Let's Watch This: An Episode of "Pig City"

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.

Why have most of the cartoons I've reviewed in January been about farm animals? Ponies, sheep, and now pigs. And on top of that, they all take place in the city. Very peculiar...

Pig City was created by Andy Knight, also the creator of a show I've previously reviewed twice on my blog, Ned's Newt. It was co-produced by CineGroupe, AnimaKids, and Red Rover Studios and aired on Teletoon in Canada, ProSieben in Germany, and Fox Kids internationally - believe it or not, however, it never aired in the United States. Apparently, it was originally going to be called The Three Pigs. Maybe they thought that title was too on-the-nose.

The show is about a pig from the country named Mikey Hoggins (voiced by Thor Bishopric), whose parents send him to live with his cousins Martha (voiced by Emma Campbell) and Reggie DeBoar (voiced by Philip LeMaistre). After its premiere in April 2002, thirty-nine episodes were produced, making for a total of three seasons. Pig City's only home video release says that it's "more than 60 minutes of pure pleasure in the company of the most sophisticated and funniest pigs in the world", "a series that manages to be witty, worldly and warm at the same time", and "hilarious, original, and sophisticated".

Is it indeed all of those things? Well, you can find episodes of the show on the Internet Archive, so why don't we find out? We'll be watching the ninth episode, "Raising a Stink". This is Pig City!

The episode starts off with Martha having just returned from the mall. Mikey shows up with a phone in his trotter, telling her that the credit card company wants to speak with her. Martha initially assumes that they want to congratulate her for all the shopping that she's done, because credit card companies do that a lot. She is wrong - they tell her that she's overcharged her card. Teenage girls in cartoons... always going hog-wild at the mall. Get it? HOG-wild? This is the first of what will likely be MANY pig puns in this review...

With those long ears, Mikey and Martha kind of look more like aardvarks than pigs.

Martha calls up her parents to see if they can clear things up. Wouldn't you know it, they can't - in fact, they're a little concerned about her "money sense". Two pigs in business suits have checked their records, and a chart shows that Martha goes through more money than Mikey and Reggie combined.

Say, do you think these pigs keep their money in human banks? Y'know, 'cause we keep our money in PIGGY banks? Please laugh. I'm trying so hard...

Notice that the girl pig appears to have lips, unlike every other pig we've seen so far.
It doesn't look like she's wearing lipstick, though... you know what they say about putting
lipstick on a pig.

Mikey brings up that he was raised out in the country, where people... or pigs, it would seem... know the value of money, because they WORK FOR IT. Martha is all "WORK?! Oh, horror of horrors!", but her parents seem to be on board with the idea of Martha learning the value of money by going to work. "I think it's time you got a job," her father says, much to her dismay.

I guess you could say that Martha will be bringing home the bacon. Ba-dum-ksssh. Actually, that would be cannibalism, wouldn't it?

"Footballs are made of WHAT now?!"

After Mikey and Reggie crack jokes about how Martha will probably wind up cooking fries at a fast food joint, Martha reveals that she's already gotten a job at Pi-Gee, the most pretentious perfume store in the mall. She's going to be their Point of Purchase Marketing Coordinator of In-Store Merchandise. Once she leaves, Reggie suggests that Martha is a lying liar from Liarsburg. "Only one way to find out," Mikey says, narrowing his eyes.

I still think Mikey looks more like an aardvark.

Actually, Martha is telling the truth - her job is to set up the merchandise on the shelves, and she alphabetized the displays by country of origin and placed them according to their land mass from least to most. She's also allowed to mock the customers.

I wonder what kind of scents they have there... "Eau De Mud Puddle", perhaps?

After her boss, the ever-so-creatively-named Mr. Swine, heads out to have lunch, Mikey and Reggie show up and through their stupidity wind up destroying a display. They help her fix it, but when Mr. Swine returns, he's horrified to see that a red bottle is in the blue bottle area. You have to keep them separated or else I imagine THIS happens...

I know he was referring to PERFUME bottles, but this is what I imagined...

"This is what I get for leaving an amateur in charge!" Mr. Swine declares. "You're FIRED! AWAY with you! LEAVE this place! Martha, DESTROYER of Perfume!" As she glumly leaves, Mikey tells Reggie that they have to get Martha her job back. Reggie's idea for how to do that: go to a music store and buy a Pig Floyd album. Metal has all the answers, you see.

"Pig Floyd"? They couldn't think of anything funnier than THAT? I mean, it's
at least slightly funnier than the pig puns I'VE been making in this review, but still...

"If we could find something that a perfume store would want," Mikey suggests, "We could deal for Martha's job." What they need is a Nose. Not the kind on one's face, which they already have two of, but a guy who makes perfume. And they know a pig named E. Brian (Michael Yarmush) who has a big nose...

...his nose doesn't look any bigger than Mikey or Reggie's does to me, but okay, let's see where they're going with this. E. Brian whips up a perfume recipe that is so potent it turns whoever wears it into a girl magnet. Mikey and Reggie then find Martha in the food court and drag her back to Pi-Gee's, where they give Mr. Swine the powerful piggy perfume. When Reggie tries some, they discover that it smells like taco chips, sour cream, and a football locker room. Apparently those are scents that drive girl pigs crazy - or boy pigs, it would seem, as there are several in the doorway sniffing the air.

"I WANT it! Who is the Nose! I must speak to the Nose!" Mr. Swine pleads. Mikey claims that HE is the Nose, and that they'll give him the perfume if he gives Martha her job back. Mr. Swine agrees... just before Reggie suddenly gains hives. Fortunately, all they have to do to get rid of the hives is douse Reggie with water. And his hair looks healthier and shinier than before, too. Very strange...

After that, Mikey and Reggie walk by the movie theater, where The Hogfather is playing. That's actually a pretty good pun... which is promptly followed by "Joe Piggy" and "Robert De Porco". Oy. Ignoring how bad those puns are, Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro weren't even in The Godfather (they WERE in The Godfather Part II, though). What, could they just not think of good pig puns for the names of people who actually WERE in the first Godfather? Al Porcino and... actually, I can't think of anything other than that either.

"Y'know, the third one of these films sucked."

Mikey gets another idea - Joe Piggy and Robert De Porco are scheduled to sign autographs at the mall. If only they could get them to go to Pi-Gee and ask Mr. Swine to give Martha her job back, but chances are they'll be too busy to do Mikey and Reggie that favor. So what do they do?

Okay, I get that they're supposed to be disguised as Joe Piggy and Robert De Porco, but they don't look like Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro at all. But it's enough to fool Mr. Swine, particularly when Mikey says, "Are you servin' ME? Are you... SERVIN' me? I don't see anyone else around, so you must be servin' ME." That's not even from The Godfather, it's from Taxi Driver, but whatever, if you parody Robert DeNiro in anything you HAVE to do the "you talkin' to me" shtick. Because that's what we all think of when we think of Robert De Niro. Kind of like how all Al Pacino parodies have to go "Say hello to my little [SOMETHING]!" at some point.

"I heard dat Martha DeBoar works here. And truth to dat rumor?!" Reggie barks. "Cause we'd sure like to buy some of dis expensive toilet water here!" When Mr. Swine says that Martha does NOT work there, Mikey demands, "Are you callin' my friend a liar? 'Cuz, he HEARD things... and I gotta be honest... I heard things." So the moral of today's story is: if a relative of yours gets fired, impersonate a celebrity and threaten their boss so they'll get their job back!

But guess who walks into the store? If you guessed "Robert De Porco and Joe Piggy", you're right! Mikey and Reggie's plan has been foiled. Oh, and Robert De Porco ALSO does the "Are you servin' ME?" thing.

"Listen to me very carefully. There are three ways of doing things around here: the right
way, the wrong way, and the way I do it."

(Also, the guy who did his voice sounds nothing like Robert De Niro)

When Mikey and Reggie get home, Martha is waiting there to chew them out. Mikey assures her that they have another plan to get her job back. Martha says that they'd better or else she will remove their ability to eat solid foods. And until then, they are on her "list", and you do not want to be on her "list". "I'm on so many lists, you'd think I lived in a grocery store," Reggie pipes up.

Mikey's new plan: they took a bunch of comment cards from Pi-Gee and they're going to write nice things about Martha on them, so that when Mr. Swine reads them, he'll give Martha her job back. Oh, and ever since Reggie has been sprayed with the perfume, he's been acting strangely feminine. When Mikey calls up E. Brian to ask about it, he says that he must have put too much estrogen in the formula, so it's now a feminizing spray.

The next day, not only is Reggie upset that Mikey didn't notice his new Van Wailin' t-shirt, but as they're putting the comment cards in the box, Mikey gets perfume in his eye again and winds up making a mess. Mr. Swine shows up and catches them red-handed... er, red-trottered. He's all "I'm not hiring Martha back!", to which Mikey declares that it's time to "kick it up a notch". I was going to make a reference to Emeril Lagasse, but then the show did it for me - specifically, they have Reggie say, "Bam!".

So, what do you think the name of the Emeril parody in this show is? "HAMril Lagasse",
perhaps?

Mikey and Reggie start boycotting Pi-Gee's and singing a protest song. Soon all the pigs in the mall are hyped up and boycotting the store too. "Perfume sucks!" one member of the crowd shouts... not sure how they got away with that in a kids' show.

"I can't ignore an angry mob parked outside my store!" Mr. Swine laments. "This pig knows when his bacon is cooked." He agrees to give Martha her job back, to which Martha says that she doesn't want her job back. Apparently her father solved her problem with the credit card companies, making all of Mikey and Reggie's efforts a colossal waste of time. Also, E. Brian shows up and sprays Reggie with an antidote so he'll stop being so feminine. The end.

What's the Verdict?

Pig City is another cartoon I'm putting in the "okay" category. There's nothing remarkable about it, but it's not awful. Not much is done with the whole "they're pigs" part of the premise, most of the pig puns weren't funny, and the characters aren't interesting at all. Ned's Newt is probably worse, but at least its bizarreness and obnoxious talking newt gave me stuff to talk about. This is just... something that existed. Unless you really like pigs, I wouldn't recommend giving it a watch. Still, there are far worse cartoons out there.

Frankly, I'm shocked that I made it through the entire review without making any jokes about Miss Piggy or Porky Pig. I was fully expecting to make at least ONE. I didn't even make any references to the other cartoon show about pigs I reviewed, Piggsburg Pigs!. Weird, huh?