Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Pig Goat Banana Cricket"

You ever judge a show based on its art style alone? Well, I have admittedly done that. And the show was Pig Goat Banana Cricket.

Yes, I'm perfectly aware that it's probably unfair to judge a show based on its art style. Anyway, Pig Goat Banana Cricket was created by Dave Cooper and Johnny Ryan. It premiered on Nickelodeon in 2015, spawning two seasons. If you'd like to know what the show is about, just look at what it's called - there's a pig, a goat, a banana, and a cricket. Their names are, rather creatively, Pig (voiced by Matt Jones), Goat (Candi Milo), Banana (Thomas F. Wilson), and Cricket (Paul Rugg). The four main characters get into whacky shenanigans. And that's pretty much it.

Like most Nickelodeon cartoon shows from the early 2010s, the show got negative reception. From folks online, at least. I avoided it because, again, I didn't care for the art style. But, the show is now obscure enough for me to do a review of it, and I think it's only fair that I watch an episode of the show before brushing it off as crappy. So, let's watch an episode of the show. Specifically, we're watching the episode "Total Bananarchy". This is Pig Goat Banana Cricket.

The episode begins with everyone celebrating Pig's birthday. When blowing out the candles on his pickle-shaped cake, he wishes for a butter sculpture of his head. And, after Banana suggests it, to become president of the planet. He blows out the candles... and then, all of a sudden, they're all in the presidential office. And this guy is there, too:

So, yeah. A dim-witted pig is the president now. I would make a Donald Trump joke here, but he's out of office now (thank goodness) so it'd likely be a bit out-of-date.

But alas, he'll only be the president for twenty-four hours. After that, the mustached dog with Peter Griffin's chin explains, he'll return to his normal life as a regular civilian hog. Then he opens up trapdoors under the dog, Goat, Banana, and Cricket's feet.

Something I'd like to point out here is that in some frames, Pig has a mustache, but in others, he doesn't. Was this intentional, or an animation error or something?

Or is that "mustache" actually his teeth?

Pig's first order of business is to demand that nobody eat anything but pickles. He rides through the town on his desk, watching everybody eat pickles... but eating too many pickles makes the townsfolk sick, and as a result they're all pretty ticked off at him.

I'm still very tempted to make a Donald Trump joke.

Pig decides that the townsfolk would love him again if he made a new rule - that everyone speak in tongue twisters all the time. I'm skeptical that this silly statute the stupid swine spoke of shouldn't spark several snags for the civilians. See what I did there?

The tongue twisters rule winds up being a total bust too, resulting in some gross gags involving tongues (I'll spare you the screencaps). Pig begs the townsfolk for one more chance. His third rule is that it's National Pet a Bunny Day. Surely THAT won't go wrong, right?

Yeah, you can probably see where this is going.

Hello, nightmare fuel.

Pig sobs over the fact that he's a horrible president (I will not make a Donald Trump joke. I will not make a Donald Trump joke...), then comes up with an idea to fix the situation - from now on, he proclaims, there will be no more rules. This is the result:

Meanwhile, Banana is loving this "no rules" rule, as now he can do and take whatever he wants. But he didn't count on a rhinoceros in biker clothing preventing him from stealing an arcade game. And if you have no idea what's going on, you're not the only one, let me tell you.

Boy, and I thought Ned's Newt was weird...

The rhino and his gang steal the arcade game themselves, then he fires Banana "from life". This makes Banana realize that if he's gonna survive in this crazy wasteland of no rules and no making sense whatsoever, he's gonna need a bodyguard. And then guess what? A potential bodyguard shows up!

Judging from the architecture, does this show take place in Whoville?

The biker dog turns down Banana's offer of being his bodyguard, but Banana isn't one to take no for an answer. One thing leads to another, and then Banana fixes the biker dog's mullet so that it doesn't cover his face or something. "I OWE YOU BIG TIME!" the biker dog says, so now he's Banana's bodyguard.

But of course Banana has to mess up a good thing, and upon discovering that the biker dog's mullet is just a wig, he starts mocking the guy for being bald. Ignoring for a second that mocking somebody who is much bigger and stronger than you (as in, somebody that could beat the crap out of you in a very painful manner) is a very stupid thing to do, does the biker dog actually qualify as being bald when he's covered in fur? Then again, maybe I shouldn't try to bring logic into a show with a talking banana in it...

The biker dog storms off, only to run afoul of the biker rhinoceros and his gang. They steal his wig, then proceed to... pluck out his chest hairs. Ouch. It's up to Banana to save him. But first, he peels himself. Is that the banana equivalent of stripping naked?

Then again, he does have underwear on...

Banana pulls his peel down over the rhino's entire body, and because his gang consists of idiots, they assume that HE'S Banana and start beating the crap out of him. Now, let's see what Goat's up to.

At the moment, she's come across Pig, who's still bummed that his attempt at being president led to what I can only describe as Mad Max: What The Heck Is Going On Edition.

It's kind of depressing when you make Patrick Star look competent.

Hey, wait... does Goat have a mustache too? Maybe that's just a beard... she IS a goat, after all.

Anyhow, Goat decides to cheer up Pig by making him that butter sculpture of his head he wanted. She heads over to Calvin Clam's Butter Crevice to get some butter. Calvin Clam - who looks nothing like an actual clam, by the way - tells her that this new "no rules" rule is "really cranking [his] horse" (I assume that's something people were saying in 2015). Goat tells him that she's going to give him lots of money in exchange for lots of butter, which "makes [his] turtleneck all twizzely"... which honestly sounds dirty to me.

He's really annoyed when people come up to him and asking "Where's Hobbes?"

But how is Goat going to transport all that butter? Simple - Cricket has a hovercar she can borrow. Cricket gets carried off by one of those demonic bunnies from before, and then... okay, I know what you're thinking. "Can this show possibly get any weirder?" Well, the answer to that is YES. Yes it can. How about we have BIKER PANCAKES show up?

It's like an IHOP commercial on acid.

The biker pancakes are all "Give us the butter!" and Goat is all "No way!" and then she and Calvin make their escape. We get a chase scene, and just when it seems like the biker pancakes are gonna swipe the butter, guess what shows up? Why, BIKER WAFFLES, of course!

There's probably better things I can be doing with my time than watching a show that has a goat fighting biker waffles, but eh, SOMEBODY has to do a review of it...

And why are they riding a giant diaper?

And the lead biker waffle has an Australian accent. Okay then...

Fortunately, Calvin finds an enormous laser blaster in the glove compartment. "Time to make this hovercraft gluten-free!" Goat exclaims before shooting the pancakes and waffles with it. Once they're disposed of, Goat is able to make Pig that butter sculpture of his head. Huzzah.

As for Cricket, he's still in the clutches of a demonic bunny, which promptly dumps him into his lab. But, oh no! The biker rhino's gang has made a mess of it!

That elephant on the right looks a bit like Raj from Camp Lazlo, doesn't it? I guess after camp
he went down a dark path...

"Without rules there's no order! I can't take it anymore!" Cricket proclaims. There's only one solution - go to Mars!

That's one strange-looking rocket ship...

On Mars, Cricket meets some Jawas who he offends by eating carrots... it's Tuesday, and they don't eat carrots on Tuesdays. The very foundation of their civilization is built on that rule. Also, they consider "what" a curse word. With that in mind, I'll avoid using that word for the rest of this review. Wouldn't want to offend any Mars-dwelling Jawas...

"Use the force, Cricket..."

Cricket escapes the angry Jawas by ducking into a bathroom. He has to go Number 2, so he does. Ha ha, toilet humor. But, predictably, it turns out that the strange-looking toilet in there is actually a Martian. And not just ANY Martian - the Jawas' emperor! They're all so outraged that the emperor announces they're going to go to war with Earth.

I think I've figured out the main problem with reviewing this cartoon. It's that there isn't much you can say about it other than "it doesn't make any sense". There's only so many times you can say "this show is incredibly bizarre" before the review starts to become monotonous...

Cricket runs back into his rocket and flies back to Earth to warn Pig, Goat, and Banana about the Martians' planning to wage war on Earth. They all hop aboard Pig's desk and fly into outer space with it. The emperor tells them that he's going to blow up the Earth (that's not exactly going to war with it, but the episode's almost over, so it's not like he's going to succeed anyway), but then Pig comes up with a new rule - toilet party in space with the alien toilet guys. So he summons all the toilets on Earth...

It's actually kind of weird that the toilets aren't sentient in a world where everything else seems to be.
I mean, FOOD talks. How come the toilets can't too?

And they have themselves a toilet party in space.  The emperor decides to cancel the war... but then Pig accidentally presses the button that fires the missiles that he was going to use to blow up the Earth. The result - Earth goes kaboom. D'oh.

But on the bright side, Marvin the Martian's view of Venus is finally unobstructed.

WHAT'S THE VERDICT?
(Whoops, used the word "what" there. Sorry, Martians)

There's a right way and a wrong way to do surrealism in cartoons. This is the wrong way. Surrealism is not a substitute for jokes. Pig Goat Banana Cricket is so obsessed with being bizarre that it seems to have forgotten about including, y'know, JOKES. When the funniest part of the episode is every toilet on Earth flying into outer space, you have a problem.

In addition, the characters are not engaging. I've seen cartoon characters whose entire schtick is that they're idiots done far, far better than Pig here. What are the other characters' personality traits? They don't have much - Banana is kind of a jerk, Goat is the girl, and Cricket is a scientist. None of these characters are interesting.

And I'm sorry, but I still don't like the art style. It's way too gross and lumpy for me. I just find it disgusting to look at. Is there ANYTHING good about the show? Well... it's got Jeff Bennett and John DiMaggio in it. So there's that, I guess.

So, yeah. I don't think Pig Goat Banana Cricket is worth your time. It's just weird for the sake of being weird, lacking the charm of other "weird" shows like Adventure Time and Regular Show.

And by the way, I much prefer THIS Pig and Goat over the ones in this show:

When do you think we'll get a Pearls Before Swine cartoon?