Kérem a következőt! (literally: "Next one, please!") is a Hungarian animated series produced by Pannonia Film Studio. Featuring a cast of Funny Animals, the show stars an owl medic and psychologist named Doktor Bubó. Once per Episode, Bubó attempts to stop a trouble-making animal by psychological methods, only to fail every single time and cause even bigger trouble. He usually gets help from his assistant, the flirty bear nurse Ursula, his best friend, the falcon police officer Sólyom csőrmester, and Sólyom's sidekick, Teknőc Ernő, the dim-witted tortoise.
Three 13-episode seasons have been made, the first two in in 1973 and 1974, and a third one much later, in 1983. There is also a novelization, titled Doktor Bubó, published in 1979, retelling the plot of seven episodes of the series and adding a backstory for Bubó.
Kérem a következőt! provides examples of:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Ursula has a one-sided crush on Bubó, who tries his best to dodge the bear nurse's advances.
- Absent-Minded Professor: Bubó is an absent-minded medic and psychiatrist.
- Adaptation Species Change: In the cartoon, the ancestors of the hippo are a stallion and a seal. In the 1979 novelization, they are a centaur and a mermaid instead, to give the story a more mythical atmosphere (plus, the book is not limited by the visual medium, so the half-human creatures don't look that out-of-place).
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The Silver Fox (or, as called in Hungary, "blue fox") has literally blue fur.
- Ambiguously Gay: The Silver Fox is a fashion designer with an effeminate voice and some camp mannerisms. While he has a female red fox assistant, with whom they exchange endearing nicknames, they act more like best friends than a couple.
- Animal Gender-Bender: An interesting variant. The male kangaroo, as usual, has a pouch, but it is part of his clothing rather than his body: he wears an apron with a massive pocket in the front (in which he gives Bubó a Kangaroo Pouch Ride in an episode).
- Animal Stereotypes: Almost all major and minor characters either play straight or subvert these. Bubó is The Owl-Knowing One, Ursula is Beary Funny, Teknőc Ernő is extremely slow; the Hippo is a Big Eater, the gorillas are Dumb Muscles, the magpies have Sticky Fingers, etc.
- The Alcoholic: Both the Pelican (due to the Hungarian proverb "iszik, mint a gödény", roughly meaning "drinks like a pelican") and the Boar (a very drunk person can be referred to as a "drunk pig" in Hungary).
- Badbutt: The Boar is a Sir Swears-a-Lot, but the swearwords he uses are mostly on the Gosh Dang It to Heck! level.
- Beary Funny: Ursula is a kind but naive bear.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Ursula may be a big bear, but she's also a Hospital Hottie who does not lack feminine charm. While Bubó is repulsed by her, other characters like the hippo or the gorillas find her quite attractive.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The locusts are taller than Bubó.
- Big Eater: One episode centers around a hippo with an enormous appetite.
- The Boxing Episode: One episode centers around a boxing match between a gorilla and a chimpanzee.
- Bumbling Sidekick: Teknőc Ernő to Sólyom.
- Carnivore Confusion: As all animals are sentient and civilized, predation is considered a crime. This is despite the fact that
three of the main characters (an owl, a bear and a falcon) are carnivores too (although they are never shown eating meat). - Cats Are Mean: Played straight with all the big cats: the Jaguar and the Panther are serial killers (since they are predators), the Tiger seems to be some kind of mafia boss running a casino, while the Lion is a tyrannical King of Beasts. However, averted with the Wildcat, who is simply a narcissistic Dreadful Musician.
- Celibate Hero: One of Bubó's defining personality traits is his lack of interest in women. He constantly attempts to dodge Ursula's advances, but also rejects Mrs. Magpie when she comes onto him. At one point he refers to himself as a "confirmed bachelor".
- Chasing a Butterfly: Ursula enjoys capturing butterflies to see how happy they are when she releases them (although the one butterfly we see her releasing clearly looks more annoyed than happy).
- Cop and Scientist: Many episodes include Sólyom and Bubó fighting crime in some way. The former is a tough police officer who prefers a hands-on approach; the latter is a medic with a particular interest in psychology, trying (and usually hilariously failing) to get into the criminals' psyche.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Hamster starts as this, before Bubó teaches him a lesson that belongings are stressful. This makes him follow a Carpe Diem philosophy - and become a thief.
- Creepy Mortician: The Jackal, the Vulture and the Raven are not just creepy, but outright villainous examples, who try to persuade the animals to commit suicide to keep their business running.
- Cuckold Horns: Invoked with the antlers of the Stag, who is extremely jealous because he's afraid he's being cheated on. He's right.
- The Ditz: Teknőc Ernő is incredibly slow-minded, much to the annoyance of Sólyom csőrmester.
- Domestic Abuse: From The Boar. He only changes his ways by Ursula beating him up.
- Dreadful Musician: The Wildcat, who believes he has a beautiful singing voice, but actually drives all his neighbours to madness.
- Driven to Suicide: Anyone who reads or hears the poems of Bubó's aunt, a Little Owl.
- Every Episode Ending: All episodes end with Bubó turning towards the camera and telling a Spoof Aesop in the form of a quote from one of his former professors before the iris closes on him.
- Fantastic Racism:
- The Mule gets beaten up by the League of Pure-Breds, who are an extremist group against hybrids.
- Bubó also shows some prejudice against mammals.Bubó: (about the Boar) He was as vulgar as only a mammal can be.
- Feather Fingers: Most bird characters (including but not limited to Bubó and Sólyom) are drawn with human-like hands. Despite this, they are still able to fly.
- Flintstone Theming: Animal themes. It's worth mentioning that one of the show's creators, József Romhányi, wrote the Hungarian dub of The Flintstones too.
- Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Most of the characters.
- Furry Baldness: Bubó's feathers on his head resemble the descending hairline of an aging man.
- Giftedly Bad: The Wildcat, who truly seems to love his own singing voice despite being a Dreadful Musician.
- Good Bad Girl: The Moth is implied to be this. She's a seductress, but is helpful and willing to give genuine romantic advice to those in need (such as a heartbroken stork girl and Ursula).
- G-Rated Drug: Surprisingly averted in one episode, where opium, hashish and heroin are all mentioned by name. The drugs' effects are Played for Laughs, since they just make the characters act funny and talk nonsense.
- Henpecked Husband: The Boar becomes this after Bubó and Ursula cure him. His wife is frustrated with how gentle he became, as she liked him more when he was a Domestic Abuser.
- Hollywood Psych: Bubó's psychological methods are Played for Laughs, the creators didn't even attempt to do the research.
- Hospital Hottie: Parodied with Ursula, who is a nurse and acts very feminine (often trying to seduce Bubó), but is also a big hairy bear.
- Hurricane of Puns: Almost every single spoken line involves some sort of pun.
- Hypnotic Eyes: Bubó employs mass hypnosis in an episode to calm down a mass brawl. His eyes get swirly and shoot lightning bolt-shaped Hypno Ray towards the animals. One snake attempts to hypnotize him back.
- Informed Species: Some of the characters are so anthropomorphized it is hard to guess what they are meant to be. The mole, for example, looks like a minute dark-skinned human with black glasses and clawed gloves.
- Interspecies Romance:
- Ursula has a one-sided crush on Bubó.
- Also, in the first episode, the Elephant crushes on (and later crushes) the Baboon.
- In "Hippo Troubles", Bubó makes up a story, about how the hippos are descendants of a stallion and a seal girl, who fell in love when they shared an Accidental Kiss. (In the novelization by József Romhányi, they are a centaur and a mermaid, but that would have been very out-of-place in the World of Funny Animals setting.)
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: When interrogating the kangaroo that kidnapped Bubó, Ursula stomps on his tail.
- Killer Gorilla:
- In The Boxing Episode, Bubó is horrified by an incredibly violent boxing match between a gorilla and a chimpanzee, and attempts to convince the apes to change their ways.
- Bubó also believes this trope is in action when he and Sólyom have to deal with a mysterious terrorist group. Actually, it was just Teknőc Ernő mispronouncing "guerilla" when talking about the terrorists to Bubó, and the gorillas were trained by Sólyom himself as an anti-terrorist squad.
- King of Beasts: The Lion is the ruler of the animal kingdom, until he is overthrown by the flea.
- Lazy Bum: The Sloth, fitting the Animal Stereotype.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: Out of all characters, Teknőc Ernő does this in "Ursula in Love". When an evil fox kidnaps Bubó, both he and Ursula mistake the tortoise for the milestone where the ransom should be placed. As the fox counts the money, Ernő crawls out of his shell and bites him in the ankle, allowing Ursula to catch the fox and rescue Bubó.
- Mama Bear: Ursula's extremely protective of Bubó. And she's literally a bear.
- Mischief-Making Monkey: The school where the Sloth works as a janitor has a lot of undisciplined monkey children as students.
- Mock Millionaire: The Rhino spends his entire focus episode acting Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense, with Bubó scamming a large sum out of him three times in a row. At the end of the episode, it is revealed that all the cheques he paid Bubó with are unsecured, thus Bubó is the one who gets cheated out of money.
- Mouthy Bird: Bird characters, including the owl protagonist Dr. Bubo, all have human-like mouths under their beak-shaped noses.
- The Napoleon: The Flea, the smallest of the animals, suffers from Napoleon complex, wanting to overthrow the lion.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: If Bubó tries to help in a situation, it almost definitely gets worse.
- Ominous Owl: Owls are considered an omen of death in Hungary, and the irony that a "death bird" works as a doctor is occasionally pointed out in the show (and is even a central plot point in an episode). Also, Bubó's aunt is a poet whose poems get anyone who reads them Driven to Suicide.
- The Owl-Knowing One: Bubó is a parody of this, being a Know-Nothing Know-It-All.
- Thinking Out Loud: The characters are prone to doing this. Lampshaded in one episode, where a snail calls Teknőc Ernő an idiot for doing so.
- Police Are Useless: There are only two people working at the police department, Sólyom, who's courageous and relatively smart but usually Comically Missing the Point, and Teknőc Ernő, who's a complete moron.
- Poor Communication Kills: Parodied in the terrorism episode. Teknőc Ernő is repeatedly warned by Sólyom about mixing up the words "guerilla" and "gorilla", but to no effect. He eventually leads Bubó to think that the gorillas Sólyom trained to take down the terrorists, are the terrorists, and Bubó poisons them all.
- Portmanteau: Sólyom's rank, "csőrmester", is a portmanteau of the Hungarian words "csőr" (beak) and "őrmester" (sergeant).
- Remembered I Could Fly: Bubó in his more absent-minded moments forgets about his flying ability, until Ursula reminds him.
- Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: The Rhino has the reputation of being incredibly rich but not very smart, and Bubó makes a bet with Sólyom that he can scam the Rhino three times. It gets subverted when Bubó finds out the Rhino is a Mock Millionaire who paid him with an unsecured cheque all three times.
- Sexy Cat Person: In the "Divorce" episode, a female cat singer performs a song about how a promiscuous lifestyle is preferable to marriage.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Every line that comes out the boar's mouth contains at least one swearword (mostly Gosh Dang It to Heck! types, but in-universe they are treated as very profane). When Ursula takes notes of what he says, she refuses to write down any swearwords, and Bubó suggests to her to replace them with dots. Ursula ends up with a sheet full of nothing but dots.
- The Shrink: Bubó, of the well-meaning but incompetent variant.
- Smart People Wear Glasses: Bubó, appropriately for The Owl-Knowing One.
- Species Surname: Played with. Sólyom and Teknőc are straight examples, literally meaning "falcon" and "tortoise" in Hungarian. Bubó and Ursula are Bilingual Bonus examples: their names mean "owl" and "she-bear" in Latin.
- Spoof Aesop: At the end of each episode, Bubó turns at the audience and draws a conclusion - that is usually a Broken Aesop.
- Sticky Fingers: The Magpie family have sticky Feather Fingers, in line with the Thieving Magpie stereotype.
- Sturdy and Steady Turtles: Teknőc Ernő is incredibly slow, both in the body and in the mind.
- The Swarm: One episode involves a locust swarm that almost destroys the animal kingdom. Fortunately, Bubó's aunt writes them a poem that makes them commit mass suicide (flying to the arctic in the cartoon, jumping in fire in the book).
- Toothy Bird: The bird characters have human-like mouths, but most of the time they lack teeth (although Sólyom does give an occasional toothy grin). Lampshaded in the theme song that mentions "dentures for birds".
- World of Funny Animals: There are no humans in the cast, and all animals, from fleas to elephants, show a certain level of sapience.
- World of Pun: Every line of dialogue includes some kind of pun, most of them animal-related.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: In an episode, Bubó helps Sólyom solve a crime mistery. They suspect that the ferret is behind the murder of chickens, but Bubó suggests not to arrest him, because in crime fiction, the first suspect is never the culprit. However, their world does not run by the rules of crime fiction, and eventually they find out that the ferret was behind the murders after all.
