Happy Birthday to one of the most underrated Nicktoons out there.
Created by Mitch Schauer, aired from 1997 to 2001 and features the two best voice actors in the business, Nick Bakay (also the voice of Salem on Sabrina) and Richard Steven Horvitz (who is most well-known as Zim of Invader Zim and Billy of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy). Schauer was given the chance by Nickelodeon to come up with three ideas for an animated series, settling on beavers, based on his observation of real-life beavers . Schauer refer to the premise as "...two politically incorrect beavers. They hated everything that was faddish and it was contemporary", based on Schauer who said he like to riff on anything that's popular with society and desire to go to the opposite direction. The decision of the title "The Angry Beavers" came from Schauer's attempt to do the opposite of what was common with animation from the 80s, often cutesty and cuddly (The Smurfs, Care Bears), and was also against wanting the beavers to look cute, as a result of the infamously hideous designs of even the humans in the series.
"I thought I'd do the opposite of what people expect from cartoon characters, which are usually happy animals. I made mine angry. Then I went down through a list of silly animals and decided on beavers." - Mitch Schauer
(A little shout out to Old School Lane, an underrated YouTube channel)
The formerly lost and unaired pilot "Snowbound" featured a nice introduction to the Beavers, and includes their original designs.
The Angry Beavers centers around two beaver brothers who live on their own in a dam, you have the laid-back Nobert and the irrational and playful Daggett. While the premise may seem simple, it's how it's executed is what makes the show so unique and memorable, and a truly underrated gem.
While it was never to the level of popularity of Rugrats and SpongeBob SquarePants, it has developed a devoted cult following since it's debut (especially with my generation and the generation after). It was considered to be THE Nicktoon of the late 90s to drag in the teenage and adult demographic who enjoyed the sarcastic, dry wit and uniquely bizarre nature, and pop culture references to the culture of the 60s and 70s of the series. The show built upon some of the simplest premises in the world, such as a blinking contest, staying up all night, doing a dare, ect, but it had it's own distinct way of fleshing out these premises through such a bizarre and humorously satirical approach, building up on the absolute absurdity of the already absurd situation. The Angry Beavers was one of the few cartoons that was weird, but knew how to be weird AND funny without just being weird for the sake of it, like some other shows had.
There was level of Mr. Schauer's personal vision put into the show that made The Angry Beavers, as I've said, an underrated gem, but also a truly unique cartoon. Schauer said he had Nick Bakay and Richard Horvitz add-libbing was inspired by classic Hollywood director Howard Hawks, giving the show some flavor in it's dialogue, a lot of times Nobert and Daggett do this......thing of just screeching distinctively when speaking or screaming, it's hard to describe, you'd have to really hear/see it yourself, and I like the way Nobert would pronounces words, like he says "mou-vaie" instead of movie, or "imberasse" instead of embarrass. The music in the show, composed by Charlie Brissette (who also composed for The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron) is this soothing laid-back jazz music that is really nice to listen to and is iconic on it's on right, inspired by some movie from the 1960s. I will admit, I like the ending credits themes more, which is a sped up version of "Baby Elephant Walk".
The Angry Beavers managed to be one of the few shows that stayed pretty consistent throughout it's run. The first three or four seasons were some of the show's best, but I wish I could say the same for much of the fourth and the entire fifth season. Not everyone talks about this, but, while the later seasons were not out right bad, it was pretty clear the show had somehow started to rot. The two beavers were heavily flanderized (meaning: emphasizing on the primary traits of a character) to the point where they became somewhat insufferable, Nobert became too jerkish and Daggett ended up becoming too dumb to live. I love both the characters, there was a moment in the show where Nobert's jerky personality was enjoyable and he had his moments of either being a nice big brother or his ideas backfire, and a moment where Daggett's eccentric behavior was fun too, but he devolved into being a dimwit, whereas early on, he was more irrational and weird than just straight up stupid, and he showed some level intelligence too.
Many Beaver fans know the story of the tension with Schauer and Nickelodeon, which is what eventually, supposedly, lead to the show's cancellation. During the second season episode "Alley Oops", involved the scene where Nobert says "Oh, shut up, Daggett", Nick, for whatever reason, suddenly had an issue with a character on their shows saying "shut up", that had the scene being redubbed to have Nobert say "Shush up, stupid". There's an interesting story behind the idea of the episode "The Legend of Kid-Friendly", inspired by the numerous of notes Mitch Schauer and his team would received from Nickelodeon to keep the content "kid-friendly", and so this episode was created as a response to that. Plus, instead of the usual order of 65 episode (or in some cases 52), it was cut down to 62.
Now to the meat of the tension, the unfinished episode, "Bye, Bye Beavers!". An episode that had a soundtrack of voices completed and storyboards resurfaced.
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