Series / Kirby Buckets

"That's me, Kirby, and those are my friends: Eli, and Fish. That's a gang of angry clowns, and that's their angry pig. I'd like to say this sort of thing doesn't usually happen to us. But it totally does."

— The Opening Narration in the Pilot episode

Kirby Buckets is a Kid Com that airs on Disney XD.

The series follows Kirby Buckets (Jacob Bertrand), an aspiring animator with an overactive imagination. Kirby and his friends, Fish and Eli, often find themselves involved in unpredictable escapades at school, while Kirby's drawings provide a sort of commentary on the various events. The show follows a basic formula each episode, usually with Kirby causing or encountering some kind of problem that usually gets resolved by the end of episode.

Also notable is the mixed-media format of the show with animated characters based on Kirby's creations often coming into the scene. In this way it can be seen as similar to Out of Jimmy's Head (except more successful) or a Spear Counterpart to Disney's own Lizzie McGuire.

Confirmed to be part of the Disney Channel Live-Action Universe through a Red Skies Cross Through event.

The show premiered on October 20th, 2014 and was renewed for a second season in January of 2015. The series was confirmed for a third season over the summer of 2016, and premiered in early 2017 under the title Kirby Buckets: Warped.

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Tropes

• Abhorrent Admirer: Big Ricky to Dawn.
• Aborted Arc: After the pilot, Mac Mcallister is only seen for one episode, and it's not even an episode to expand on Kirby's dream to be an animator.
• Accidental Hero: One episode opens with The Bully stealing Kirby's skateboard, only to lose balance and knock himself out. A crowd of kids sees Kirby standing over the unconscious bully and instantly declare him a hero.
  Ricky: Kirby Buckets knocked out Pearly Todd!
  Kirby: No, no, that's not what -
  Ricky: Kirby Buckets is a hero!
• Alpha Bitch: Dawn has the "Bitch" attitude, but she isn't very popular. She's also rivals with one who has the "Alpha" (Mandy). Mandy swings between a Lovable Alpha Bitch ("Killer Puppies") and just a plain-old Alpha Bitch ("Kirby to the Max")
• All Elections Are Serious Business: Simply mentioning an election in Fish's presence risks turning him into, in his own words, "a political werewolf" - an entire split personality who acts like a stereotypical gladhanding politician.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Kirby to Dawn, but Dawn herself isn't very nice either.
• Author Avatar: Averted. Kirby doesn't really have a "himself" character.
• Big Bad: Lord Mitchell in Season 3. Otherwise, the episodes have Monster of the Week big bads.
  • Mr. Jenkins in "Bad Seed"
  • The giant spider in "Queen for a Dawn"
  • Eli and Jean-Luc in "Forest Hills Blues"
  • "Cool Chad" from his titular episode
  • Prank Williams, Jr. in "The Unpranked"
• Big Bad Ensemble: Dawn and Principal Mitchell are the primary antagonists who hate Kirby and often try to ruin his fun. This is downplayed in Season 3, where they both are almost always good guys.
• Big Damn Heroes
• Big Sister Bully: Dawn is this to Kirby.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Dawn.
• Broken Aesop: In "The Hurt Box", Kirby makes a comic book containing insulting cartoons about his teachers, which Fish accidentally enters into the school's submission box. When the gang sneaks into the school to try and stop the teachers from reading the comic book, they discover that the teachers only look the students' suggestions to laugh at them, prompting the two sides to agree to stop making fun of each other. Now if only Kirby would stop drawing "Dawnzilla"...
• Bumbling Dad: Kirby's father is well-meaning but a massive dork, and should not be allowed near computers.

• Comedic Underwear Exposure: Kirby gets one after a toilet explodes while he is using it.
• Diabolical Mastermind: Principal Mitchell has all the traits of one—scheming and conniving from behind the scenes, finds creative ways to either get rid of Kirby or make his life miserable, sometimes has minions with him, and has a Right-Hand Cat.
  • That's nothing compared to Lord Mitchell, his actually evil counterpart introduced in Season 3.
• Evil All Along/The Mole: Man-D in "Commander Kirbo" is revealed to be this — hardly surprising as she is the alternate universe counterpart of an Alpha Bitch.
  • In "The Kirbinator", the Future Kirby was actually an actor hired by Dawn to trick Kirby. When Kirby attempts his final prank on Dawn, he turns on him.
• Fake Charity: Kirby fakes a disease and ends up causing the entire school to hold a fundraiser to try and help cause a cure for it. He narrowly got away with it.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • Dawn may be malicious and easy to hate, but there is a sympathetic angle to her—she was always picked on and made fun of in school, and her brother contributed to it. As the show went on, she became much more likable, and often tended to at times be more sympathetic than Kirby himself, though she still always held a grudge on her brother.
  • Her parents also favor Kirby and his life. Often ignoring or belittling Dawn, praising Kirby as their 'greatest accomplishment' right in front of a young Dawn.
  • Part of Principal Mitchell's problems comes from trying not to get on the Superintendent's side—and the superintendent is his father.
• Gasshole: Dawn loudly (and proudly) burps in her brother's face in 'All Hands on Dexter' (Season One, Episode 17).
• Innocent Beta Bitch: Belinda isn't as malicious as Dawn is, and in fact is rarely unlikeable.
• Instrumental Theme Tune: The theme song is mostly instrumental, aside from shouts of "Hi, hi" and the occasional sound effects.
• It's a Wonderful Plot: "It's A Kirbyful Life!" has a variation - Kirby was still born and exists, but never learned to draw.
• Jerkass: Dawn and Mandy, Dawn's rival. The two are almost comically mean-spirited and selfish, though Dawn does have rare moments where she becomes more sympathetic. Whenever they go at each other's throats, Dawn is usually the more likeable one.
• Lovable Alpha Bitch: Mandy is this towards Kirby and his friends when she's not being a straight-up Alpha Bitch towards Dawn and Belinda.
• Magic Realism: Though the show is goofy, it is otherwise a substantially mundane school centric setting. However, plenty of episodes bring strangely supernatural elements to the series, such as a magic pen that brings Kirby's drawings to life among others. Season 3, subtitled Warped pretty much throws the whole mundane aspect of the show right out the window, introducing a strange orb that allows Kirby and his friends to teleport to alternate universes, among other strange quirks. Of course, the show never treats any of this as anything other than an everyday occurrence.
• Medium Blending: Live action, with occasional pop-ups of Kirby's drawings in animation.
• Monster Clown: The episode "Send In The Clown". Even that is nothing compared to the clowns we see in "Yep, This Is Happening".
• Morality Pet: Dawn usually acts like a nice teenage girl, although still quite selfish, instead of a bossy one whenever she's around her friend Belinda.
• Mundane Fantastic: None of the goofy supernatural stuff that occurs in the show is treated like anything other than an everyday problem. Even when past strangeness is referenced, people tend to shrug it off as if it was nothing.
• My Beloved Smother: There is an episode where Fish and Eli's mothers forbids their sons' friendships with Kirby. Kirby as well tries to make friends with his animated character...until his animated character's mother forbids his friendship with Kirby. This lasts until the end of the episode, where Kirby saves Fish and Eli, and their respective mothers allow their sons to resume their friendships with Kirby.
• New Season, New Name: The show became Kirby Buckets: Warped for its third season.
• Never Trust a Trailer: Some of the ads promoting the show before it premiered made the entire premise appear to be about Kirby obtaining a special drawing pen that caused his drawings to come to life and dealing with the shenanigans this caused. This turned out to be a plot for one episode, but not one for the entire show, and the drawings are for the most part Kirby's imagination.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: According to voice actor Dean Julien, many of is characters are impressions of celebrities: Macho-Taco is Randy Savage, Dr. Gut-Punch is a male Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Zip-Zap is Emperor Palpatine.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: The subplot in "Balloonacy!" is Dawn asking her parents for a raise in her allowance, which she says she needs to pay for dates with her new boyfriend. Between her stammered reveal of the name ("Demarco") and her insistence that he is attractive and smart like she is, the folks are incredulous and (when pressed) try to call her bluff by saying they want to meet this supposed boy. Demarco looks like Dawn poorly disguised as a boy and with a voice to match, so the folks are incredulous and later openly ridicule these points. Then they see Dawn and Demarco at the same time, and he is so insulted by the folks' behavior that he dumps Dawn and moves on to a new girl (who, incidentally, looks like Kirby in drag).
• Out-Gambitted: "The Kirbinator" is this in spades. Kirby is approached by his supposed Bad Future self that verifies his identity with assorted details, including a Dark Secret about consistently wearing the same pair of underwear for years. Dawn set the whole thing up as a prank to humiliate Kirby in front of the whole school, saying she learned about the secret when he was recovering from surgery and got a local actor to pretend to be Kirby's future self. However, Kirby reveals there is no such Dark Secret; he made the whole thing up to provide advanced warning of a prank and pretended to go along with everything in order to successfully prank her in front of the whole school. Then, Belinda reveals to the audience that she manipulated everyone at school into exactly everything they did that day, thus declaring herself the real top prankster.
• Painful Adhesive Removal: In one episode, Kirby gets his face covered in Dawn's leg hair so it looks like a mustache. He uses tape to remove it and screams in pain during the process.
• Parody: "Commander Kirbo" is an obvious parody of/tribute to Star Trek and Star Wars.
• Playing Sick: Kirby pretends to have a disease called Puppies

• Put on a Bus: The cartoons were killed off at the beginning of Season 3 after Kirby's lawsuit ends his cartoonist career.
  • The Bus Came Back: They are once again seen during the last scene of the final episode — in fact, they are literally on a school bus.
• Retool: The third season, Kirby Buckets: Warped
• Right-Hand Cat: Principal Mitchell's cat, Laughy Cat, who is a well-known internet celebrity (so much so that even Mighty Med and Lab Rats characters watch his online show).
• Roger Rabbit Effect: Kirby's drawings, which is one of the main gimmicks of the show.
• Rewriting Reality: In one episode, Kirby finds a magic pen that makes his drawings come to life. Turns out it may just be coincidence, and there are tons of pens like it.
• Sibling Rivalry: Kirby and Dawn, quite possibly the worst
• Spiritual Successor: To Out of Jimmy's Head. Don't worry though, this one's much more tolerable.
  • Also one for Zeke and Luther, Disney XD's previous single-camera sitcom show. Many of the characters are obvious Expies of those from Z&L (i.e. Kirby and Zeke, Eli and Luther, Fish and Face Kojo, Dawn and Ginger, Belinda and Poochie, Gil and Don, Mitchell and Dingle, Ricky and Ozzie, the Babcocks and the Plunks) and some very similar episode plots ("All Hands on Dexter" is an obvious rehash of "Not My Sister's Keeper")
• Stern Teacher: Principal Mitchell shows signs of this.
• Superficial Suggestion Box: In one episode, Kirby, Fish, and Ellie are about to snatch the suggestion box; it contained a comic that made fun of the teachers at school. The trio learned that the teachers are making fun at the students' suggestions during a party.
• Toilet Humor: The show relies heavily on this with one of Kirby's character's even being named Tri-Butt.
  "I have a special toilet!"
  - Tri-Butt
• Two Lines, No Waiting: One of the few Disney shows with a specific character formula for this trope, as the plots are pretty much always going to be Kirby/Fish/Eli and Dawn/Belinda.
• The Voiceless: Jean-Luc.
• Voices Are Mental: Kirby and Dr. Mac & Cheese when they switch bodies.
• With Friends Like These...: Dawn is often Innocently Insensitive towards Belinda, as well as ropes her into various antics that get them both in trouble or into embarrassing situations.