Let's Watch This: An Episode (or Two) of "The Twisted Whiskers Show"

NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.

NOTE #2: No disrespect is meant towards anyone who worked on the show I am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.

Did your school ever have one of those school supply sales? Y'know, where they'd set out a table and put a bunch of folders, notebooks, erasers, that sort of thing on it for you to buy? If not, maybe you went to a Target or a WalMart or wherever during their "Back to School" sales (which would usually start up in July, annoyingly enough... we're just trying to enjoy our summer vacation!). Either way, there's a very good chance that at some point in the 2000s, you saw something like this:

These warped, nightmare-inducing pets are part of the Twisted Whiskers franchise. Created by Terrill Bohlar for American Greetings and Corus Entertainment in 2001, all you had to do to create a Twisted Whiskers character was digitally modify a photo of an animal. Then you slap the result on a greeting card, a notepad, a sheet of wrapping paper... they even made Twisted Whiskers Valentines. Because nothing says "I love you" like a cat with eyes as big as dinner plates and a giant mouth full of creepy human-esque teeth!

I don't know how much money the Twisted Whiskers franchise has made as a whole, but they did well enough for The Hub (now Discovery Family) to greenlight a show about 'em. In fact, this was apparently the first program that The Hub aired - as in, BEFORE their more popular stuff like My Little Pony or Transformers: Prime.

The show received one season of fifty-two episodes, all of them focusing on the WHACKY SHENANIGANS that these various cats and dogs get themselves into. Two of the co-producers, Bill Kopp and Savage Steve Holland, are also responsible for Eek! The Cat, fittingly enough. I tried to do a review of Eek! The Cat, but I wound up deleting the review because it wasn't very funny (the funniest moment was me talking about airplane toilets and where the waste you put in them goes. That should tell you a lot), which is the same reason I canned my review of another one of Bill Kopp's shows, Mad Jack the Pirate. Maybe I'll have better luck with this one...

We're gonna watch the thirtieth episode of the show, "Dine and Dash: For the Birds". Why that episode in particular? Because it's the first one I could find on YouTube. This is The Twisted Whiskers Show.

The episode stars two cats named Dine (voiced by Peter Kelamis) and Dash (voiced by Lee Tockar), who with their striped pelts that resemble prison uniforms are your typical "streetwise leader and dimwitted sidekick" duo. They're hungry, and there just so happens to be a flock of blue jays perched on the fence nearby...

Dash is the one with blue eyes, Dine is the one with yellow eyes. Remember that now.

But, since this is a cartoon, actually getting to EAT the birds will be much harder than Dash and Dine anticipated. First, they set up a birdhouse. But when a bird (Scott McNeil) tries to move in, they're promptly kicked out by... a squirrel?

Okay, um, Comedy 101, guys: setups are a thing in jokes for a reason. What the heck is a squirrel doing in the birdhouse? We never saw him go in the birdhouse, so him just being in there feels very random if the cats' goal was to trap the birds inside.

"I am a crazy rabid squirrel! Also, I can burp my ABCs!"

The squirrel's purpose, it would seem, is to make things harder for the cats. It throws pies at them... oh, I get it. This is one of THOSE cartoons. The ones that try to emulate the classic cartoon shorts from Warner Brothers and Tex Avery but don't quite understand what made those shorts funny. I expect one of the cats to get clobbered by an anvil at some point too.

Well, problem solved: if the cats are hungry, they can just eat the pie.

"If we don't get rid of that rodent immediately, say goodbye to delicious bird dinner!" Dine tells Dash. I mean, surely there's some other way you can catch the birds, isn't there? Or some other way you can get food? Heck, why don't you just eat the squirrel? Cats can eat squirrels.

Spoiler alert: the cats wind up making total Sylvesters out of themselves. The squirrel effortlessly thwarts each of their attempts at getting him out of the birdhouse. For example, at one point they're hanging from a telephone wire. I was expecting them to wind up getting electrocuted since that's what usually happens when cartoon characters hang from telephone wires, but nope. The squirrel's got something else planned for them. Something involving a can of oil.

You're gonna give that back to the Tin Man when you're done with it, aren't you?

Offbrand Screwy Squirrel uses the oil to make the wires all slippery, resulting in the cats sliding down the wire and into a telephone pole. Nyuck nyuck nyuck.

Next, the cats try to flood the squirrel out of the birdhouse using a hose. But wouldn't you know it? The squirrel tied the other end of the hose to a car's bumper. Okay, seriously? How is this squirrel able to predict all of the cats' plans in advance? All I can think of is that he saw the cats working the hose before they climbed up to the birdhouse, but even then, how did he get down from there without them noticing? Has Jammet been supplying him with Pep-Ups? I know the answer to this is "it's just cartoon logic", but it feels very jarring. Also, I'm just gonna say it right now - I do not like this squirrel. You have to be very careful when writing characters who are in control of everything and effortlessly outwit everyone. When done wrong, it results in a very frustratingly obnoxious character. Bugs Bunny this squirrel is not.

The creepy design they gave him isn't doing the little rodent any favors either.

The cats then hoist large air fresheners up into the air so that they're directly in front of and behind the birdhouse. Once the air fresheners are turned on, they make things very, very chilly at the birdhouse. I have to give them credit for their determination, but once again, I have to ask if it's really worth it. Aren't there other ways you can get food?

So how long until the air fresheners land on the cats, crushing them in a joke that should
be funny but instead just comes across as needlessly brutal?

Then the cats start shaking the pole that the birdhouse is sitting atop, and the squirrel retaliates by pelting them with snowballs, icicles, and - of course - the air fresheners. Incidentally, do you know what this squirrel's name is? According to the credits, it's "Sinister Squirrel". Honestly a pretty fitting name, although I think "Sadistic Squirrel" would be more fitting.

Look, the cats have been crushed by the air fresheners. That's funny, right?

I generally feel sorry for Sylvester when I'm watching a Sylvester and Tweety short, but at least
I never actually rooted against Tweety. I'm actively rooting against the squirrel right now.

Dine snaps like a twig and decides to just chop the pole with the birdhouse on it down - I guess he finally figured out that it's not worth having to put up with that squirrel just to eat some birds. Speaking of birds, the bird who tried to move into the birdhouse before shows up again and tells them that HE'LL take care of the little pest. Yes. Please beat him up, Bird. I want to see that squirrel get what's coming to him.

Oh, who am I kidding? The squirrel's probably gonna effortlessly take down the bird, too.

"I'm gonna peck out those bulbous red eyes of his!"

What's this? The bird actually KOs the seemingly invincible squirrel?

I think this GIF summarizes my thoughts on the matter:

After kicking out the squirrel, the bird sends the cats fleeing with a mighty roar... hey, he IS descended from the dinosaurs. But when he heads back into the birdhouse, he finds out that somebody else has moved in. Specifically, a BEAR.

I'll be honest, I was half-expecting the squirrel to return and steal the birdhouse back. I'll
gladly take this over THAT.

Here's a question: why was this episode called "For the Birds" if we barely saw any birds in it? I mean, I know it focuses on a birdhouse, but still...

Okay, so that wasn't very good. But, since the episode was pretty short, I think I'll watch another episode to make the blog post a bit longer and see if I didn't just watch one of the weaker ones. The nineteenth episode, "Quiet Time With Tiny Head", is on YouTube, and the person who uploaded it dubbed it the best episode of the show, so let's see if they're right about that...

The episode starts off with a dog named Von Ripper (also Scott McNeil) - best described as Scud from Toy Story if he were part-shark - at the veterinarian's office. The vet tells his owner that Von Ripper's got high blood pressure, and if he doesn't calm down, he'll die. Wow, this episode's off to a dark start. The solution? Von Ripper needs a cat. His owner is all "No, he HATES cats!", but the vet insists that cats lower blood pressure.

No, I didn't crop out the humans' heads. This is one of those Muppet Babies-esque
shows where we don't see the humans' faces.

The Pet Therapy Center loans them a cat to help calm Von Ripper's nerves. That cat is the titular Tiny Head (Colin Murdock), whose shtick is that he has a very very very small head. I smell a one-joke character!

His head is as small as Megamind's head is big.

I know I've been making a lot of Looney Tunes comparisons here, but as soon as Tiny Head starts talking, it becomes clear that he's NOT just a one-joke character after all: in addition to having a tiny head, he's also sort of a Foghorn Leghorn wannabe in that he talks a lot. He even has a similar body shape AND a southern accent (though his voice sounds more like Bing Crosby's on helium than Foghorn's).

"Unfunny jokes, unfunny jokes everywhere..."

Tiny Head puts Von Ripper in a massage chair, and it seems to calm the dog down. Why Von Ripper's owner has a massage chair outside, I don't know. But it's working... until Tiny Head turns the dial too high, causing the chair to go haywire. Next, he wraps Von Ripper's head in steaming hot towels, which just winds up shrinking it.

Y'know what? Tiny Head might be a bit of a Foghorn Leghorn knockoff, but he's the only character on the show I kinda like thus far. He's a little funny, at least, if only because of his high-pitched voice. Plus, he's actually trying to be helpful, whereas Foghorn is pretty much just a troll. Foghorn might be more fun, but Tiny Head's more pleasant.

Picking one's nose must be very hard for Tiny Head.

Since the hot towels didn't work, Tiny Head places Von Ripper in a hammock and, after a lullaby, tries to rock the dog to sleep... and accidentally sends Von Ripper flying into a tree. His next attempt at calming the shark-like pooch down results in Von Ripper getting clobbered by a falling tree. Finally, meditation seems to do the trick... or at least cause Von Ripper to have a nervous breakdown, particularly when the Pet Therapy Center tells them that they can keep Tiny Head.

What's the Verdict?

Well, I watched two episodes of this show, and for once I had the opposite reaction to each one.

"For the Birds" was pretty bad. It tried way too hard to be like a Warner Brothers cartoon and failed miserably at it. The squirrel was way too repulsive and nasty to be likeable, I just felt sorry for the cats. The jokes (aside from the ending with the bear) weren't funny at all - lots of poor attempts at slapstick reminiscent of those Larry Doyle-produced shorts from the 2000s. On the flip side, "Quiet Time With Tiny Head" was surprisingly pretty good. Nothing spectacular, but I found it kind of funny and liked Tiny Head even if he was a bit too much like Foghorn Leghorn. The animation is fine as far as 2000s television CGI goes, the voice actors all do a good job... so if I had to sum up The Twisted Whiskers Show as a whole, I'd call it a mixed bag. Will I be watching any more episodes? Probably not, unless Tiny Head has a big role in them. In fact, maybe the show should've been all about him.

If you want to watch The Twisted Whiskers Show for yourself, you can find episodes on YouTube. It's also on Amazon Prime, but apparently it's "currently unavailable to watch in [my] location", you might have the same problem. And now, a teaser for my next review: