The 7D: Oh? This Show Is Good? Certainly There Are Other Disney Shows That Are Good! (Idiot)

Well folks, here we are. The show that started it all.

And some of you may be thinking. "Hold up. Shut up. Die. Scar from the Disney Watch. Didn't you start with like the Wuzzles or something?" And yes. I did. But this was the show that inspired me to begin the Disney Watch.

See, 2020 kind of sucked ass. There was a pandemic, I almost got killed, I got accepted to a new university, but it was in another country and the border was still closed, so I was at my parent's house for a pretty long time. I binged a bunch of shit during this era, with four things sticking with me: Community, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Old Time Radio Anthologies, and The 7D.

I don't actually remember what specifically got me watching the 7D but I'm pretty sure my friend Tabs is to blame. And I got hooked pretty quickly. It has a lot of the ingredients for success that Fish Hooks had: colorful characters and a really impressive writing crew, but unlike Fish Hooks, The 7D really stuck the landing for me.

10:09 AM · Mar 20, 2021 "Fish hooks is interesting because it has a star studded crew working on it but you can say the same of the 7D. And both shows have Noah z Jones and mr warburton on them. But on one side you have the guys who made Harvey beaks gravity falls and billy and Mandy"
10:09 AM · Mar 20, 2021 "And on the other it’s just the crew of the og animaniacs. And I think it says something about cohesion and teamwork bc 7d is like. Inherently better than fish hooks"
10:11 AM · Mar 20, 2021 "I think there’s also more women on the creative team of the 7d but I would not call either show a masterpiece when it comes to gender they just have their weird girls in fish hooks and have weird girls and girl bosses in 7d"
10:13 AM · Mar 20, 2021 "7d has like. A positive energy with an insidiousness underneath it. Fish hooks might be the other way around."

The humor in the 7D is a lot less mean than that of Fish Hooks, with a lot of the rudeness being subtle and directed toward characters in a way that works. It also has a lot of cartoony slapstick in it and more wordplay than Fish Hooks, which I think can be pinned on the people working on the show. (Worth noting, a lot of background characters, especially in the second season look like Warner Bros rejects, which I found kind of neat.)

I also kind of wonder how much of the kindness came from The 7D being a show intended for young children. Much like Elena of Avalor, this show suffered a bit of an identity crisis, and you can kind of tell from the first few episodes. The show seems a lot more oriented toward littler kids, and more pointed toward older kids as the show goes on. It's a flaw, but one that gives the show a bit of charm.

The characters are also a lot of fun. This show is probably the first (or second if you count Tron: Uprising) show that focuses on relatives of a Disney property, and even beat out the Descendants franchise by a year. The dwarves are about what you'd expect, but they still have a bit of charm to them and a little more character than their one dimensional names suggest. The villains, Grim and Hildy Gloom are also a lot of fun, being this sickly sweet young married couple who are also gothic evil sorcerers out to take over the kingdom. I actually didn't realize until embrassingly recently that they were supposed to be ancestors of Queen Grimhilde. There's also Queen Delightful and Lord Starchbottom, who I don't think have anything to do with the Snow White canon, but they're very fun characters too, with Queen Delightful being the one to move along the plot, and Lord Starchbottom being Paul Rugg playing the show's straight man (at least when Grumpy is busy).

The dynamics in the show are also hilarious. My favorite being the dynamic between Grumpy and Bashful, who have this really sarcastic but close sibling-esque relationship.

 

I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention the relationship between Grumpy and Happy, especially considering they're the two dwarves who get the most screentime, and spend a lot of it serving as foils to one another. Are they gay? I didn't read them that way, but I know a lot of people who did.

I do kind of wish the show did more with its potential dynamics, but then again, it got canned in the middle of its second season, so I can see why that didn't really happen.

Also, as this show was created by Noah Z Jones and came out in the 2010s, it is a little bit obsessed with 2010s meme culture. For example, in the season 2 episode "Take Me To Your Grumpy" has Doc away most of the episode because he's trying to chase down a double rainbow, quoting the meme constantly through the episode, to the point where "all the way" becomes a catchphrase of his for the rest of the series. There's also references to things like lolcats. So like. I suppose be prepared for that.

I do wish this show had more to it, it took a while to find its footing, but it was still a charming show, and I would definitely say it had merit, if it got me to see if any other Disney Cartoons were good (spoiler: not that many were)

Overall Rating for The 7D: A Tier