CatDog: Season One, Part One + Angry
Beavers: Season 1 & 2 (Shout! Factory/Nickelodeon DVD Sets)
Picture:
B- Sound: B- Extras: D Episodes: B
Nickelodeon
has now left generations of children with fond memories, mostly surrounding
their solid gold cartoon programming.
Nickelodeon has been the creators of (or at least founders of) a
numerous amount classics like Rugrats,
Doug, Rocko’s Modern Life, Aaahh!
Real Monsters, and many more.
Nickelodeon continues to pump out hits to this day, but it is the
recently released classics by SHOUT that fans drooling.
Under
review here are two later classics, CatDog:
Season 1 – Part 1 and Angry Beavers:
Seasons 1 & 2. Both series came
a bit later than the aforementioned animated series, but still just as fun and
creative.
CatDog was created by Peter Hannan and premiered
in 1998, running until 2004. The premise
of the series was odd and simple enough.
The series stars Cat and Dog, conjoined twins with no hind legs or ummm…
back ends. Their origin of the brothers
is a mystery, but together they are trying to live life to its fullest and
though brothers, their personalities couldn’t be more different. Cat is the bossy, tough, gets in over his
head type; while Dog is the innocent, goofy, and optimistic one. Peter Hannan’s intentions were to portray a
duo that perseveres even in the worst of situations. When not battling each other, CatDog find
themselves mixed up in a mess of trouble with other town’s folk. The enemies of CatDog are as odd as them;
including the Greasers (a band of rude, crude motorcycle riding dogs) and
Winslow, CatDog’s devilishly clever mouse neighbor.
Next on
the block of new releases is Angry
Beavers: Seasons One and Two. Like CatDog, Angry Beavers is about two brothers who couldn’t be anymore
different. Daggett is the high strung,
immature, and somewhat dimwitted; while Norbert is the well spoken,
intelligent, cool, good looking brother.
Daggett is often overshadowed by his brother, in turn making for some
rather heated situations. The love hate
relationship of Daggett and Norbert is only exacerbated by the fact that
Norbert is constantly getting Daggett into trouble; as if Daggett didn’t do it
well enough on his own. Though Norbert
is a genius, he is also a schemer who usually uses Daggett as his rube. It is through their differences; however,
they grow closer; in the end always managing to remember they are family.
Neither series
has much of a running storyline (or depth for that matter) and instead
emphasizes the ‘story of the week’ model as the characters get into and out of
hijinks. The series are each amazingly
constructed with solid writing, creative/colorful characters, and brilliant art
direction. Both series were created at a
time when Nickelodeon was literally pouring millions of dollars into new
animation development. Nickelodeon had
raked in the benefits of animation in the past by putting their faith in
creative ventures like Ren & Stimpy and
Rugrats; and in the same manner they
were willing to take a chance with series like CatDog and Angry Beavers.
The
technical features on both sets are essentially the same and slide by as
adequate. The picture is presented in
its original 1.33 X 1 format with bright colors, clean lines, and solid
blacks. The sound is also good though
not great in its Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo mix coming all from the front, there
are little too no distortion issues and everything comes through crisp.
There are
sadly no extras to speak of, which is all too common for these types of sets.
I HIGHLY
recommend both of these series as they are solidly creative and keep to jokes
coming. I can’t wait until the next
seasons are released.
- Michael
P. Dougherty II
