DR. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!
DR. BEES is a series of web animation shorts by Harry Partridge, created as a parody of cheaply-made superhero cartoons from the 60's and 70's. The titular character has the ability to carry exorbitant amounts of bees, and the solution he has to every problem involves sending out said bees. The series currently has three shorts, the first in 2013
, the second in 2015 and a third in 2021.
What's this? A work page underpopulated by tropes?! My examples full of BEES oughtta put a stop to that!
- Affectionate Parody: Of the Golden and Silver Ages of superhero comics, and their cheap cartoon adaptations.
- The All-Solving Hammer, a laaarge influx of BEES ought to put a stop to any given problem approached by Dr. Bees! Yes, that includes problems caused by an over-abundance of bees.
- Anti-Villain: The Comforter, who uses his patented Comfortizer to zap physical and emotional comfort to those who need it, such as overworked security guards and grieving widows. Even the police chief admits that he doesn't commit any actual crime. Yet he still acts, and is treated, like a supervillain.
- Bait-and-Switch: Two in DR. BEES RETURNS:
- The security chief called attention to Dr. Bees arriving from his Bee-mobile, with the screen panning towards a bee-themed vehicle speeding away. Then immediately afterwards, the Bee-mobile turns out to be Dr. Bees arriving from atop a mattress being pulled by a babushka.
- Towards the end, Dr. Bees wished that he won't be killed at the end of the cartoon this time. Everybody laughed to his chagrin, then shortly afterward all of them except Dr. Bees got skeletonized, something the latter considered much worse.
- Bank Robbery: Subverted in Dr. Bees Returns!. Apparent supervillain The Comforter uses his Comfortizer to render the bank's guards too comfortable to stop him from... doing nothing else and leaving.
- Batman Parody: Dr. Bees Returns! gives Dr. Bees a Bee-Mobile, a Bee Cave (also called the Bat Hive), and sidekicks Bee Boy, Dr. Boy, and Boy Boy.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Dr. Bees wished for himself to not die at the end of Dr. Bees Returns! When he sees everyone around him had suddenly been skeletonized instead, he admits to this being worse.
- Bee-Bee Gun: Dr. Bees is a walking version of this trope, unleashing sting-happy swarms of bees on people in his ineffectual attempts to help them.
- Beyond the Impossible: Dr. Bees Returns ends with Omnipotron, a literally omnipotent character, suddenly dying along with everyone else in the room, except of course for Dr. Bees.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Dr. Bees ends Dr. Bees Returns the cartoon wishing for him not die at the end unlike the previous two episodes.
- Calling Card: The Comforter leaves behind a folded napkin... with his real name and address inside, and only partially obscured by the fold. Dr. Bees needs a bee-powered supercomputer to realize he should try unfolding the napkin. As it turns out, the Comforter wanted to be found.
- Creepy Good: Omnipotron is a benevolent (if useless) superhero, who has extra forearms and hands, extra shins and feet, and an extra face on the back of his head, making for a seriously freaky character design.
- Cutting the Knot: After failing to unravel the mystery of the Comforter's evidence (read: he dropped the napkin down a crack and couldn't get it out), Dr. Bees consents to simply letting "Bee Boy" teleport them instantly to the villain's location.
- Dramatic Unmask: When Dr. Bees unmasks the Comforter, it turns out to be exactly the person he suspected: an individual he did not recognize .
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: To his chagrin, nobody respects Omnipotron's unlimited reality-warping powers which could solve any problem (or non-problem) with ease. They're all way more impressed with Dr. Bees, whose solution to every problem is to add bees.
- "Everybody Laughs" Ending: When Dr. Bees wished that he doesn't die at the end of DR. BEES RETURNS, everybody except him (who was clearly in distress) had a hearty laugh before all the sudden all dying around him.
- Expy: The superhero Omnipotron, an all-powerful naked blue person who experiences time non-linearly, is clearly a riff on Dr. Manhattan of Watchmen.
- Hero with an F in Good: Dr. Bees seems to be genuinely convinced (most of the time) that his actions serve to help others, when what he primarily does is unleash his bees on people.
- Harmless Villain: The Comforter is one, since instead of actually doing evil things, he's doing the heinous crimes of giving relaxation to overworked security guards and grieving widows.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: Comically exaggerated with Omnipotron, whom Dr. Bees recruits as his sidekick despite the former being an all-powerful Reality Warper and Dr. Bees having, well, bees.
- Inherently Funny Words: Much of the humour in the shorts is derived from the fact that "bees" (and its singular form, "bee") is an inherently funny word.
- Informed Attribute: Just about everything Dr. Bees says about himself in his introduction is quickly, if not immediately, shown to be nonsense. He doesn't wear a mask (at least as Dr. Bees), he doesn't operate at night, and he doesn't appear to care about saving mankind. He does have a load of bees, though.
- Lantern Jaw of Justice: Although not as pronounced as Killgar in Partridge's Starbarians, it is still present in the titular Dr. Bees, complete with a cleft.
- Large Ham: Dr. Bees always speaks in a bombastic manner, even in more mundane matters.
- Legacy Character: Dr. Bees is implied to bee one at the end of the first animation, though DR. BEES RETURNS shows that the new character became Boy Boy.
- Limited Animation: As part of the throwback to extremely old superhero cartoons, the animation takes a lot of shortcuts. It's especially noticeable in the first short, which consists largely of static poses with only the eyes and mouth flaps animated. DR. BEES RETURNS gets more ambitious with its animation, but is still stiffer than is typical of Partridge's work.
- Mind Screw: The titular character correctly identifies an object in the sky as a plane, noting that he himself is presently on the plane, and no matter where he is when he makes his entrance, he's always standing on a grassy hill dotted with flowers. Then there's the family at the picnic...
- Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Omnipotron has four forearms sprouting from his two upper arms (same deal with his legs). He also has unlimited reality warping powers and can alter the state of the whole universe at will, though he's usually too irritated and petty to bother when people don't appreciate what he can do.
- Name-Tron: Omnipotron, of course, because how can you get any cooler than taking The Omnipotent and adding "tron" to it?
- Negated Moment of Awesome: A problem arises that can actually be solved by Dr. Bees's supply of bees... but he's not there. Turns out he's long dead in the middle of some desert.
- Every time Omnipotron points out that he can use his Reality Warper powers to instantly solve an issue (or alter reality so that it never occurred in the first place), he gets brushed aside.
- Neon Sign Hideout: The signs aren't neon but it's still notable:
- Dr. Bees's secret base is located inside a mountain with a giant "BAT HIVE" sign above the entrance.
- Later, we see that The Comforter's so-called "top-secret hideout" is inside a similar mountain with a giant sign saying "COMFORT BASE" and a giant sleeping hat on the mountain's tip.
- Later again, we see that the the police's own "top-secret hideout" is also located in a mountain with a giant sign saying "COP CAVE" and a giant police cap on the mountain's tip. On top of that, all three "secret" bases are right next to each others.
- Nominal Hero: Dr. Bees, who, when not fighting crime with bees, is fighting the lack of bees with bees, or the overabundance of bees with more bees, oblivious to how much pain it causes others.
- Non-Indicative Name: Dr. Bees's secret base has a huge sign with "Bat Hive" written on it, despite him not being a bat-themed superhero. Weirdly enough, the narration actually calls the base the "Bee Cave", which is a more fitting name.
- Not So Above It All: Omnipotron isn't willing at first to indulge Dr. Bees and his weirdness. By the end of the cartoon, he's nervously joining in with the doctor's application of bees to a situation, bashfully accepting praise for it, and wearing the ratty old "Bee Boy" sidekick costume without complaint.
- Orgy of Evidence: In the third short, The Comforter only leaves behind one clue at the crime scene: a folded napkin with his real name and address written on it. Dr. Bees, naturally, still manages to screw this up: first by requiring the use of a bee-based supercomputer to consider the idea of unfolding the napkin and reading the name, then by dropping the napkin and losing it before he can do so, forcing him to simply ask "Bee Boy" to teleport them to The Comforter's lair.
- Poke the Poodle: Apparent supervillain The Comforter takes this to its logical conclusion. He uses his Comfortizer to zap all the guards at the bank, rendering them too comfortable to stop him from... doing nothing else and leaving. In his hideout, he uses his nefarious machines to do things like calm down grieving widows. Through the whole cartoon he commits literally no crimes, and the heroes know it, but he's a supervillain so they bust him anyway.
- Poking Dead Things with a Stick: The first animated short in this series ends with the title character revealed to have died in a desert, where a chubby Boy Scout discovers his body and pokes at it with a stick.
- Political Overcorrectness: #CHANGETHEBEES has Dr. Bees being pressured into changing the cover of his comic because it depicts a woman getting stung by bees. What's more, we never see if any women actually took offense to the first cover, so there's no way of knowing if his editor's concern was out of sincerity or if he just wanted to maximise profits. He eventually has to create a cover where a woman is stabbing a bee. The editor approves, ignoring the bee-people who are clearly distressed at this decision. Dr. Bees later commits suicide over this.
- Real Vehicle Reveal: When the police chief announces the arrival of Dr. Bees in the Beemobile, the camera cuts to a shiny bee-themed Cool Car... which then drives away, with Dr. Bees being dragged into frame atop a creaky mattress pulled by an elderly woman at a speed slightly slower than walking.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: Omnipotron, who is omnipotent, is put to work stopping criminals and never uses his powers for anything else. At one point, he suggests that he simply eliminate the very concept of crime from the universe, but he gets interrupted before he can do so.
- Retraux: All the Dr. Bees shorts are done in the style of an old-timey shoestring-budget superhero cartoon. There is a grainy, stuttery cel filter over everything, and Limited Animation and Stock Footage are used liberally.
- Reused Character Design: The chief of police in DR. BEES RETURNS has the same appearance and voice as the comic company executive from #CHANGETHEBEES, just with a different outfit.
- Rule of Funny: All of it.
- Rule of Three: The "highly visible secret base" joke is done three times in DR. BEES RETURNS.
- Scenery Censor: Any time we get a full frontal shot of Omnipotron, a character's limb conveniently moves to cover anything sensitive. There's a few frames where the police chief's pointing hand moves away, revealing Omnipotron has Barbie Doll Anatomy.
- Secret Identity: Parodied with Dr. Bees. His secret identity is another superhero. It's a strange case as what might be his civilian name ("Dr. Miles Manners") is on his office door, but his alternate superhero name ("The Striped Stinger") is on his desk name plate.
- Shout-Out: "Dr. Bees Returns" takes place in New Propolis, a reference to Metropolis.
- Stock Footage: As would have been done for classic superhero cartoons to stretch the budget farther, there are a few shots that are reused multiple times across all the shorts. The most consistent is the low-angle shot of the title character's face, which is used nigh-constantly whenever he talks. The behind-leg shot of Dr. Bees crashing the picnic is also reused whenever he enters a scene and feels the urge to release bees, but the 'cel' with his body also includes the grassy knoll he was standing on at the time, so the grass carries over too.
- Stranger Behind the Mask: The Comforter, is revealed to be an individual Dr. Bees did not recognize.
- Super Zeroes: Dr. Bees, who's more concerned with fighting the lack of bees than crime.
- Take That!: #CHANGETHEBEES was a response to #ChangeTheCover.
- Theme Mobile: Dr. Bees has the Bee Mobile, a bee-themed Cool Car... which immediately drives away. The actual “Bee Mobile” is a shabby mattress being dragged around by an elderly woman.
- They Killed Kenny Again: Dr. Bees ended up dead in some fashion in his first two appearances. He wished he doesn't die at the end of the third, but everyone else around him died, a fact he considered much worse.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Parodied in the first cartoon, where, after making things much worse with his bees, an absolutely perfect scenario for Dr. Bees shows up... and he's been Killed Offscreen.
- Took a Level in Badass: In his first appearance, Dr. Bees seems to be literally just a guy in a beekeeping-themed costume who carries containers filled with bees. In DR. BEES RETURNS, he still doesn't have any explicit superpowers himself, but he has a machine that uses a swarm of bees as a Wetware CPU and outputs data via nectar, he can fly by flapping the wings of his bee hat, and his arsenal includes the clearly-abnormal Russian Doll bees, which open up to release a series of smaller bees. That's a bit more impressive for a superhero than just throwing bees at people.
- Useless Superpowers: Omnipotron is remarked multiple times to be all-powerful, so naturally, every time he would use his powers to actually help solve a problem, he is interrupted. The only times he uses his powers are to teleport him and Dr. Bees to the villain's lair (which was only a short distance away and was only necessary because Dr. Bees dropped the napkin that would have told them to go there) and to summon a box containing a single bee. As he previously suggested the idea of rewriting the entire universe so that the concept of crime did not exist, this is probably for the best.
- We Can Rule Together: When Dr. Bees is teleported to the Comforter's hideout, the latter makes this proposition to address all comfort and lack-of-bees related problems. After consulting Omnipotron about the feasibility, Dr. Bees is so ecstatic with the offer that he accepts... with a shitton of bees.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Dr. Bees' only power seems to be(e) that he carries around a lot of bees. And no, he can't control them.
