{"id":3516,"date":"2016-08-26T22:24:10","date_gmt":"2016-08-26T21:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3516"},"modified":"2016-08-26T22:24:10","modified_gmt":"2016-08-26T21:24:10","slug":"watch-with-father-12-paw-patrol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3516","title":{"rendered":"Watch With Father #12: Paw Patrol"},"content":{"rendered":"

I said I’d do\u00a0a post on remakes. \u00a0We’ll get to that. \u00a0But the Boy is obsessed with\u00a0Paw Patrol<\/em> right now,\u00a0so it seems a good time to write about it. \u00a0I’ve been seeing enough of it.<\/p>\n

Paw Patrol<\/em>\u00a0is a\u00a0hit\u00a0pre-school franchise. \u00a0And it takes us for the first time outside the sheltering arms of CBeebies, into the world of Nickelodeon. \u00a0This is what happens when you take\u00a0the kid on holiday and expose him to the Danish version of Nick Jr, which shows\u00a0Paw Patrol<\/em>\u00a0incessantly. \u00a0(In the UK, you can get it on Nick Jr or Channel 5.) \u00a0The\u00a0show’s appeal turns out to survive dubbing remarkably well.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0concept is simple, not to mention\u00a0merchandise-friendly. \u00a0A boy called Ryder leads a team of talking pups who provide rescue services to\u00a0the town of Adventure Bay. \u00a0The pups each have their own theme, a harness (sorry, “Pup Pack”) with awesome tools, and a personal doghouse that transforms into a\u00a0vehicle. \u00a0There’s a watchtower and everything. \u00a0\u00a0You can see the thinking: emergency\u00a0rescue services are good for pre-school action; dogs are neat; transforming vehicles are fantastic; therefore emergency rescue services plus dogs in transforming vehicles must be awesome.<\/p>\n

There are signs that suggest the original concept may have got a bit muddled during the development process.\u00a0 Can we really have an ambulance pup? \u00a0Maybe not, because unless this is going to be a bloodbath by pre-school standards, what’s he going to do? \u00a0What about diggers? \u00a0Kids love diggers. \u00a0And could we work in something about recycling?<\/p>\n

So it is that\u00a0Adventure Bay finds itself served by the full complement of rescue services: fire, police, coastguard, construction vehicle, refuse collection, and dog in a plane. \u00a0Though really, they lost interest in\u00a0the police pretty quickly – not unreasonably, since police Chase spent a lot of his time putting out traffic cones and asking people to stand back. \u00a0So\u00a0come season 2, he was a\u00a0spy instead, which was much better. \u00a0As for Rocky the recycling pup, he’s really\u00a0used more as an\u00a0engineer who can cobble anything together from what he has lying around. \u00a0Fair enough,\u00a0if you’re trying to make recycling seem fun.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0drifting from the core emergency services theme,\u00a0the show could easily have lost focus, but there’s no denying that\u00a0it works. \u00a0As usual with TV\u00a0aimed at the very young, it’s a formula show. \u00a0Some problem\u00a0comes up in Adventure Bay – sometimes a genuine emergency (an oil tanker is leaking, a rogue elephant is on the loose), sometimes not so much (the mayor needs to train for a race, three penguins need rounding up). \u00a0Ryder is called for help and summons the pups for a briefing. \u00a0He picks two or three with the skills for the job. \u00a0They race off to the rescue, which means dramatically\u00a0going down the slide into\u00a0their transforming doghouses as the theme song plays. \u00a0A complication leads to\u00a0some of the others being called for\u00a0back-up; the day is duly saved. \u00a0Ten minutes for the lot – though they show it in double-bills.<\/p>\n

So it’s a teamwork deal, and crucially, the format doesn’t require them to find an excuse to shoehorn everyone into every\u00a0episode. \u00a0Instead they get to work through the permutations, and between the various themes they chose, they’ve got a reasonable amount\u00a0of combinations to play with.<\/p>\n

If you’re waiting for some sort of\u00a0explanation of exactly where all this equipment came from, or\u00a0why exactly\u00a0the pups can talk (in a world where\u00a0no other animals can, and we see a lot of them), you’re going to be disappointed, by the way. \u00a0As near as I can figure, the official origin story\u00a0is a hand-waved “Ryder trained them” – which still doesn’t explain how they can talk. \u00a0But it\u00a0really doesn’t matter. \u00a0They’re talking pups. \u00a0Run with it. \u00a0Brazen it out.<\/p>\n

While\u00a0it’s formulaic and it’s\u00a0relentlessly paced (it’s not so much that the show is\u00a0rushed, more that it often feels nervous about actually pausing\u00a0for breath\u00a0to let things sink in), you can see the appeal. \u00a0Visually,\u00a0the style may be \u00a0fairly standard\u00a0CGI, but the\u00a0character designs are very good. \u00a0They’ve put some real thought into not just making the tech look good, but making it look workable for the pups. \u00a0If you’re paying attention, you can see where the budget has been squeezed – slightly robotic background characters, squeezing\u00a0multiple episodes out of a\u00a0new character model even if that means a remarkably high number of penguin-themed rescues<\/a> –\u00a0but the show is clever about working around that sort of thing, and putting\u00a0effort into the stuff that will be noticed. \u00a0So there’s a running gag\u00a0that Marshall, the klutzy one, will always screw up the\u00a0bit where the pups report for duty and send everyone flying. \u00a0That’s done differently in every episode, which requires both effort\u00a0in terms of animation, and somebody to keep coming up with new variations on the joke.<\/p>\n

And\u00a0having established its format, the show does\u00a0gently mess about with it. \u00a0\u00a0Sometimes, instead of a random emergency, there’s an actual baddie – usually in the form of Mayor Humdinger from the neighbouring town and his kitten-based\u00a0Catastrophe Crew. \u00a0Sometimes they deviate more drastically from the usual story, with weird dream episodes,\u00a0or a minor\u00a0supporting character trying to corral a bunch of ordinary animals into a mini-Patrol, or an episode where everyone’s missing apart from Marshall, who gets to do the entire central set piece on his own (running back and forth to deliver his own\u00a0briefing). \u00a0They’re pretty good about finding cute\u00a0variations on the theme. \u00a0(Later episodes occasionally take them out of the\u00a0HQ entirely, if only because the producers had to sell the Paw Patroller truck toy.)<\/p>\n

There’s some\u00a0gentle comedy in there for the parents too –\u00a0Ryder’s briefing graphics always show the mayor as a\u00a0desperately panicking figure (sometimes with a split second voiceover gabbling “What am I going to do, what am I going to do?!”), and her deadpan pet chicken is an endearingly\u00a0random idea. \u00a0 I’m less sure what to make of the decision to give Captain Turbot a cousin called Francois who is\u00a0exactly the same character design<\/em> but dressed as a Frenchman. \u00a0Conveniently, Francois seems to be a gadfly who is\u00a0willing to go on\u00a0any sort of expedition that the plot\u00a0demands of him. \u00a0And then screw it up.<\/p>\n

It’s a programme\u00a0that would never show up on the BBC, though. \u00a0It\u00a0takes a while\u00a0to put your finger on exactly why – after all, it’s a concept from Keith Chapman, who came up with\u00a0Bob the Builder.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>CBeebies generally prefers more idiosyncratic animation styles, but they took\u00a0Kate and Mim-Mim<\/em>. \u00a0They’re not especially wild about\u00a0toy-selling action shows, but they took\u00a0Octonauts<\/em>. \u00a0They don’t often have actual villains, but they do with\u00a0GoJetters<\/em>. \u00a0And while\u00a0Paw Patrol\u00a0<\/em>is not an explicitly educational show, it does have\u00a0some power-of-teamwork stuff, and every so often it\u00a0demonstrates some\u00a0legitimate rescue techniques like oil spill clean-up or ship salvage.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0more concrete problem for CBeebies might well be the ten year old on the quad bike. \u00a0And then there’s the gender split…<\/p>\n

Ah, the\u00a0gender split. \u00a0That would be a deal breaker, in fact, because Paw Patrol<\/em>\u00a0has token girl syndrome – five male pups and one girl, Skye. \u00a0Oh, and she wears pink. \u00a0Sure, she has the plane, and she’s written on a par with the others, but still. \u00a0Even if you wanted to argue that firemen and construction workers are overwhelmingly male, what about the police? \u00a0But it’s\u00a0not a problem that easy to solve now. \u00a0They did add a second girl in series two –\u00a0Everest, the mountain rescue pup. \u00a0She\u00a0wears turquoise.\u00a0 But it’s hard to work her into stories, what with the show being set in Adventure Bay, which is not up a mountain. \u00a0She doesn’t even live with the rest of the team, which is logical enough, but\u00a0means she’s stuck on the\u00a0edges. \u00a0And that’s still a ratio of five to two – not counting Ryder.<\/p>\n

It’s a strange call for a modern show, even one that was originally intended to target boys. \u00a0But as I said, there are a few\u00a0weird\u00a0decisions in the core premise (a\u00a0recycling<\/em> pup?) which can’t easily be backtracked now, and\u00a0the\u00a0show has done a decent job with it regardless. \u00a0Yes, it’s a toy\u00a0franchise, but it\u00a0does have\u00a0some real energy and\u00a0invention within its parameters, and a mild sense of self-awareness – enough to be gently amusing for me\u00a0while the boy is enthralled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I said I’d do\u00a0a post on remakes. \u00a0We’ll get to that. \u00a0But the Boy is obsessed with\u00a0Paw Patrol right now,\u00a0so it seems a good time to write about it. \u00a0I’ve been seeing enough of it. Paw Patrol\u00a0is a\u00a0hit\u00a0pre-school franchise. \u00a0And it takes us for the first time outside the sheltering arms of CBeebies, into the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-watch-with-father"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3516"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3519,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3516\/revisions\/3519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}