7:42 PM · Dec 11, 2020 "oh kay holy shit"
7:43 PM · Dec 11, 2020 "everyone is just tormenting pj i feel so bad."
Trigger warning for Parental Abuse this time. It's not really a topic you can skirt around with Pete and PJ.
With that out of the way, let's get into this show, starting with the good...
12:25 PM · Dec 14, 2020 "i really like pistol. she's funny as hell"
12:31 PM · Dec 14, 2020 "oh! the narrator from the mouse works shorts is here"
1:39 PM · Dec 14, 2020 "ok so these episodes feel less uncomfortable than the first. i think the best eps have max as like, the kind troublemaker, goofy as an assertive father, and pete as a harmless asshole. pj would be minimal. also i love peg and pistol any day"
1:40 PM · Dec 14, 2020 "is goof troop dated???? kind of???? i kinda get the vibe of a 90s sitcom when i watch it, but it doesn't feel like it's trying to be hip. i'm also watching it with such a lens which makes it better when it subverts it or goes back to goofy's basics."
The show is really good when it acts like a classic Goofy short. As I mentioned, the narrator from the Mouse Works Shorts (the Mickey Era I grew up with) is here, but that's been a thing since... the 50s, I want to say. It's honestly just really funny when Goofy teaches us how to do things. Always has been always will be.
Problem is that there's plenty of Goofy How-To Shorts. If you wanted to watch those, you could in one of the many Disney compilation shows. But this is the Disney Afternoon, this is something new.
Arguably, this is an Alternate Universe show. Our alternate universe: The slice-of-life 90's family sitcom. So let's talk family! Max and Goofy shine light on a non-nuclear family, giving us a single father and son. And as foils, we have the nuclear Pete family.
New characters Peg and Pistol are also an amazing addition to the cast. They're both incredibly fun, and arguably the best part of the whole show. Peg especially feels like she'd fit in quite well with my own family.
I guess this would be the part where I compare Peg Pete to Pete's other love interest, Trudy Van Tubb, but honestly... Since I don't really read Disney comics starring The Rat, I don't really know anything about Trudy and how she fares as a character other than her being Pete's girlfriend. And honestly I think most Trudy fans don't really know a lot about Peg. (From my experience at least, Disney comics fans don't know a lot about Disney animation, and vice versa. Probably because the animation is primarily American while the comics are primarily European.) If anyone watches Goof Troop and reads the Mickey Mouse comics, let me know. I'd love to hear opinions.
Finally, I guess it's important to discuss Goof Troop as it toes the line between funny and realistic. And by toes the line, I mean flops a bit. But it has a difficult task to do. It's Goofy, but it's a 90's family sitcom too. It wants to make its child characters sympathetic, but also edgy and anti-authority. In addition, one of our main characters is Pete, who is a villain in just about every piece of Disney media up to this point. How do you make Pete clearly the villain of your 90's family sitcom? Easy. You make him a cartoonishly terrible father. But remember: This is supposed to be somewhat slice of life. Anything Pete does has to be a relatable to the youths watching it.
So basically they made Pete really abusive a lot of the time and played it for laughs.
12:36 AM · Dec 12, 2020 "like i dont really remember goofy doing anything at all i just remember pj and all the torment he's gone through"
1:43 PM · Dec 14, 2020 "pete is such a double edged sword because he's a villain but he's supposed to be a likeable family man, and i admittedly have trouble balancing cartoonish evil with actual fucked up shit and being a human character"
1:44 PM · Dec 14, 2020 "what you get with pete is a dad who is at best cartoonishly menacing/trickstery and at worse an abusive father and to be completely honest, unless you stick with the former i dont really know a way to fix that that would change up character dynamics that much"
1:45 PM · Dec 14, 2020 "and like. goofy movie has those sorts of vibes too but i think it's done better because it is a comedy movie that can take itself seriously. the awful things done to pj are shown to have more weight to them"
And there's this feeling of "Oh it's fine. They're cartoon characters they can be silly and unabashedly evil." However, in this, our 90's slice of life sitcom context, we're adding a layer of reality to things, which ultimately ends with PJ fearing for his life as his dad abuses him.
This sort of behavior is brought up in A Goofy Movie. Pete, in a conversation with Goofy says your children should fear you, since that's the only way they can respect you. Those who believe that Goof Troop and the Goofy Movies take place in the same universe, see that this shines a light on why Pete acts so terribly, allows him to be a foil to Goofy in how they treat their kids, and most importantly, treats the subject matter with a lot more weight than it does in Goof Troop.
Is it perfect? No. There's still abuse endured by PJ in the film that's played for laughs, but the film still forces you to look at it through a serious lens and makes it clear this is a bad thing. It's clearly a bad thing in the show as well, but it more often feels made light of, and treats PJ as the butt of the joke rather than what he actually is. A victim. Someone who respects his father out of fear of what he'd do if he didn't.
But treating these topics seriously doesn't end with Pete and PJ.
5:19 PM · Dec 14, 2020 "i watched two more episodes of goof troop since these. one was about max being upset his dad wasn't getting an award, which def has some good set up for a goofy movie but like... at the same time i'd rather watch that in a more serious atmosphere."
5:19 PM · Dec 14, 2020 "then there was a weird alien episode.... dunno WHAT was going on here."
Disregarding the alien episode (though it did lead to some whiplash on my end), "Meanwhile, Back at the Ramp" focuses on how Max feels ashamed that his father has never won an award. It stood out to me in particular, because while the rest of the series involves Max being a troublesome yet loving kid, we start to get the inklings of what will be the teenage Max most folks my age and younger recall. This feeling of shame that his dad is Goofy. But at the same time... if I wanted to see that, I'd watch A Goofy Movie, which treats the situation with more weight than "get your dad to skate down a ramp and then disguise as your dad with your best friend once you realize that skateboarding is only an innate skill for those of us who were preteens in the 90s."
Goof Troop is ultimately a stepping stone between the comedic Classic Goofy shorts and the comedy-drama that is A Goofy Movie. While it's a weird transition, I might argue that it was a necessary one. This is what brought Max and PJ into the world the way that they are, and you couldn't really deconstruct Goofy and Pete as fathers with mid 20th shorts alone. In that regard a lot of good came out of it.
But By God, I Wish It Wasn't So Hard To Watch.
Overall Rating for Goof Troop: C Tier
No comments:
Post a Comment