of that wave of early 90s prime time cartoons which wanted to run with the grown-up crowd but tripped up and perished straight out of the gate, living on now as a mere footnote to animation buffs and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it sight gag in a Halloween episode of The Simpsons to everyone else.  Fish Police, Capitol Critters and my somewhat ironic favourite of the triad, Family Dog - they all had it coming, believe me.  But what of that wave of prime time animations more unfortunate still, to the extent that they never made it past the pilot stage and, as such, don't even have the luxury of being remembered as a flop Simpsons competitor?  If you're familiar with the likes of The Jackie Bison Show, Hound Town and Hollywood Dog, then it seems a safe bet that you're not only a pretty hardcore animation buff but that you share my particular interest in the obscurities and castaways of the medium.  When, having kicked off their career as a supporting skit on The Tracey Ullman Show for a few years, The Simpsons were given their own series on Fox in 1989, its success surprised many and led to some interesting knee-jerk reactions from other TV networks eager to replicate a bit of that lucrative cartoon magic for themselves.  Even before Fish Police and Capitol Critters had made it to air in 1992, the path to concocting a successful Simpsons rival was already littered with failures and dead-ends, a handful of cartoon pilots having been cranked out at the dawn of the new decade and immediately discarded.  Among these was a second attempt by Fox at catching that all-elusive ink-and-paint lightning in a bottle, this time with the set-up for a would-be series that was only partially animated.

Hollywood Dog was based on a comic strip by R. P. Overmyer and aired on Fox on 25th July 1990, but was ultimately not picked up for a series.  It centred around the exploits of a sleazy entertainment promoter who just happened to be a two-dimensional cartoon dog living in a world populated by flesh-and-blood humans, and his partnership with a Hollywood newcomer, aspiring musician Bodine Frank (Tim Ryan).  Although it arrived during that initial wave of wannabe Simpsons bandwagon-riders, this one was clearly more interested in capitalising upon the goodwill directed at the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), which was then still pretty fresh on the public's minds.  Of course, minus a lavish Hollywood budget and the art direction of an animation legend like Richard Williams, the results were never going to be quite as impressive. Integral to the appeal of Who Framed Roger Rabbit was the breathtakingly believable way in which cartoon creations like Roger, Jessica, Baby Herman, etc, appeared to inhabit the same physical space as Bob Hoskins and Christopher Lloyd.  Needless to say, Hollywood Dog couldn't scratch up the same effect.  The titular character connects with his live action world with all the seamlessness of a flat pencil drawing that's been crudely pasted on top of it, and efforts to have him interact with the human cast end up looking really, really ropy.  More crippling still is that the animation for Hollywood Dog is so stiff and limited that the character is denied the dynamism and flexibility he desperately needed in order to make the show's central concept fly.  Clearly, he's supposed to be this Tex Avery-style whirlwind of anything-goes anarchy, the kind of cartoon creation who can randomly set his face ablaze and flash headlights from his eyes because he's not bound by the rules of the flesh-and-blood world, yet in practice he moves about as fluidly as the characters from Rude Dog and The Dweebs.  It somewhat defeats the purpose of doing a show about a cartoon character living in a live action world when your animated creation frankly isn't.

One thing that Hollywood Dog DOES have in its favour is that it boasts the talents of a Simpsons voice actor, the title character being voiced by Hank Azaria and sounding recognisably like Moe the bartender.  Azaria was a pretty solid choice for the role, giving the character an enjoyable spunkiness that exceeds the limitations of the animation.  Whenever Hollywood Dog does exhibit any kind of verve or dynamism, it's thanks to the liveliness of Azaria's performance.

For a long time, Hollywood Dog was the stuff of mystery, this weird little failed show which I'd delved deep enough into the history of television animation to know existed but could otherwise uncover precious little information about.  If it was a misfit animation from the early Simpsons era then my curiosity was definitely piqued, but the pilot long proved impossible to find - until very recently, when it surfaced on YouTube, and I was able to cross off one item on my grail list (alas, still no sign of the Carlton Your Doorman special to date).  Which means that we now have the joy of getting to go through it with a fine comb on here.

First off,  I have to say that I don't much care for the show's theme music, which sounds like the kind of blandly generic theme you'd find in any number of second-rate sitcoms from this era, and doesn't exactly make for the best of initial impressions.  Before we get to Hollywood Dog, we're introduced to our human protagonist, Bodine, who's in desperate need of a fresh start after being dumped by his fiance and decides to leave his life in Nebraska and pursue a music career in Hollywood - much to the chagrin of his mother, who warns him that "those California people are animals!"  Of course, in the case of the Californian he'll be befriending shortly, that's literally so.  After a few establishing shots, we enter into Hollywood Dog's apartment at the Bahama Lounge Hotel (the show's principal setting), where he's having a heated telephone conversation with a musician named Dave La Rock who he'd booked to play at the hotel bar tonight but who now apparently wants out.  Hollywood Dog is kept largely off-screen during the initial portion of this scene, with the occasional fleeting glimpse of an animated arm teasing us as to his true identity.  La Rock's cancellation comes as quite a blow to the cartoon mutt, not least because he's being hounded by the building manager, Duane (Raymond O'Connor), for having racked up some significant rent arrears.  As Duane listens in on the disastrous phone call from outside, he's briefly approached by another tenant, a young artist named Rhonda (Lenora May).  We'll get to Rhonda later, but those of you who know your sitcom cliches inside out won't be surprised to learn that she's basically there to be Bodine's gratuitous love interest - certainly, in this episode she serves no real purpose other than to set up a will they/won't they that evidently didn't.

Duane eventually loses patience and tries to enter in on Hollywood Dog, but is kept at bay with a bark of, "Hold it, I'm naked!"  Duane pauses, then realises that he's being taken for a chump - "Wait a minute, you're a dog, you're always naked!"  Actually, given that Hollywood Dog is never without his yellow shirt, that punchline doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  Regardless, Duane barges in, but Hollywood Dog has found an ingenious hiding place that takes advantage of his two-dimensional physique, by slapping himself upon a painting hanging on his apartment wall.  Here, we get our first proper glimpse of the titular character, as Hollywood Dog peels himself from the picture and makes a stealthy escape through the window and into the front seat of his car, conveniently parked below.  Upon landing, he pulls out and discards a couple of bras, muttering "Twins" with a sly grin.  Yep, it's hinted that Hollywood Dog gets off with human females, a thought which you may or may not find palatable, although this was around the same time that Paula Abdul made a music video implying that she did the backseat mambo with a cartoon cat, so chalk it up to the spirit of the age.

Duane heads back down to the hotel lobby to excitedly announce to his mother and building head, Louise (Conchata Ferrell), that Dave La Rock has cancelled and Hollywood Dog therefore won't be coughing up the long-overdue rent money.  Duane is essentially the closest thing that the pilot offers to an antagonist, in that he blatantly doesn't care for Hollywood Dog and would like to see the back of him, although it's never made clear what his specific beef with the dog is.  Hollywood Dog may be a total sleazebag, but he has heart and everyone else at the Bahama lounge seems to enjoy having him around.  Louise is a lot better-disposed toward the albino mutt than her son, but has her limits and reluctantly concedes that she'll have to evict him.  This upsets Rhonda's kid brother Tyler (Matthew Brooks), who idolizes Hollywood Dog, although he's confident that the wily pooch will think of something.

Sure enough, it dawns on Hollywood Dog that, since no one at the Bahama Lounge even knows what Dave La Rock looks like, he could pluck any random musician off the streets and pass them off as La Rock.  As chance would have it, he happens to spot Bodine getting off his bus from Nebraska with his guitar case in hand and decides that this is too good an opportunity to pass up.  He pulls over and offers Bodine a lift, which Bodine accepts although he's somewhat overwhelmed by Hollywood Dog's appearance.  He admits that, "I've never met anybody so..."  "Animated?" offers Hollywood Dog, pulling a wacky but still very stilted-looking face.  This is another gag which doesn't quite work because, as we've discussed, Hollywood Dog really isn't.

This is also the only point in the episode in which anyone even vaguely alludes to the inherent weirdness of a talking cartoon dog being a part of this live action world.  Nobody else so much as bats an eyelid at the concept.  Must be a Californian thing.

Hollywood Dog get to know one another a little better, and then Hollywood Dog impresses Bodine by revealing that he knows Canadian actress/model Shannon Tweed, who makes a guest appearance as herself, and who the randy mutt unsuccessfully attempts to work his flea-bitten charm on.  Hollywood Dog asks Bodine where he'll be staying and mentions that he has a spare room in his place at the Bahama.  When Bodine confirms that he has money, that seals the deal.

At the Bahama Lounge lobby, Hollywood Dog points out his friend Maurice, who happens to be playing the drums in the backdrop, and who's really just a weird means of inserting a suggestive drum beat every time something wacky or alluring happens to Bodine in this scene, starting with a random encounter with twins played by Anadel and Adele Baughn (it's never revealed if they're meant to be the same twins Hollywood Dog is implied to have had a threesome with earlier).  The inclusion of these twins is entirely arbitrary as they serve no useful purpose in story terms whatsoever, but maybe their intended function would have come to light had the show been picked up for a series proper; we can only speculate.

Hollywood Dog is spotted by Louise, who calls him over and demands that he come clean about the status of tonight's La Rock gig.  Louise frankly doesn't take much convincing that Bodine is La Rock, although Hollywood Dog further protects his scheme by telling her that "La Rock" is a little sensitive right now because his fiance barbecued her entire family and has just been committed to a mental hospital; thus, he could do without any unnecessary hassle.  Louise never questions his ridiculous story (then again, she lives in a world where having a tenant who's a cartoon dog is regarded as entirely normal) and tells Hollywood Dog to take "La Rock" straight to his room.  Hollywood Dog still needs to stall Bodine while he converts the closet in his room into a spare bedroom, so he calls Tyler over and has him hogtie Bodine.  At this point, Rhonda shows up and we get our awkward initial meeting between the two would-be lovebirds, with Tyler making a point of the fact that his sister is single (seems an odd thing to say off the bat to a total stranger, unless he's really determined to see her hook up with someone) and Maurice throwing in another telltale drum beat in the backdrop.

Bodine later joins Hollywood Dog in his apartment and finds him nosing through the songs he's written.  He gets miffed when Hollywood Dog refers to his creaky old guitar as "firewood", but his annoyance turns to awe when he notices pictures showing all the famous celebrities that Dog has rubbed shoulders with over the years.  Which leads into this exchange:

Bodine: You really are a celebrity!

Hollywood Dog: Celebrity-slash-promoter, entrepreneur, actor, musician, not to mention impressionist...

Bodine: Impressionist?  Can you do Roger Rabbit?

Hollywood Dog: (Glances at camera) Not on this budget!

(Drum beat)

Thus, we get a stab at self-depreciation over the show's real elephant in the room.  As a gag, it feels jarring as hell, although it is the one that the promos seemed to favour.

Bodine is pretty taken with Hollywood Dog's place, until he realises that Dog intends for him to bunk in his old closet, at which point he cottons on to the likelihood that his new companion is looking to scam him and opts not to stay.  In desperation, Hollywood Dog offers him the first two weeks for free, but Bodine isn't biting - however, on his way out he bumps into Rhonda, who spills paint all over his shirt.  Spying an opportunity to delay Bodine's exit, Dog rips off the shirt and suggests that Rhonda dry clean it while Bodine take a shower.  This leads to an awkward bit where Bodine is left standing around the hotel corridor with his chest exposed while Rhonda gawks at him, in case it wasn't already painfully obvious that they're setting up for a thing between these two.

While Bodine showers in his apartment, Hollywood Dog stumbles upon another potential wrench in the works; namely, that Bodine is a pretty terrible singer (in Dog's words, he "sings like a seal", which is a simile I'd never encountered before).  He hatches a fresh plan, and asks Bodine if he can borrow a bit of money to buy them both food - Bodine permits him to take five dollars from his wallet.  Bodine then realises that he's been lathering up his hair with Dog's anti-flea shampoo and is predictably horrified.

Bodine later attempts to order a soda at the hotel bar, where Duane is serving, but realises that Dog has stripped his wallet completely bare.  Duane mocks Bodine for allowing the dog to scam him, but Louise intervenes and orders Duane to leave "La Rock" alone, as his girlfriend was recently committed.  This is the first whiff Bodine gets of the dog's massive fib, so he storms off to confront him, while Louise instructs Duane to try and soothe his hurt feelings by bringing him a sandwich.  Before Bodine gets to have it out with Dog, there's another gratuitous moment between him and Rhonda which results in her inviting him into her place for jalapenos (nope, not a metaphor).  When that's done, Bodine overhears the dog playing one of his songs on his own (cartoon) guitar, and bursts into the apartment to find him in the process of trying to sell the song to his agent Ziggy over the phone.  Bodine now has a barrage of reasons to be pissed with Dog, who decides to come clean with him and explain that he was hoping to be able to pass him off as La Rock, and that he used Bodine's money to get his guitar, Loretta, out of hock so that he can back him up on stage should his singing prove much of a problem.  Bodine refuses to go along with his scheme, angrily asserting that all they'll be doing is going to get his money back.  He then heads off into his converted closet room to pack, while Dog dejectedly tries to take himself for a walk (producing a collar and leash out thin air) and discovers that Duane has been eavesdropping on the conversation (while munching on that sandwich he'd prepared earlier).

Duane now knows Dog's entire scheme and berates him for thinking he could pass the newcomer off as Dave La Rock.  Dog tries to bluff his way out by hastily explaining that he was trying to protect his true identity, Blind Lazy Bones Jackson, who he states "has vision - limited, I admit, but he writes great songs."  Duane isn't buying it, but Bodine discovers that Dog didn't just get his own guitar back but has also gifted him with a new one and, touched by the gesture, decides to assume the role of a blind musician in order to give his story credibility.  Duane is a bit confused, recalling that this man didn't appear blind when he saw him downstairs earlier, but Dog insists that "the kid's a pro, he doesn't look for pity," and sends Duane off to prepare the stage for Blind Lazy Jones Jackson.  With Duane gone, Dog thanks Bodine for covering him and assures him that he was being totally sincere when he describd his songs as great.  Bodine agrees to go on stage and perform, but only as Bodine Frank, singing his songs, his way.  Dog assures him that he'll see his name in lights, which gives Bodine the inspiration to finally finish a song he'd been penning.

That evening, Duane introduces Bodine on stage (realising in the process that Dog has gotten the best of him), only his singing doesn't go over too well with the lounge patrons (Tyler also uses the similie "sings like a seal").  Louise is all prepared to pull the plug on Bodine, when Dog comes to the rescue with Loretta in hand and the two friends perform on stage together.  This gets the audience going, and even Duane seems won over by their charm.

In the final scene (which includes an endearingly tacky-looking shot with an animated moon sinking behind the hotel) Hollywood Dog pays off his debts to Louise and returns the money he borrowed from Bodine, but adds that if Bodine intends on staying then he'll take back half the rent money.  Bodine, who's no pushover, reminds him that the first two weeks are free and proceeds to negotiate use of Dog's car into the package.  The pilot ends with Dog advising Bodine that another local hotel, this one crawling with chicks, is looking for a cabana boy, and suggests that he might be able to help him out, because "I never met a dame who could resist a guy with a cute dog".  "Cute dog?" Bodine retorts,  "Do you know where I can find one?"  "You're quick kid," replies Hollywood Dog.  "I like that."  Drum beat (actually, there is something strangely fitting about giving Maurice the last word here).

Anyway, contrary to what Dog insists at the end, obviously neither he or Bodine were going places, their television career being stopped dead after this one measly installment.  Not too surprising, given that they clearly didn't have the resources to make the show's central conceit work, and the entire thing falls fatally flat as a result.  Otherwise, there's nothing really offensively bad about Hollywood Dog - central gimmick notwithstanding, the writing feels totally generic, the human characters have no real depth or outstanding qualities, and the set-up for the intended romance between Bodine and Rhonda is handled with all the grace and subtlety of an echidna in a balloon factory, but it remains more-or-less watchable throughout, and Azaria is always on hand to pepper things up a notch.  Personally, I doubt that the world missed out on anything too earth-shattering by stopping this show in its tracks, but it's definitely one to look up if you have a fascination with the rejects and misfits of television history, and with long-forgotten stabs at novelty premises that may well have been hits in alternate timelines.

Amazing Stories - "The Family Dog"

Original air date: 16th February 1987

Before I close the book on Family Dog, I'd like to take a look at the original Amazing Stories episode which kicked off the character's underwhelming career (albeit not with any astoundingly potent dynamic - it took several years for the spin-off series to come to fruition, after all).

Amazing Stories was an anthology series that was created by the 1980s' favourite hotshot director, Steven Spielberg, and ran on NBC for two seasons between 1985 and 1987.  The title of the series was lifted from that of a long-running science fiction magazine - although, as Family Dog's inclusion might indicate, the emphasis wasn't merely on science fiction stories but also on the wacky, unsettling and at times just plain odd.  NBC had enough confidence in the clout of the Spielberg brand name to commit to two years' worth of episodes from the go, only for the series to be completely trounced in the ratings war by CBS's Murder, She Wrote.  These days, Amazing Stories isn't terribly well-remembered - heck, the CBS Twilight Zone revival from around the same time (itself bolstered into being by the public's immense appetite for Spielbergian fantasies, at least on the big screen) left more of an imprint on popular culture (people still seem pretty traumatised by that "A Little Peace and Quiet" episode).  One of the more curious entries in the series' largely unnoticed run was a foray into a fully animated story, then a rarity on prime time television, which arrived a month and a half ahead of the Simpson family's debut as a supporting skit on The Tracey Ullman Show and also dealt with life in a dysfunctional suburban household.  The episode featured the up-and-coming talents of Brad Bird (who wrote and directed) and Tim Burton (who contributed character designs) and was apparently well-received enough that CBS later decided to use it as the basis for its own spin-off series, albeit a few years down the line, once The Simpsons had proven that there was a viable market for such things.  I suspect that, back in February 1987, getting something like this from a series aimed at adult audiences would have seemed extremely fresh, offbeat and daring, and in some respects "The Family Dog" may have even whetted the public's appetite for the prime time animated adventures of The Simpsons, although it has to be said that the Amazing Stories episode does look decidedly thin and shop-worn when compared to Groening's creations.  Bird had no involvement with the CBS spin-off, reportedly believing that "The Family Dog" had already reached the peak of its potential as a one-off installment, and it's not hard to see where he was coming from, even without taking the outcome into consideration.  "The Family Dog" may be superior in just about every regard to anything its ill-fated spin-off had to offer, but it's still a rather uneven piece of television that doesn't stack up against the best of Bird's work.

Unlike the spin-off series, which followed a one story per episode format and was consequently encumbered with having to pad out ten incredibly thin premises to a full twenty-one minutes each, "The Family Dog" adopts a multi-narrative approach, in being broken up into three self-contained stories told in succession.  Truthfully, this doesn't work out massively better than the spin-off's approach, the problem being that only the third story manages to be especially fun or compelling.  The first story, which is essentially designed to introduce each member of the Binford family and their unique hand in making life troublesome for the dog, is a slog to sit through, and feels more like a prolonged introduction to the third story than anything else, with the second "story" (if you can call it that) acting as a kind of intermission between the two.  Upon reaching the third story, which centres around the dog's efforts to protect the house from a pair of serial burglars, the episode finally kicks into gear and becomes extremely enjoyable.  You get the impression that this was the story that Bird was really interested in telling all along, but he couldn't figure out how to extend it to the necessary running time.  Thanks to the strength of the animation, which is head and shoulders above that of the spin-off series, the story has a solid visual wit and a likeable, Chuck Jones-esque expressiveness and energy throughout.  It's in this third story that the episode also goes absolutely nuts, straying from the realism of the earlier segments and simply trying to milk as much madcap lunacy as possible from the increasingly unlikely scenario.  As I say, it makes the entire affair seem incredibly uneven, though it does ensure something of interest in the latter stages.

Despite its altogether tediousness, the opening segment did, apparently, play as a standalone short attached to the US theatrical release of the Spielberg-produced animated film The Land Before Time (1988), which had undergone some serious editing and was in danger of running a little too short at 69 minutes.  Given that Bird had no intention of using the characters again beyond this one-off installment, it's surprising that he considered it necessary to give each of the Binfords such a drawn-out introduction (particularly as all of them are fashioned upon easily-recognisable archetypes), but I guess that he wanted to include a glimpse into the dog's everyday life by having him interact with the family in a more down-to-earth context before progressing toward the cartoonier hi-jinks.  We start out by watching Billy, who's bitter that Bev has roped him into vacuuming the house on a Saturday, harass the unfortunate dog by chasing him with the hoover.  The dog's no idiot, however, and knows that he'll be safe from Billy's hyperactive malice if he takes refuge next to Skip, who's watching a sports game with a neighbour, and who he knows Billy would never dare to antagonise.  What the dog doesn't count on is being beaten to a pulp with a rolled-up newspaper because Skip needs to cover for his own methane emissions.  He retreats to the kitchen and tries to scrounge a meal from Bev, but has to work to get her attention and when he finally does she rewards him with an angry outburst about her own unfulfilled dreams.  Noteworthy is that while Bev was voiced by Molly Cheek in the spin-off series, here she's voiced by Annie Potts (Bo Peep from the Toy Story films) and comes across as a spunkier though altogether more outwardly bitter character, in contrast to the perpetual weariness of Cheek's Bev.  The undeniable vigor of Potts' performance aside, there is something a tad unsettling about seeing the dog on the receiving end of such a melodramatic outburst.  Whereas Bev, in the spin-off series, was probably the least awful of the four Binfords toward the dog (she was only really actively callous toward him on one occasion, in "Enemy Dog"), here she uses the dog primarily as a punching bag for venting her frustrations with her stupid and shiftless family, and the results aren't very enjoyable.

Grudgingly, Bev opens up a can of dog food and proceeds its contents into his bowl, leading into a nifty visual gag in which we see the joy in the dog's expression slowly evaporating when he realises that he's in for a pretty uninspiring dinner from an inferior brand.  Suddenly, the dog loses his appetite and attempts to slink away, but Bev, who isn't prepared to let him off the hook after the trouble he just put her through, drags him back by the collar and forces him to eat.  Given the sheer tyranny exhibited by Bev toward the dog, I find I have limited sympathy for her when the dog subsequently staggers away and vomits up the gruesome offerings into her slipper.  The dog then runs into Buffy, the toddler of the household, who's intent on treating him like a doll and dressing him up in baby clothing.  As much as I loathe Buffy with a fiery hot vengeance in the spin-off series, here I actually find her to be a notch more tolerable, chiefly because her animation is so much more fluid and expressive, adding a vaguely demented vibe to her character that makes her central shtick seem a little less flat.  The dog eventually gets fed up and growls at Buffy, causing her to go running off in a screaming tantrum, just as Bev puts her feet into her slippers and discovers the dog's little present from earlier.  Realising that all hell is about to break loose, the dog attempts to escape out the front door, but finds himself ignored as the four Binfords bicker among themselves as to who is to blame for their pet's behaviour.  Eventually, the dog's panic gives way to boredom, and he marches over coolly, cocks his leg and passes water all over the living room rug, prompting Skip to toss him out of the house.  The segment fades out with the dog sitting in the front yard with a self-satisfied smile, relieved to have escaped the nightmares within (and to have relieved himself as a bonus).

The second segment takes the form of a super-8 movie of the family's last Xmas, which the Binfords are currently watching and providing a running commentary on.  Perhaps if you have kids of your own you'll find it all hilariously authentic, as Buffy repeatedly points out herself in the movie and then annoys her parents with repeated requests for a soda, but other than offering up a neat visual change of pace I personally find this segment to be entirely pointless.  There are some mildly amusing running gags involving Skip struggling to feign enthusiasm over being gifted with endless neck-ties and Billy terrorising the dog with increasingly nasty-looking playthings, and then at the end the dog exacts a vengeance (of sorts) by devouring the family's Xmas ham, but otherwise precious little happens.  Fortunately, this segment is also the shortest of the three, so we're able to move on fairly swiftly to the "guard dog" portion of the episode, which is where the fun really begins.

This segment opens with a somewhat weird moment where Buffy is describing a scene from a movie she saw in which a wolf devours a rabbit - unlike a lot of Buffy's dialogue, which come across as strained attempts to emulate the kind of things a toddler might say, this bit has a spontaneity that genuinely does feel like it might have been improvised.  It's then revealed that Skip, Billy and Buffy are seated at the dinner table and, just as Billy starts hurling childish insults at Buffy for spilling milk all over his lap, Bev walks in with a dodgy-looking pile of orange mush.  In the spin-off series, there was a rather tiresome running gag involving Bev's efforts to serve up wholesome, healthy meals, to the chagrin of her takeout-loving family.  Here, we see the origins of that gag, only the nature of the joke is somewhat different - in the Amazing Stories episode, it isn't health food that Bev grosses out her family with so much as weird and experimental recipes from housekeeping magazines, in this case tater puffs combined with cheese whip, which feels a little less cliche.  The way it plays out here is a heck of a lot funnier too.  Skip, Billy and Buffy manage to sneakily clear their plates by passing the contents down to the dog, who readily devours the lot, while Bev samples the recipe in the kitchen and decides that, actually, she'd sooner tip the whole revolting mess down the sink.  Skip suggests that the family go out for dessert and a movie, leaving the bloated dog alone to watch the house.  Unfortunately, on this particular night two burglars happen to waltz in and make off with the family's coach and coffee maker, while the dog is too overstuffed with Bev's potato-cheese whip concoction to even lift himself off the ground.

Naturally, when the family returns, Skip's none too happy that the dog has failed at his single duty and warns him that it had better not happen again.  Nine days later, when the family goes out for another evening at the movies, the dog is once again left alone and with a renewed determination to keep the house safe.  In an absolutely brilliant sequence which piles on the menace perfectly, we see the camera rotate continuously around the darkened household, the clock ticking away ominously, as the dog's vigilance slowly gives way to weariness.  At the rattling of the door handle, he suddenly springs back to life and lunges at the opening door in a raging burst of fury - nevertheless, we suspect that things won't work out too well for the dog and, sure enough, the intruders promptly sidestep him and proceed to lock him out of the house.  Once again, the Binfords come home to find their home stripped of its possessions and, once again, Skip isn't very happy with the dog.

It's at this point that the story crosses over into decidedly more warped territory, as Skip escorts the dog to Gerta Lestrange's Attack Dog School for assistance in becoming a savage, burglar-eating monster.  It's also here that Burton's hand in the design process becomes particularly evident, with the school in question looking like something straight out of Beetlejuice.  Skip appears to have second thoughts about the wisdom of hanging out in such a place, but Gerta promises that she can turn any dog into a "quivering, snarling, white hot ball of canine terror" and gives him a demonstration by having Angel, a neurotic-looking toy poodle, tear a huge chunk from her unfortunate assistant.  The dog is left in the care of Gerta and, two weeks later, Skip returns to find him in a state of energetic delirium which instantly switches over into all-out savagery at the click of a finger.  The entire Gerta sequence is far stranger, darker and more inventive than the spin-off series ever dared to get, and all the better for it.

That night, the family goes out and yet again the burglars, who by now have blatantly singled out the Binfords as easy targets, return for another merry evening of looting.  As soon as they pry open the door, however, they're greeted by the savage, raging monster on the other side and beat a speedy retreat.  Only once they've reached the apparent safety of their own house does the shorter of the two burglars become aware that the dog has accompanied them by latching onto his arm and is now refusing to let go.

Oh yes, and sharp-eyed viewers may have noticed that the license plate on the burglars' vehicle reads A113.  If you're an animation enthusiast, then odds are that you're already familiar with this particular in-joke, of which Bird has long been a key proponent.  But did you know that this is where the in-joke in question all began?  That's right, every time you see the gag featured in a Pixar film or an episode of The Simpsons, know that Family Dog has the unique distinction of being the very first animated project to utilise it.  Not bad for a property of otherwise very little consequence.

(If you're not familiar with the gag and are still scratching your head as to what A113 even signifies, it refers to a classroom at the California Institute of the Arts, where many prominent figures in the modern animation industry trained as students.  Bird likes to include it as an Easter egg in all of his films, and many other alumni have followed suit.)

As the Binfords fret about their missing dog, we see the burglar comically try to go about his life as normal, despite the handicap of having an angry and persistent terrier lodged into his arm.  Things take an unexpected turn when a police officer shows up at the door, having tracked the burglars down, and the dog, apparently conditioned to treat any shadowy figure lurking outside whatever property he's currently in as an intruder to be vanquished, abruptly switches his allegiances and savages the cop.  The burglars subdue the chewed-up police officer and, grateful to the dog for his assistance, decide to take him in and deploy his fearsome savagery in conducting further crime sprees.  It's here that the episode slips over from being slightly freaky into balls to the wall insanity, via a montage in which the dog is seen doing everything from holding up banks to depriving a petrified old lady in an alley way of her purse.  It's all extremely bonkers, but there's something distinctly disarming about it too.

As the criminal trio gains notoriety and is dubbed by the local press as the "Dog Gang", the burglars grow frustrated with their canine cohort hogging all the limelight, to the extent that one of them is emboldened enough to start antagonising the dog by threatening to replace him with a cat.  It's an incredibly dumb move, coming from someone who should be all-too familiar by now with what a vicious, nasty temper the little snapper has, and all the more idiotic for being carried out while the gang are cruising the streets in their getaway vehicle.  Predictably, the dog decides that he's not so keen on these two after all and launches into attack mode, causing them to crash into a police car and be promptly arrested.  The dog is then hailed as a hero for helping to bring the two criminals to justice and is returned to the Binfords.  It all wraps up just a little too glibly and abruptly, although in a manner that seems entirely befitting to the increasing lunacy of this narrative thread.  And as little as I cared for Bev's behaviour toward the dog in the opening segment, there is actually a bit of pay-off here, as suddenly she's all over the dog and feeding him a lavish steak dinner (this is the only sense in which the individual stories make any kind of direct nod to one another).  The episode concludes with Skip getting accidentally locked outside of the house while the rest of the Binford clan retires upstairs to bed and trying to sneak in through the back door, only for the dog's anti-intruder training to kick in yet again and...yeah, I'm sure you can write this one yourself.

Although "The Family Dog" does pick up considerably in its third act, its appeal is fairly limited and efforts to rework the scenario into a Simpsons-style sitcom were definitely misguided.  The script doesn't have the heart, sharpness or observational wit of The Simpsons and where it does excel, with madcap cartoon antics in the tradition of Chuck Jones, it feels like it would be better-suited to a six-minute short than to a full-length TV episode.  Not to mention that the Binfords are an inherently unpleasant bunch and there are only so many times that you can really tolerate seeing them bicker among themselves and treat their pet like refuse.  May that tombstone in the Springfield Pet Cemetery forever stand as a testament to the fact that some things aren't meant to be.

With that, I'm done with Family Dog for the foreseeable future.  Perhaps I'll find a reason to bring it up again at some point or another (should anything ever come to light about those three "lost" episodes, for instance), but after eight months of carefully studying the series and of trawling through the Binfords' antics, I definitely feel as if I've earned a nice long break from it for now.  This does prompt the question as to what obscure or long-forgotten cartoon series I'll be covering next - Fish Police is a definite possibility (made all the more attractive for the fact that it's a considerably shorter series than Family Dog), although rest assured that I'd have to be very, very bored to even consider giving Capitol Critters another run.  It's not quite as obscure or long-forgotten, but I did indicate back in November that I was planning an in-depth look at Al Jean and Mike Reiss's The Critic at some point in 2017.  Coming up next, however, will be coverage of a long-standing animated curiosity of mine, one with even weaker fortunes than Family Dog (ie: it never made it past the pilot stage), and which I'd previously hinted I would happily review should I ever come across it.  Check back to see what February has to offer.

VHS Verve: Alvin & The Chipmunks - Theodore's Life as a Dog

"Simon and Theodore convince Alvin that he's caused Theodore to turn into a dog!"

I probably should take a look at "Theodore's Life as a Dog", the third and final episode on The Chipmunks "Cookie Chomper" VHS release, if for no other reason then in the interests of completism, although there's not nearly half as much that I can say about this one.  As I noted in my coverage of the title episode, this episode frankly feels a bit out of place on this release, showing up after two very earnest and ambitious "issue" episodes and offering purely farcical hijinks (nothing wrong with that in itself, of course, but there's a definite tonal dissonance).  I presume that the idea was to enable the VHS release to go out with something silly and lighthearted, just to reassure kids that life isn't all serious - the irony being that, of the three, this is the only episode to end on note that feels genuinely sour.  For all the hardship their plots entailed, "Cookie Chomper" and "The Wall" were both able to wrap up with messages that felt thoughtful, sincere and optimistic.  This episode revolves around Simon and Theodore playing a prank on Alvin in order to punish him for being a dick, only to become even bigger dicks in the process and with no real consequences for them.  The writing for the episode is actually very good, and I did find myself chuckling at quite a few points throughout, but in story terms this one leaves me feeling a bit off-colour.  There's a vindictive vibe here which at times skirts dangerously close to Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends levels of meanness.  Let's check it out.

The episode opens with the Sevilles watching a werewolf movie on TV.  The exchange we overhear between two characters in this flick is absolutely golden, so allow me to transcribe for you it in full:

Professor: It seems too fantastic to believe - your boyfriend, Reginald, a werewolf?

Woman: (Distraught) During a full moon, my boyfriend turns into a horrible, starving, deranged wolf and...devours people!

Professor: Are you still seeing him?

Theodore then attempts to sneak away and into the kitchen, but Dave spots him and reminds him that he made a promise not to snack in between meals.  He heads into the kitchen anyway and Simon suggests that the family's new box of cookies doesn't have long to live, but Dave isn't worried as he's made a point of positioning the cookies on a high shelf where Theodore will struggle to reach them.  Unfortunately, this just encourages dangerous and stupid behaviour from Theodore, who's stacked a bunch of boxes onto a stool and is at serious risk of breaking his neck, when Alvin comes in and offers to help by guiding Theodore on where to reach.  "What are brothers for?" he asks, innocently.  Theodore is relieved because he thinks he's in good hands with Alvin and that he won't report him to Dave, only to discover that Alvin has tricked him into picking up and consuming a dog biscuit.  (Side-note: "Theodore's Life as a Dog" first aired on 7th January 1989, and predates "Cookie Chomper", the episode where the Sevilles acquire their pet dog, Lilly, so I'm a bit unclear on why they'd have a box of dog biscuits stocked in their larder in the first place, but whatever).  Theodore isn't exactly an innocent here, since he's deliberately disobeying Dave's orders on no snacking between meals, but Alvin certainly exploited his brother's trust in a decidedly mean and unpleasant way, so he has our sympathies for now.  Theodore complains to Simon about Alvin's behaviour and finds that he, too, is fed up with Alvin's pranks.  Noting that there's a full moon tomorrow and that Dave will be at work all day, Simon concocts a fiendish revenge plot that Theodore is only too happy to go along with.

The following morning, Alvin is feeling particularly cocky because Dave's not around and, even though he's been left with a huge list of chores to get done throughout the day, he's confident that he can con his two stupid brothers into doing them for him.  He then notices that Theodore is down on all fours and slavering all over the breakfast table.  Simon convinces Alvin that, since he made him eat a dog biscuit just before a full moon, he's inflicted a terrible curse on Theodore which is gradually transforming him into a weredog.  Actually, given that Theodore technically isn't human in the first place, I'm not sure if the term "weredog" is totally apt, but what would be the appropriate equivalent for an anthropomorphic chipmunk transforming into a non-anthropomorphic dog?  Alvin is a tad freaked out, but still too much of a selfish little prick to care, until Simon points out that he might have a personal stake in this:

Simon: I don't envy you, Alvin.

Alvin: Me?  But it's Theodore who's cursed, not me!

Simon: Yeah, well, you're the one who'll have to explain this to Dave.  And when I tell him what's in store for poor Theodore...

Simon proposes to go away and do research into Theodore's condition, while Alvin gets saddled with the "cursed" Theodore all day.  We then get our musical number, "Life of a Dog", as Theodore trails Alvin around while his doing his chores and creates a nuisance with his canine-esque behaviour.  Actually, it's interesting just how committed Theodore is to the prank, to the extent that he's willing to utterly slaughter his dignity in public.  There's a scene where they're in a supermarket and Theodore is leaping up onto the trolley and continuing to slaver over everything, and to the crowd of understandably anxious onlookers it must look like Theodore is behaving like a total lunatic.  Theodore also terrorises a mailman, attempts to piss against a lamppost and picks a fight with a Shih Tzu belonging to a girl named Mary who Alvin has a crush on.  By the end of the day, Alvin has reached the end of his figurative tether, only for Simon to drop yet another bombshell - he's done some reading and discovered that, if the curse is not removed by midnight, Theodore's transformation into a dog will be complete and irreversible.  The good news is that he's also read up on a means by which the curse can be lifted, although it involves Alvin, being the one who inadvertently facilitated the curse, dressing up as a dog and performing an ancient ritual.

That night, Alvin dons a makeshift dog costume, which basically consists of putting socks over his hands and ears and strapping on a red nose, and Simon has him go out into the yard and recite an incantation which will supposedly restore Theodore to normal if said for one minute after midnight.  Now, I noted earlier that Theodore was initially the sympathetic party in this whole affair, but there comes a point with these kinds of pranks where one seriously risks crossing a line if they allow things to drag on for too long.  Simon and Theodore definitely cross that line when they lure a neighbour's dog out of its garden, so as to convince Alvin that his incantation has failed and that Theodore's transformation is complete, causing the dog in question to be let loose onto the streets and impounded.  Although Alvin does sneak into the pound and release the dog, we never find out if it was reunited with its rightful owner, and that certainly bothers me.  There's also the fact that they have their brother, who is, after all, only a child, endanger himself by wandering the streets after midnight in pursuit of this dog.  Alvin, who's still wearing his makeshift dog costume, ends up being impounded himself, but since he can talk, he's able to convince the dog warden to grant him one phone call.

Alvin is picked up by Dave, and nervously tries to explain to him what's become of Theodore, only for Theodore himself to pop up out of the backseat of the car with Simon, suddenly right as rain.  The penny finally drops for Alvin, who now has a murderous glint his eye.   I do kind of have to love Dave's reaction to the whole thing, being one of such total and utter confusion that he's not even willing to delve into what actually happened, although if anyone deserves to have the shit lectured out them right now for their ugly behaviour, it's Simon and Theodore.  As Dave drives them all home, Simon ridicules Alvin for being so dumb as to believe that Theodore had ever turned into a dog, only to notice that Theodore is now sleeping on the backseat and exhibiting the grunting and twitching mannerisms of a dog.  Guess he's now so accustomed to pretending that this behaviour has become ingrained.  Dun dun dun.

The VHS closes off with an appearance from our friend the DiC "Kid In Bed" logo, albeit a version that incorporates the series' closing theme and avoids that naughty-sounding word being spoken out loud.  It's still the most hideous thing on the tape, regardless.

VHS Verve: Alvin & The Chipmunks - The Wall

"Whilst on tour, The Chipmunks heroically try to save a little girl's brother who is stuck on the "other side" of a prominent wall."

Following on from that episode about pet bereavement, we get yet another Chipmunk adventure which goes directly for the viewer's heartstrings and, against every cynical bone in your body and the niggling feeling that, as a grown adult, you really should be above this kind of nonsense, will absolutely succeed in tearing you apart.  The prominent wall mentioned in the VHS synopsis is very obviously the Berlin Wall, although it's never explicitly referred to as such in the episode itself.  "The Wall" first aired on 17th December 1988, and has the Chipmunks traveling to West Berlin to play at a benefit concert in support of world peace; instead, they become involved in the plight of a family who have been physically separated by the wall, only to be captured by the East Berlin authorities, who intend to use them to make a political point of their own.

"The Wall" is one of those specimens of children's entertainment that seems almost a little too bizarre to be true, at least from the synopsis.  Try bringing it up in adult conversation some time -  "Hey, do you remember that episode of Alvin & The Chipmunks where they bring down the Berlin Wall by playing a rock concert beside it?"- and see how much snickering you provoke.  Certainly, there's no denying that the way the thing plays out is cheesy as sin, and yet when I recently popped in the VHS to watch the episode for the purposes of this review, once they'd got around to singing that infernal "Let The Wall Come Down" song I was wiping tears from my eyes.  I simply couldn't help myself.

If the entire notion of the Chipmunks bringing down the Berlin Wall with a concert sounds a tad out there, then keep in mind that rock music has been fondly credited with, if not actually demolishing the wall, then playing a special role in feeding the revolutionary spirit of the East Berliners in its final years.  When David Bowie took his Glass Spider tour to West Berlin on 6th June 1987 as part of the three-day Concert for Berlin, a show held in front of the Reichstag and within the vicinity of the wall, thousands of East Berliners had gathered close to the border to listen in.  "We send our best wishes to all our friends who are on the other side of the wall", said Bowie in German, before launching into "Heroes", a song written while Bowie had been living in West Berlin about two lovers caught up in the divide.  It was a powerful moment which many see as a defining point in characterising the changing tides and increasing anti-wall sentiment - the German Foreign Office responded to Bowie's death on 10th January 2016 with a beautiful tweet thanking him for his role in helping to bring down the wall.  On the third night of the Concert For Berlin, while Genesis were performing on stage, police finally decided to launch a violent crackdown upon the East German gatherers, but the seeds of subversion were by then firmly planted and couldn't be shaken any time soon.  On 19th July 1988, things got particularly heated when Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band played a concert at the Weissensee district in East Berlin to a crowd of some 300,000 East Germans.  The Springsteen concert had been given the go-ahead by the East German authorities and its youth wing, Free German Youth (FGY), in the hopes of appeasing the growing revolutionary tension and improving their standing with the young generation - to Springsteen's horror, they stealthily attempted to label the show as a "Concert for Nicaragua" -  but if anything, it merely whetted that generation's rebellious appetite and yearning for change.  Not wishing to be prodded along by the Communist Regime's efforts to exploit him for their ends, Springsteen addressed his audience, in German, with the stirring message that, "I'm not here for or against any government. I've come to play rock 'n' roll for you in the hope that one day all the barriers will be torn down," before playing Bob Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom."  In fact, it seems a safe bet that the Chipmunks' own visit to East Berlin was conceived as a direct nod to Springsteen's, seeing as how The Boss himself gets multiple shout-outs therein.

So yes, with "The Wall" the Chipmunks were essentially adding their own helium-filled voices to the anti-wall fervor that prominent members of the rock community had been helping to vocalise.  Certainly, the show's producers appear to have recognised the power of music in providing catharsis and expression to such feelings and wished to pay tribute to that, in addition to delivering an anti-wall statement of their own.

The episode opens with Dave announcing to the Chipmunks that they've been invited to play at the annual "Wall of Iron" rock concert.  Alvin is mostly excited at the thought of getting to play alongside so many big names in the music business ("We'll boogie with The Boss, moonwalk with Michael!"), but Dave reminds him that the concert is a serious event held in support of world peace.  We cut to the Chipmunks arriving at West Berlin by plane, as Dave points out the wall and gives them a lowdown on its origins: "The wall was built after a war that divided the country in two.  Once a year this side of the wall has a concert for their friends and family living on the other side, where many freedoms we take for granted are denied."  He tells them that even rock and roll is against the law there, which shocks Alvin.  He questions who would want to live there and is reminded by Simon that the East Berliners don't exactly have a choice.

As Dave helps with the concert preparations, the Chipmunks do some sightseeing around the wall and encounter a girl named Caterina, who's waiting beside the wall to receive a message from her brother, Erik, who lives on the other side.  Caterina explains that Erik got separated from the rest of the family when they defected across the border and was left stranded.  Now, he and Caterina communicate on a daily basis by kicking a football over the wall and attaching pictures and written messages to it.  She receives one such message from Erik, which reads: "I'm okay.  Can you play Boss records tonight?  Miss you, love Erik."  Simon asks Caterina to clarify Erik's Springsteen request, and Caterina explains that Erik is an avid lover of rock music and draws strength from knowing that his family are enjoying his favourite records in his stead.  Caterina has prepared some pictures of her family to send back to Erik, but these consist entirely of  crude stick figure drawings.  "I know it's not very good", she says, mournfully, "but I don't have a camera."  "Well, we do," says Simon.  Huh, I don't know about you, but it sounded to me like Caterina was fishing for reassurance there, and I always thought the chipmunks were kind of dicks for not offering her any.  Anyway, before we know it a whole bunch of snapshots featuring Caterina and the Chipmunks have materialised - all three Chipmunks can be seen in them all, leaving me a bit unclear as to who actually took the pictures.  At this point, Caterina twigs who they are and tells them that Erik is a really big fan of theirs.  She gets them to autograph the football and then kicks it back across the wall to Erik.  Seeing that Caterina is still sad, Alvin vows to bring Erik across safely to the other side, although his brothers suspect that he may already be promising more than he can deliver - for one thing, they don't even know what Erik looks like.  Caterina says that she has a picture of him, although by picture she of course means one of her crude stick figure drawings.  Even Alvin's confidence takes a slight dip at this point.

Alvin's grand plan consists of marching across to East Berlin and demanding that they allow Erik to move freely into West Berlin, believing that his celebrity will give them all the clout that they need.  Getting past the West Berlin border guard proves no problem, as he's too wrapped up in listening to his walkman, but the East Berlin guards are far more attentive.  "Defectors?" one asks.  "We never get anyone defecting to our side."  Alvin explains who they are, only to find themselves seized by the border guards, who declare that the Chipmunks are exactly what they need.  Dave witnesses this and rushes across to the Chipmunks' aid, but is denied entry.  Instead, he valiantly attempts to climb over the wall, but is thwarted by a football which has been kicked over by Erik, carrying another message for Caterina.  Erik has seen the Chipmunks being carried away by the East Berlin authorities and intends to escape across the wall with them during the concert tonight.  Meanwhile, the Chipmunks find themselves confined to a derelict hotel room, with the authorities declaring that they intend to take them to the "rock pile" that evening.  Those authorities appear to be surprisingly slack on security, however, for Erik is able to worm his way into the hotel without incident by disguising himself as a bellhop.  Theodore immediately recognises Erik - apparently Caterina's crude stick figure drawing was more than enough for him to go off - who leads them in a good old-fashioned escape bid by knotting several bed sheets together.

Erik and the Chipmunks slip cautiously through the streets of East Berlin, which are surprisingly deserted - the only other figures seen out and about at all are a couple of authorities, who are discussing what good fortune it is that they were able to get the Chipmunks and how they intend to make an example of them.  Erik gets the Chipmunks to a friend of his, who is a tailor.  He helps to disguise the Chipmunks by decking them out in baggy clothing, and asks them to return the favour by taking a gift to his granddaughter, who lives on the other side of the wall.  In spite of their ingenious disguises, the Chipmunks (and Erik) are recaptured almost immediately upon taking to the streets.  Meanwhile, the Wall of Iron concert is underway and Dave and Caterina are waiting for their respective family members to make it across the wall.  Caterina fears that they will not make it, but Dave seems extraordinarily calm given the circumstances, attributing his confidence to the fact that, "Alvin hasn't missed a spotlight yet."

Back in East Berlin, the apprehensive Chipmunks are being marched toward the "Rock Pile", with the authorities eagerly declaring that they will show their people how they really feel about rock and roll.  "Give him the axe!", orders one, pointing to Alvin.  "No, not the axe!" Alvin screams, trembling at the thought of being hacked to death.  To his surprise, he finds himself being handed a guitar.  Theodore, meanwhile, is given drumsticks and Simon a keyboard.  As it turns out, the East Berlin authorities are as fed up as everyone else with the situation and want to make a statement about rock music and how they don't think that it should be against the law.  Oh, okay, although they might have picked a term for their venue slightly less open to misinterpretation than the "Rock Pile".

With the Wall of Iron concert drawing to a close and still not a peep heard from the Chipmunks, Dave declares that he's going to take another stab at getting his boys back himself, when all of a sudden they hear the sounds of melancholic rock music being played from the other side of the wall.  It's here that we get that "Let The Wall Come Down" song I referenced earlier.  "Heroes" it ain't, but you'd be shocked at just how deeply moving this sequence is nonetheless, with crowds from both sides of the wall gathering in mutual awe at what's taking place.

The lyrics:

"Far from the battlefield, far from war,
We've got to look for an open door,
All of us working, all of us searching for peace,
We dream of a time when we all are one,
Clinging to hope under Earth's bright sun,
So let's get together, things will be better if we try,
Hear our cry!

Some day the pain of war will be healed,
Some day when we can speak what we feel,
Let the wall come down,
Tumble to the ground,
And love will live in peace all around.

So let's raises our voice so they all can hear,
Over the wall they will raise a cheer,
All of us clinging, all of us singing the cry,
We will try!

Some day the pain of war will be healed,
Some day when we can speak what we feel,
Let the wall come down,
Tumble to the ground,
And love will live in peace all around."

The vibrations from the Chipmunks' performance are so powerful, in fact, that cracks begin to appear in the wall - or perhaps this is simply the manifestation of the will of the people, as their yearning to be free and united swells up to the point that the barriers are completely overwhelmed.  As the wall finally crumbles to the ground, we see various characters racing across the shattered barrier and embracing - Erik and Caterina, the tailor and his granddaughter - with Dave making it across just as the Chipmunks finish up their song.  The Sevilles are in the midst of a triumphant embrace when all of sudden the picture begins to waver, we hear ominous chiming music, and - GAAAAH, we find ourselves back aboard the plane, with Alvin, Simon and Theodore snuggled up against their airline pillows, and Alvin continuing to mutter the lyrics to "Let The Wall Come Down" in his half-sleep state.  That's right, the entire thing was nothing more than an airline food-fueled fantasy taking place inside Alvin's head.  Naturally - you didn't really think they would have the Chipmunks do something as ridiculous as bring the Berlin Wall down with a rock concert, did you?  (With that in mind, I suppose we can disregard whatever minor logical nitpicks I raised with this episode.  If it's all a dream, then I guess there's no obligation for it to make airtight sense, magic camera and all.)

At this stage, you might be forgiven for thinking that the episode has gone and played the most irritating cop-out card of all-time, but it actually does have a very powerful piece of symbolism up its sleeve.  Looking out as their plane touches down at West Berlin and seeing the wall still standing, Alvin reflects, wistfully, that "It was only a dream...but it doesn't have to be."  The episode's final image shows Erik and Caterina embracing beside the fallen wall; its closing mood poignant, but also hopeful.

How prophetic Alvin turned out to be.  On 9th November 1989, less than a year after "The Wall" had first aired, the barriers really did come down - although the physical demolition of the wall did not begin until 1990 and the reunification of Germany was not formalised until later on that year, on that historic day in 1989 the East German government announced that its people would be allowed entry into the West and crowds of jubilant East Berliners headed across to celebrate with their neighbours on the other side.  There were, of course, a variety of complex factors leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, so in the end it's probably a bit romantic to suggest that it basically came down to Bowie, Springsteen et al galvanising the East Germans by playing a few songs to them - nevertheless, they had a powerful hand in vocalising their hopes and frustrations, speaking not only to those directly affected by the division but also enabling listeners from all over the globe to feel united in their mutual passion for the music, and that barriers could be positively swept over through such a simple human connection.  How lovely that Alvin & The Chipmunks wanted to be a part of that, and to impart that message to an entire generation of children.  Its approach to the subject is naturally pretty simplistic and hackneyed, and yet I cannot overestimate just how choked up I get when the Chipmunks perform their song, and during the episode's closing moments.  They put together quite the little stonker here.

Finally, a small side-note from my personal recollection.  When I caught a re-run of this episode on Children's BBC in the mid-90s, I could swear that they actually cut out Alvin's final line and faded things out with him muttering the lyrics to "Let The Wall Come Down" in his sleep.  Naturally, that ending doesn't have quite the same impact - without Alvin illuminating the symbolism of his dream and transforming it into a message of hope, it becomes little more than the standard "it was all a dream" cop-out.  Maybe the cut was implemented upon the grounds that the Berlin Wall by then already come down and Alvin's closing message might have seemed redundant, but I would find such reasoning to be spurious.  Berlin Wall or no Berlin Wall, Alvin's statement is still stirring on such a universal level, a reminder of the barriers we've erected and overcome throughout human history and that hope and perseverance are some of the most powerful qualities we have as human beings, and to be cherished.  Because god knows what kinds of barriers, literal and figurative, we're going to have to overcome in the future.