Starfield Creations

The first of what I hope will be a continuing series where “The Artist” tackles many many very… “off” cartoons.

In this episode, The Artist tackles a little bit of dark Saturday Morning past known as The Bubsy the Bobcat cartoon, based off the video game series of the same name… Seriously though, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?

I wanted to give off a few quick thoughts I had after watching a new premiere tonight on Fox’s “Animation Dominatrix” the two hour Sunday lineup that basically whips your poor lives over and over until you can’t stand up anymore… I also can’t believe that this has to be my first new post of the new year…

Wow…. I mean, wow… The standards for what makes it past the production line in animation is so low nowadays, why? Bob’s Burgers. Let the image above just give you an idea of what I had to deal with tonight… Not only after another riveting venture to “The Seth MacFarlene hour.” I don’t want to spend too much time on this as I have already.

The show starts off immediately making sure the main jokes of concept of  “about a guy who owns a burger joint with his family” get out there. The show of course, stars Bob (voice by Home Movies/Adult Swim actor H. Jon Benjamin) Sadly, an actual competent father at first (that spells show length poison) while the wife, two daughters and son seem to be the most idiotic of the group. Might I also add, there is only one actual female voice, and it’s the little girl with aspergers syndrome. Right off the bat, signs of pain can be seen as the smooth movements point to none other than Flash animation. Now hang on, I’m not badgering Flash animation as it’s a great medium for entertainment, but it just looks very very… awkward, but it could be the whole style anyway.

Anyhow, the show really did not make me laugh. Pilots for shows often make or break a lot of first impressions for folks, and I can understand that the first episode is often the “black sheep” of the entire series as it progresses and gets better. But I just can’t find this appealing. And here’s the issue I have with it, it’s such a promising concept! What I mean by that is, I strongly felt that the idea of the show was handled poorly in terms of appeal. None of the characters are appealing, the look is unappealing, but the concept behind the episode and the series itself… Could have been something good.

Let’s see here, I want to run down the “personalities” of each of the characters in this show and see what we have to work with: We have the father, the obvious protagonist of the show, the wife, who seems to be this dim-witted, obnoxious, brunt of the joke, showing very little actual character and emotion. Though I guess the real joke behind her was “We had a guy voice the wife! isn’t that FUNNY?” The son is also an idiot… prone to fart jokes and weird noises (who sounds like Patton Oswalt and I swear they even snuck in a “Family Guy” type joke with him as if to say “look at us, we’re part of FOX now!” the youngest daughter, as I stated before, has aspergers… plain and simple, who seems to make everything a filthy joke and make sure that everything she says is inappropriate (and is the only female character actually voiced by a woman.) finally, we have another appealing daughter, the eldest, whose gimmick is basically to make sure that everything she does is disgusting and inappropriate… Wow people… This is the family you’d like to see for a whole season, right? The show is also accompanied by two health inspectors, one whose basically the jerk and his partner, who of little words, actually can be the only funny one of the whole cast.

I really am sick of picking on shows like this, I really am. I want to actually be able to see a new show kick away the long running and honestly stale Simpsons run, and more importantly, destroy the torrid, unfunny and stiffly drawn Seth MacFarlene crap. Are we just so used to shows that feature “dumb dad with a family” that we just can’t try anything new? That we have to come up with great ideas, but ruin it by giving it to folks who really don’t understand the what makes a show appealing? I would have loved to have seen Bob’s Burgers done differently, it should have been performed differently. But no, this show was made. The company put money into this crap and now writers and artists will continue to bicker over whose fault it was that the show didn’t “hit it” with its audience.

Or maybe I’m wrong and this is just the beginning to something that might actually work? I don’t know, I have my own tastes and this just ain’t it.

To add more insult to injury on the horrible style of the show, I joyfully spotted a hand that was drawn backwards in plain sight. Something I learned to avoid when I first started drawing at the age of 5… Your hands don’t do that no matter how much you freaking twist it so there’s no excuse… I just thought I’d point that out.