Foe Paws review

 So, I never alluded to a third entry in my coverage of failed Cartoon Network pilots but here we are. Here's a little refresher.

I covered Lucky Lydia way back when, and it's one of the few old reviews I did that I'm still proud of. Lucky Lydia had a premise that would get old within seconds, a glorified mary-sue as a main character, and one of the rare instances I'd claim something to take too much influence from another show (short leader, guy with hat, big idiot, what comes to mind?)

I had made a promise to cover My Freaky Family in that, but I wound up forgetting about it until I finally decided to get it off the chopping block. It made me afraid of how it could've gotten worse if it got picked up. The writing was so bad that any negative stereotypes you could throw at it would have some kernel of truth (for instance, "Eggs? I'm allergic to eggs! But these are my famous scrambled eggs, everybody loves them!")

It got me thinking, there could be a lot more pilots that've held up poorly or would've become disasters in less than one season. I would've talked about Prickles the Cactus, but it got a sequel that helped provide context to what happened in the first and helped provide groundwork for a series that could work.

For the record I won't talk about Kitty Bobo, I think it could've worked.

If only there was a pilot created by an infamous figure in the animation industry which actually sucked before he got busted for, I dunno, sexual harassment?

Chris you son of a bitch

Foe Paws was the work of Chris Savino. For a crash-course, Savino had some prominence back then and to now. He became a showrunner for Dexter's Laboratory and PowerPuff Girls in both of the show's later years (and the latter's only good to say you like it to spite fans of the crappy previous seasons (and I await your inevitable comment Dan)

Aside from that, he helped direct episodes on Kick Buttowski (which for the record I actually do kinda like), and he had managed to create a show that could rival SpongeBob in terms of ratings and was a contributing factor to killing Fairly Odd Parents, what was it? The Loud House. I will say this about it, I like it the same way I like CatDog, I tend to skip certain segments to get to better ones and could understand claims of mean-spiritedness. The show got a little better without him.

And then he got busted for sexual harassment allegations, but I will say this, he stepped down and apologized, which is more than I could say for him than John Kricfalusi.

I bring up The Loud House and CatDog specifically for key reasons. This show had a similar style to the former, and basically a similar coat of paint character wise for CatDog, a stuck-up cat and a fun loving dog, well for the most part.

Useless divider

But back on CatDog, take a rather stuck-up character like Cat, and a rambunctious, fun loving naive dog, and strip them down to only one key character trait. What've you got? A borderline jackass who acts as such so the writers could get away with making him the butt of many jokes, especially for a major one that'd stick for the entire show. Which is why I won't be stating the names, the pilot title didn't give away the joke.

Then there's the dog, the kindly.... that's it really. He rolls along with everything and sees the good in all of it.

So, the two are at a pet store, valued lowly and part of a buy one get one free sale, and you're just waiting for those hijinks to happen. In a better world, all of the pets would hate the cat, and the dog, seeing the good in everything, would stick around with the cat to the point he'd tolerate him more than other by default. Perhaps question why they don't go into the dogs against cat trope.

They're as bare basic as BlackFire and Azula.

You know, a key to a pilot is giving us the essential details for what people could expect. More grounded affairs could get away with this lack of detail because it's just a chapter out of their lives, but this leaves some questions, not a lot, but some. Also telegraphed jokes, heh, wouldn't it be funny if the dog said a lady was coming by then the cat assumed she'd be hot but she'd just be gross?

Meet their future owners, and I'm not trying to make an edgy racial joke, I'd be poking fun at my own nationality if I did. Mama Mia. People hate stereotypes because they're offensive, I just hate them because it's done out of laziness. It's easy to write a stereotype, just give them traits indicative of their character. Mama Mia strikes me as someone who considers Olive Garden to be genuine Italian cuisine.

I'd say more, like how Italy gave us those three animated Titanic movies and that they were done with the help of North Korea, but then I'd be taking the piss out of my home state and lose friends.

But just know Mama Mia plays to the stereotype to a T, from spaghetti to the accordion. She is also rather senile since she treats the pets like actual humans. This may sound like a good thing, but like literally, she treats them like they're legit humans, to the point she has them dress up.

They get their names hereafter, the dog is called Rollo, and, for the rest of time had this gone to series, the cat is called Vivian and dressed accordingly. This hurts, all due to the long term ramifications, it'd be better if it was his choice, when it comes to sexuality it's all about choice. This is Desmond, ultra conservative-tier sexual abuse. Think about it, especially since Vivian has no one on his side, oh but he was an asshole the entire time, why bother giving layers to characters to make up for lesser decisions when we could make characters just as minimal? There's a reason people knock comedy a lot, it's because it's used as an excuse, but it makes every joke predictable. Heh, wouldn't it be funny if Vivian believed he was bought and Rollo was the freebie, but it was the other way around?

So, Vivian is, sadly, the most sane out of all of them, but not for a lack of reason, so, he feels he'd be better off back at the pet store. But is soon goaded into going back to living a demoralizing life with the old and kooky, to avoid living like an... animal. In a world with humans, animals make up a lower ebb of it, especially since they abide to the same standards as domesticated pets, can't talk in front of Mama Mia or she at least can't understand them, in other words Rollo, you're either an idiot or suffer from Stockholm syndrome.

The End

I don't know how long Foe Paws would've gone on had it been greenlit. At the very least Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones, had technically lost, so we wouldn't expect as much of it as we did (to sum up my thoughts on that for now, I felt it was a fever dream, but knew full well it was real, and I like the show.), for some we can understand that the seeds for several more potential episodes are there, but like My Freaky Family, it would've surely gotten worse.

To be frank, Savino was a hack, and this pilot is a testament to it, not even a majority of the earlier Loud House episodes are that good (though I'd like to assume a butthurt PowerPuff Girls fan got the allegations going.)

The characters are bland and only exist to justify harsher jokes, anything that does make sense is also stupid and holds a darker subtext to it, the fact they got Tom Kenny to voice the dog only further cements the potential CatDog connections, but one good thing bout this show is that it showed me how good CatDog really was.

Think about it, I was able to come up with allegories that could justify the mean-spiritedness of the show, like it being an allegory for racism, discrimination, corruption and the like, plus the characters were more fleshed out.

The only way this could've been interesting is if Vivian didn't exist physically, he'd be a representation of Rollo's angst and would come out toward the climax and attack the old bag, the pattern repeating as Rollo becomes more evil. Come on tell me you wouldn't consider that interesting.

But for now, think that takes care of the pilots that deserved to bite it. I hope, at least by Cartoon Network standards.