I wholeheartedly agree with you on this great review. To me CatDog is Nick's Cow and Chicken: the rare 90's cartoon with a massive hatedom. Yet I feel the show is incredibly overhated for the reasons you stated. CatDog is a pretty good Nicktoon to me.
"Detecting trace amounts of mental activity. Possibly a dead weasel or a cartoon viewer"
I wrote this one way, way back when I first joined and hadn't really gotten my critical faculties in order...
I'd probably rewrite it to show off my newfound critical sensibilities if I didn't think that was a waste of time. Needless to say, however, CatDog is in the sort of tradition of comedies about the little guy who's always down on his luck, gets shit on by the world, and we're meant to sympathize with him as we laugh at him. Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy did a number of films of that sort.
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."
It's kinda like Spongebob right now in that it's admittedly not full on mean spirited all the time, but it is let down by some excessively downbeat or over the top bleak episodes (eg. it's very easy to hate Dog's guts by the end of Trespasser). A lot of them that aren't also still fall flat a bit more compared to Nick's other more surreal shows like Rocko and Ren and Stimpy, being more corny or dumb. There are some funny episodes in there, but it often felt a lot like Nick's B staff.
You can't really compare any other Nicktoon of the 90s to Rocko or Ren and Stimpy; everything else - Rugrats, Hey Arnold, etc. - falls flat when you compare it to them.
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."
I dunno, Rugrats and Hey Arnold still had better writing than Catdog to me, at least in their earlier days.
I dunno. When you think about it, there's really two levels in the Nicktoons of the 90s: Ren and Stimpy and Rocko - and everything else. Everything else is just good compared to those two.
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."Leave a Comment:
Not as bad a show as you may think
After reading the TV Tropes article about the show, I decided to rewatch the show to see why I liked it. (I was driven in particular by one very harsh comment that said anyone who liked the show was deluding themselves... Whoever wrote that, shame on you.)
I still think it's a good show. I like a few of the characters. I think Lube, in particular, is hilarious. Randolph and Mr. Sunshine are good too. Both Cat and Dog have their good and bad points: Cat is smart, and would be interesting to talk to - but he can be a real jerk. Dog's someone I can imagine having fun with - but he's an idiot with a one-track mind. Their relationship is better to relate to if you have a brother or sister. It helped that despite everything they did, they did love each other deep down. The moments where Cat sticks up for Dog are some of the best.
As for the villains - Winslow was simply an annoying jerk. Not exactly the worst guy in the show. Rancid Rabbit was the Red Guy of the show - sometimes he didn't try to antagonize CatDog but most of the time he did, and most of the time when that happened CatDog won. That's one thing nobody seems to remember. There were a lot of episodes where they won.
But the Greasers... They were similar to the Kankers in that I never liked how they beat the crap out of CatDog. I can take a lot of the stuff Cat gets because it's slapstick - and as The Nostalgia Critic says, "Big laughs come from big pain." Besides, dogs in real life, when they chase something, do it because of their instincts. I can hardly blame Dog for acting on his instincts... Unlike the Kankers though, the Greasers could be funny (especially Lube) and we did find out more about them as the series went on. That, plus CatDog did win against them and sometimes even worked with them.
The jokes, by and large, work for me at least... I like the plots - a few episodes remind me of old Laurel and Hardy shorts, and a lot of them are enjoyably silly. I like the score, which is heavy on slide guitar. The songs are good - even if you hate the show you may like the songs they put in.
Overall, it's not a mean-spirited piece of crap like you'd think. I may be saying this because I grew up with it, but I like the show and think it's good.
And how is slapstick mean-spirited? Am I out of touch?...