The Chipmunks

[mr3urious]

But I agree, I loved Alvin's Wild Weekend. It had the right amount of cartoony to grounded humor, and I genuinely felt something when Dave angrily crapped all over Alvin's father son one on one bonding experience, causing Alvin to run up to his room, extremely hurt. We got some great Dave being driven crazy in this episode, too. A solid Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon all the way around. Loved Simon and Theodore being absolutely disgusted by the fact Mrs. Miller was watching them.

I'm also impressed that Alvin actually earned that weekend adventure with Dave by doing his chores for a whole month like Dave said. If only Alvin did that regularly.

I also liked the bike theft episode for expanding on the even worse version of Barney Fife they have as a police officer, giving him something more than just being a gag character, but not by too much.

There was some nice chemistry between him and Alvin in that episode.

 

[D'Snowth]

Yesterday's episode with Alvin's phone addiction was really funny and rather realistic too. But what I really like is how they've made Brittany such a talented mimick, in that she can disguise her voice and fake accents really well.

 

[D'Snowth]

I know I've said before that one thing I've observed about ALVINNN is how relatively low-key and laid-back Dave seems, almost as if he's become desensitized to Alvin's mischief, well, today's new episode had Dave the angriest I've seen him in a long time, so much so in fact that I actually found myself experiencing glee at Dave absolutely losing his temper with Alvin without knowing it was his clone who was actually causing all the trouble. I mean, seriously, this is the Alvin-Dave dynamic I once knew, so that was refreshing to see, and the way Ross's voice strains as Dave gets angrier and angier makes it all the more funny.

But, is anyone else noticing how in the end everything turns out to be just a dream is becoming a very common - almost too common - plot device?

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

But, is anyone else noticing how in the end everything turns out to be just a dream is becoming a very common - almost too common - plot device?

Becoming? It's been a cliche for decades now. I blame The Wizard of Oz. Seriously, they've used that plot device on almost every show I can think of.

 

[Drtooth]

I think its the simple lack of faith in a plotline being too cartoony. The show needs to be grounded in realism, no matter how much its about singing wildlife living as humans. I can overlook that, but the whole episode where Dave buys a parenting app to keep Alvin in check and it turns into a robot... we can be expected to believe that, but find clones and magic, and weird science hard to swallow?

But to be fair, a lot of the episodes of the 80's/90's Chipmunks cartoons ended up as just a dream. So I don't take that much issue with it.

 

[D'Snowth]

Did anyone else feel like today's new episode, with the Aesop about lying, seem more like an episode of a Nick Jr. show, or even a PBS Kids show, rather than an episode of ALVINNN?

Also, talk about Disproportionate Retribution: Alvin was the one who made up the story about having an older brother who races in the jungles of China and prodded Dave into going along with it, but Dave was the one who got all the blame and ended up getting in all the trouble for it, while Alvin received no discipline or punishment for making it up in the first place.

 

[D'Snowth]

So I was listening to a new(er) interview with Ross and Janice, and Janice explained why they went the route they did with the movies: they were inspired by STUART LITTLE (which is a good movie, actually) in terms of a believeable, pseudo-realistic, tiny CGI character interacting with live actors in the same universe. So, in a sense, it's interesting to note that Stuart Little is the grandfather of what many like to refer to as "The CGI Rats."

 

[mr3urious]

In the episode where Brittany gets a suck toad attached to Brittany's face, didn't the New Zealand specialist who was supposed to treat her sound an awful lot like Rhys Darby?

 

[D'Snowth]

You know what I've just recently come to realize? Many of the supporting characters on ALVINNN are genuinely unlikeable much of the time. Miss Smith and Miss Croner, in particular, are prone to this: Miss Smith often goes out of her way to be harsh with Alvin, even when he doesn't deserve it - automatically singling him out for stealing everyone's phones and yet still punishing him after he proved himself guiltless, punishing him for Brittany getting that suck toad stuck on her face when he was actually pushed into the terrarium; Miss Croner goes back and forth between being an embodiedment of a miserable old lady who pesters kids for amusement, and being a misunderstood loner with a heart of gold - the switch witch prank was okay, because she and Dave were both in on it to give the kids a harmless scare for Halloween, but that cat curse prank to get the kids to find her missing cat for her was just spiteful, mean-spirited, and they even had to prompt her to thank them for even finding her cat. Derek? Again, he's just walking status quo, and nothing more. Even the other kids at school can be obnoxious at times.

Officer Dangus, Julie, and the seemingly nameless principal are just about the only consistently good supporting characters, though we seem considerably less of them.

 

[D'Snowth]

I've realized there's another flaw with ALVINNN so far: there's a considerable amount of delay before we actually learn the names of some of the supporting characters - it was well into Season 2 that we finally learned the cop's name is Officer Dangus, and we still don't know the principal's name.