CatDog has its fans, and has its haters. It's an acquired taste, but it has plenty of redeeming qualities to justify itself. Through all the turmoil and disadvantage, Cat and Dog care for each other as brothers would, the jokes are hilarious and it's a pretty even playing field between them and the Greasers. It's sorta like a heavier version of Peanuts where Charlie Brown is always down on his luck and that just makes the viewer like him more because yeah, they can relate sometimes and life throws them one too many foul balls, it's why I like this, even Ed, Edd n' Eddy and Johnny Bravo. Otherwise, they're not the sum of their parts and actually have some depth to them, depth that's all but non-existent in shit like The Loud House.
But don't get me wrong, there're some episodes that even when justified can underwhelm, at worst annoy the viewer. It's not a CatDog standard, it's an everyone standard, and it won't be of any consequence to the rest of the series. I've rarely seen anyone single out any particular CatDog episode for being the worst, beyond some comments left on episode articles on the show's wiki, and it's between Trespassing and Back to School on what's the most hated.
Back to School
The episode was written by Steven Banks, who would go on to write episodes for The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius. His CatDog episodes tend to feature the best sight gags and jokes, and even when things go wrong it can be forgiven for being entertaining at least, but if you want my opinion, the best writer for CatDog was Andrew Gottlieb, that is, if you want episodes where things either end happily for Cat or not as bad, and I'm only saying this because he managed to maintain an otherwise spotless writing record for the show, a rare feat.
He also wrote CatDogula, which was also co-written by Steven Banks, I just wanted to point out that coincidence before I got into the episode proper.
The problems with this episode can be broken down into two details, how Cat's treated, and inconsistency. Before I get into the latter, I need to better explain Cat's treatment as it seems to be a standard for a lot of episodes.
Now, CatDog is a kids cartoon first and foremost, and thus most episodes would try and teach a lesson or something. It felt like the case for Cat in earlier episodes as he tends to do something out of selfishness and would thus pay the price by the end. In other episodes, Cat manages to get what he wants, but something has to ruin it, having its cake and eating it too. Something has to cancel out, show a character is in the wrong or it could just subvert expectations or show that maybe what looks to be the right path isn't.
And it isn't just CatDog that tends to throw out these unfair circumstances, most shows need something to help get the episode to end in a way they consider to make sense. For instance, Ed, Edd n' Eddy's first season tended to use the Kankers as a means of stopping Eddy's plans when nothing, or no one else would. By the next few seasons the Kankers were reduced to either a minor nuisance or just attacking when provoked or approached... then the fifth season reduced everyone to the sum of their parts and somehow got worse.
Other times, misfortune happens for the sake of it, they didn't ask for it, they just happened to be the unfortunate one to be at the right place at the wrong time, such as in Flea or Die. A point of comparison is Johnny Bravo, where most of the time he is the main player in a strange scenario, and usually his doofiness and womanizing tends to annoy or provoke those who're around. They demonstrate Johnny lacks any common sense and thus he'd be prone to trouble. There's a reason for everything, even if it doesn't seem as obvious, and when you come to that you can understand why these things happen to CatDog.
Okay, with the schtick behind CatDog explained, I think that would give you an idea on Cat's treatment, onto the plot.
This is what I'd like to call a diploma episode, characters either go back to school or attempt to get their degree. It's a fairly common concept and I can understand CatDog giving it a whirl, but there is one problem... Cat is the one who has to get his diploma. The problem is that it looks like Cat had already got his diploma, and I don't just mean based on the intro, in a scene from Remain Seated where Cat's life flashes before his eyes, we see him at a graduation ceremony of some kind.
And to add insult to injury, Steven Banks also wrote that episode. I mean I don't know what goes on behind the scenes, maybe the network wanted one and Steven was the first to offer. But yeah, it makes very little sense for Cat to get his diploma again, the rest of the episode just goes through taking the piss out of Cat, in other words a typical episode, in the nicest way possible, and as customary of episodes from this season, Cat accomplishes what he wants to do and something goes wrong, in this case, Cat losing his girl Sally, not to be confused with Sally from It's a Jungle in Here, but to be fair Steven didn't write that episode so how could he have known? And Dog's happy about it for some reason, like I get Cat trying to pass off Dog's high school stuff as his own, but it wasn't even a point. Maybe if it was a twist that Cat had taken credit for Dog's accomplishments or Cat did in fact flunk while Dog passed it'd make sense, but no, it's weird.
Could it be different?
They could've easily had Dog need to get his high school diploma, there is a premise there. Dog would've likely struggled in class and became the class clown to cope, putting popularity over having the will to pass. That would show as both had to go back to high school to get their degree, Dog would slip into old habits while Cat had to relive humiliating moments during their school days, and in order to impress the Greasers' nephews, Dog would wind up bullying Cat, only to learn his lesson by the end and soon Dog would trade his work with Bartholomew (Lube's nephew) to get his diploma, but if you really wanna throw in a typical Cat ending, have it where Dog winds up getting with Sally, and Sally gets pranked by Squeak (Shriek's niece). Cat would take one of Dog's accolades and both would get into an argument over who it should belong to.
Final Thoughts
What makes this episode the worst for me is how broken it feels. I'm not gonna assume the writers see their own work, or perhaps they operate entirely in a bubble, but it becomes harder to believe when you see glaring contradictions, especially from the same writer. I'm no advocate for air tight continuity, I mean Revenge of the Flying Dutchman doesn't make my blood boil, and I don't give a shit about SpongeBob in general, but this just felt very off. Was Cat being a graduate not specified in the show's bible? Did they scramble for ideas and had to bite a bullet?
The broken nature of this episode is what sets it lower for me. On Trespassing, another lesser episode apparently, for me it all depends on where the character is left off. At the end of that episode, Cat isn't outright miserable, at most realizing how bad things got and became hysterical, almost like he stopped caring and believes things can not get worse.
But in spite of that, this episode didn't piss me off the most. Had it not been for the elements previously discussed, I'd say the one episode of CatDog I hate is Climb Every CatDog because of its forced unhappy end, like they needed desperately to ensure Cat didn't get his happy end, like maybe we saw it coming, but the overall end just felt like a slap to the face. And yes, something like Mush Dog Mush had a similar bad end, but Cat had been running Dog into the ground with training so you can consider it karma. What kind of karma applies to that episode? I'll never know.
The reason Climb Every CatDog isn't being discussed is because it pissed me off, it didn't piss everyone off enough to get singled out, so there you go.
On this, I get it, it's almost a right of passage for a show to have characters going back to school in some capacity, or showcase how bad high school was, but there was a better way to go about it.
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