Mad Dog

TAKE ME TO THE PICTURES

Name of show that this character is from: Dog City
Titles of Episode:

Original Air date: September 17, 1994 (NETWORK: FOX )
Where can I find this episode now?: No Longer Available

EPISODE TYPE: Devolving
(see Common Themes section for more on this category)

WHAT IS MAD DOG?: An Anthro, furry, wild dog

IS HE MACRO ORIGINALLY?: No

HOW DID HE BECOME MACRO?: Ingested genetic soup

WHAT DOES HE BECOME AFTER HE GREW?: Dinosaur Larger version of himself.

IS GROWTH SHOWN?: Yes

HOW MUCH OF GROWTH STAGES SHOWN?: All growth and devolving stages seen

MACRO NAME: (If different from regular sized name) Mad Dogasaurus

QUOTE: (NONE--Mad Dog only growls and roars)

SEX: Male

LOCATIONS: Tropical Island

MACRO SIZE (Approx or Average ): 35 feet

NATURE: Chaotic Animalistic Behavior

DESTRUCTION LEVEL DONE: Low - Car, outhouses

SYNOPSIS OF EPISODE: (Note: This show is half Muppet live action moments and half animated. The Elliot scenes are done with muppets while the Ace Hart and other cartoons are all animated with Elliot being the animator of said cartoons)

Elliot an animator for the cartoon Dog City is busy introducing his show to the viewers, calling it the "All New Ace Hart Show" . He talks about Yves N Steven being part of the show and that Ace will have to fend off Dog Dinosaurs in todays episode. Ace who is hanging from a limb in the picture on Elliots desk tries to get his attention by yelling out of the paper to the excited animator. It seems that Ace is suddenly turning various colors and alerts Elliot that he may want to talk to his young assistant about this. Elliot walks over to his young canine friend who is busy at work on the animated cells listening to music and unable to hear Elliot trying to get his attention. Artie appologizes and says he will do better. Elliot reminds him that he has to come up with his animated idea by the end of the show, while he goes to clean up the mess he made of Ace's colors.

Ace talks to Elliot through various mediums as Elliot organizes his place. First hes in a picture on the wall, then in a tape on the tv and then a drawing on his desk. He questions if Artie is really ready to take on an animated feature of his own while Elliot has full confidence in his young apprentice. Elliot then goes to the Yves and Steven cartoon which Ace sits down to relax and enjoy because the cat Yves always gets beat up while the dumb security guard dog named Steven has no idea what is going on the whole time. Yves tries to get a mouse figurine that is being guarded in a musem and gets abused and finds that it is not as easy to do as he thought. Elliot and Ace break in the middle of the story wondering if they may have gone to far at poor Yves expense. Ace rationalizes by saying he's a cartoon, he can take it . And Elliot shrugs and agrees and goes on with the cartoon as the cat continues to be abused in every way possible still unable to steal the figurine. The story ends as they go back to Elliots appartment with some of Elliot's friends behind him laughing and wanting more. Elliot says there will be more later as it's time for Ace's cartoon. Ace jumps from one cell to the next entering a picture with the name "Jurrasic Bark" on it and a motionless dog dinosaur standing there as Ace mock punches the still picture as the Jurrasic Bark episode starts.

Ace and his young sidekick named Eddie fly in a helicoptor heading to some remote tropical island. Eddie seems excited to get there while Ace takes it easy stretching as they land on the island. The Colonel runs up to Ace in a panic and upset about something. Ace listens to what he is upset about . The Colonel explains that he invented a way to recreate prehistoric living and breathing fidosaurs. He's up in arms due to the fact that someone stole his "Genetic Soup" The very thing that is used to make fiodsaurs. While Ace heads off after the wrong criminal, Eddie informs him that it was Bugsy Vile most likely as Ace agrees and head back to the island.

Bugsy along with his gang of Frisky, Bruiser and Mad Dog are driving in a jeep thinking of all they will do with the Genetic Soup. They can create a whole army of fidosaurs if they want to. Too bad for them Ace Hart and Eddie have already caught up to them and are following them in a car of their own. Bugsy decides to feed Mad Dog the Genetic Soup and to let him handle the situation. Mad Dog willingly does so and before they can blink Mad Dog bursts right through the car turning into a gigantic dinosaur who sits atop Bugsy. Bugsy orders Mad Dog to get Ace and Ace and Eddie quickly flee behind some bushes.

Mad Dog suddenly turns on Bugsy and his gang literaly bitting the head off of Bugsy as they all look for a place to hide. Frisky finds an outhouse and waves Bruiser and Bugsy inside as they all complain of no room. Mad Dog lets out a massive roar at the outhouse causing it to collapse. Mad Dog picks up the three gang members into his muzzle holding them and swinging them about. Ace complains to Elliot that this may be a bit to mcuh for Eddie to handle and Elliot agrees and then we see Mad Dog let go of the gang members sending them into the air into the bushes Ace and Eddie are hidding in. Eddie complains of them smelling like prehistoric doggie breath and Mad Dog roars so loudly it sends all five of them flying over a near by cliff as they hang on for life while Elliot makes light of the situation making jokes while they hang there for dear life.

Wanting to keep Ace in suspense as to how they get out of the situation, Elliot goes to a Rosie and Dot cartoon in the meantime. Rosie is a female collie who is busy doing all these activities with her niece Dot and to everything Rosie explains Dot just answers "Why?" Rosie just gives up and holds her police badge at Dot and says "That's an order, that's why!" and we head back to Elliot who is seeing Artie hasn't made much progress on his cartoon. Elliot tries to help Artie out by putting on a thinking cap and throwing dog biscuits at him and pacing back and forth. But so far not much is helping either of them to come up with an idea. Artie suggest he goes back to Yven N Steven and Elliot likes that idea and does just that.

After watching Yven get abused some more Artie comes up with some ideas as Elliot gets back to the Jurrasic Bark segment he left undone, with Ace still hanging around for dear life. Ace almost falls into Mad Dog's muzzle while Eddie starts to work with some of the trees above the cliff that he now stands on. He makes a rubber toy version of Ace and Mad Dog quickly starts to chew on the squeeky toy as they all sneak by Mad Dog who is now distracted. The rubber toys though distract more fidosaurs and lucky for our hero Eddie made more to resemble Bugsy and his gang too. Unlucky for Frisky they mistake the rubber Frisky for the real one as a giant Fidosaur chews on Frisky while Frisky begs for help. They make a quick switch of the Frisky toy for Frisky and make a mad dash out of there. They see a boat and cheer only for it to suddenly take off without them. Mad Dog shows up again as does the Colonel complaining that the Fidosaurs broke into the main building.

Ace gets a brillient idea and takes the Genetic Soup from Bugsy and heads into an outhouse using some of it on a fire hydrant. Mad Dog suddenly becomes very tame and dociile by the sight of the giant fire hydrant . Ace puts it on a platform with wheels as Mad Dog follows it harmlessly. The Colonel is less then pleased though. His park is ruined and so are his plans. Ace tells him to use his invention for the good of man kind, and the colonel opens a chicken restaurant that serves giant fried chicken legs. They all enjoy it only to see Mad Dog choking on a chicken bone that they all have to get out by jumping on his back. Ace asks for the check as we hear the bone coming out as they fade to black.

Artie tells Elliot that he loved that episode and Elliot asks if he came up with something. Artie shakes his head and Elliot gives him some advice. That he should use something close to him and he pushes Artie's squeeky bunny toy towards him. Artie comes up with the Mr. Moogie Show based on his rubber rabbit toy and Elliot congratulates him on a well done job. Ace shows up back on the blank piece of paper before Elliot saying he knew it all along. And that he wants to see the cat Yven get clobbered again. Elliot agrees and makes another sketch where he gets abused. Elliot feels a little bad for the poor cat and Ace reminds him that cartoons can take it. Elliot draws a mob that runs over Ace. And then tells Ace "Remember you said you can take it" Ace just replies from the ground , "Yeah but we don't have to like it." Elliot snickers and turns out the lights.

REVIEW OF EPISODE: Dog City was a very unique and interesting show. I always found the interactment that Elliot (who is a real time muppet) had with Ace Hart (who is animated) to be an interesting idea. Elliot didn't even have to draw Ace for Ace to suddenly appear and talk to him. If it was a place that a cartoon was viable to be (paper, tv set, video tape) he would suddenly show up finishing a conversation from each point. So whether it was all in Elliot's head the whole time is looking way to mcuh into it and I like to just enjoy the idea of a muppet talking over with his animated creation what to do next for his stories.

The whole show was basicaly another Jim Henson Studio's project and it shows in many places. Whether it was in the real time with the dog muppet characters or in the animation, everyone had the muppet look, eye brows and all. This episode was done in the third and last season of Dog City and it definitely wasn't on par with earlier season episodes but still had it's moments and went out in style. The show never gained popularity or is even remembered by most, but it was something you would expect both humor and quality wise to come out of Jim Henson Studios.

As for a review of this episode, I would have to say it would have been great if it was just the Jurrasic Bark segment, but the episode, titled "The New Litter" was full of another cartoon that was just supposed to be funny if you take it from a dog's perspective but otherwise it was just dumb. That would be the Yven N' Steven segments they kept going to. I don't know if it was trying to mimic an old Wile E Coyote vs Road Runner situation with the cat being the Coyote getting abused all the time but it was not funny and really seemed like a time filler more then anything. It definitely made parts of the episode over all unenjoyable and you would have thought they could have done better then that idea if they needed another cartoon besides Ace Hart.

After making it through all of the other filler, finally towards the middle we get to the Jurrasic Bark episode and it's good macro and monster wise but lets face it, it's less then original. That didn't mean it wasn't a good situation. This episode was made sometime after Jurrasic Park was big and in the theaters, so you saw a lot of things that spoofed the whole return of the dinosaurs theme, this is one that truly just spoofed it and just put it into a dogs world giving a differnet take on the story. It doesn't hide the fact that it is a direct spoof of Jurrasic Park but at the same time really was more of an original story using some details from Jurrasic Park to base around the canine characters in the Ace Hart cartoon. We had fun situation with some Colonel inventing some soup that turns dogs into dinosaurs or what they called "Fidosaurs" and havoc ensues when Mad Dog is fed the stuff and turns against his former mob members. That is pretty much the whole situation. The connection to Jurrasic Park end there as it mostly turned into a comic relief situation where Mad Dog would show up suddenly to scare everyone, only for the story to be stopped by Elliot to go into another Yven N Steven segment.

The biggest problems I had was most importantly the voice actor doing Mad Dog's voice just wasn't prepared to handle the 35 foot character Mad Dog had become. Mad Dog was never able to speak and couldn't here, he is pretty much a humanoid dog without the human speach and intelligence. So the voice actor mostly just had to do grunts and growls and stuff previously. But now as a dinosaur he had to actualy sound ferocious and powerful. So everytime Mad Dog as a fidosaur would show up, and wanted to roar the actor literaly just said "ROAR!". It got quite annoying and repetitive, it didn't sound realistic and sounded just like he was told to roar so he said the word roar and that was it. They probably should have used a sound clip or found someone more like Frank Welker who could have pulled it off right. The second biggest problem I had is that they didnt' know exactly where to go with the story. The whole fun of the situation is Mad Dog turning into a Fidosaur. There is no rhyme or reason as to why he turned on Bugsy after becoming Mad Dogasaurus or what the whole point of the situation in the first place was. It was just here's a giant Mad Dog on the loose, enjoy. Could have been more fun if they had more Jurrasic Park type references and situations mixed in. They had something going with the story but sorta missed the boat. The most annoying part of the episode was the Yven N Steven cartoon segments that Elliot kept pushing on us poor viewers of this episode. Yes it's a cartoons about dogs whether it's the puppets or the cartoons, everything is dogs. But the humor of a cat being beaten up by some dumb clueless dog guard in a cartoon is not only unoriginal, and uncreative it just wasn't even enjoyable. They went to these segments 3 or 4 times during this one episode and honestly it really ruined the show a bit. Jurrasic Bark was great, the side story with Artie coming up with his own cartoon was fun. There is only so many times that watching an anvil fall on some cat burgler is actualy amusing and this was not one of those times period.

A lot of things are just not explained and are thrown at us rapidly. The whole existance of the other Fidosaurs is a real inigma. Were they also just regular dog persons who volunteered for the experiment or were they like Mad Dog and only part evolved? Why would Dog humanoids want to devolve other dogs and keep them in cages anyway? And what about the other Fidosaurs, were they good or bad or what? We see them only in blink moments in the episode and those situations were confusing rather then amusing. They invade the gift shop and are all playing games or hanging around as if they are evolved but previously when they see them they are like Mad Dog and are wild unevolved beasts only tamed with chew toys. There was just no logic or continuity here. One moment they are one way another moment they are gone another moment they are just schmoozing.. very disorganized. Also there were errors like the Genetic Soup suddenly became just a growth potion and not a devolving enducing potion. The Colonel explains that he made a way to devolve dogs into Fidosaurs. Mad Dog eats it and turns into a giant Fidosaur. Later on though Bugsy uses it on a newspaper to try and teach Mad Dog a lesson only for the newspaper to grow really big and fall onto Bugsy. Ace uses it on a fire hydrant in the outhouse and the fire hydrant grew in size. So when did it suddenly become a growth potion on things it touches? Maybe there were two writters on this, or he just didn't care but it's a very glarring mistake that was kinda over looked in the name of humor and wrapping up the story.

To sum it up, it's Ace Hart meets Jurrasic Park. meets the Muppets. Mad Dog was a great choice to be the one to be changed into the dinosaur. He's the only not totaly evolved dog character in the episode and for that reason he played the part of an out of control dinosaur as you would have expected. May not have worked if one of the other main characters was changed but would have also been nice to see some of the other dogs changed and some variety as every dog seemd to resemble a Tyranasaurus Rex and they were either purplish, greyish or brownish in color. Could have done more with variety. There was some size fluxuation as well to be found here but that is expected when you have giants interacting with smaller characters. It wasn't that bad though but was noticable. Sometimes only half his body or his head would be the only thing seen other times they fit all characters into the frame easily. It's enjoyable though. Its a lot better then most return to dinosaur situation and had a lot of humor and cool moments that most would enjoy. Mad Dog makes for a fun out of control dinosaur and the fact that he didn't take more then a second to turn his power and size against Bugsy was a nice touch. There was no reason explained as to why but I guess he had no reason to listen to them anymore now that he was huge and powerful. This is a good find and a good effor from a lesser known cartoon. Not the greatest of all time but still quite enjoyable and most will probably like the situations and story that this had to offer. The fire hydrant gag may not have been the most original or new idea but in a world of dogs it works. I guess Mad Dog was so mean as a fidosaur as he had to use the restroom the whole time. A good lesson to remember folks if you are being chased by a huge Fidosaur. Find him or her a hydrant fast. It will solve all your problems.

RATING: B

MEMORABLE QUOTES AND MOMENTS IN EPISODE:

(The Colonel comes running in as Ace and Eddie approach seeing him in a panic and upset about something)
Ace Hart: "What's up pops? Ferris wheel fall flat?"
Colonel: "This is no kiddie park son. I have developed a way to geneticly recreate living, breathing FIDOSAURS!!
(Points to a full sized scale model of one on the other side of the room)
Eddie: "COOL!!"
(Ace walks over to the scale model and taps on it as he hears the sound of metal being clanged)
Ace Hart: "Is he always this frisky?"
Colonel: "That's a model you boob!"

****************

(Frisky looks in the car's side mirror to see Ace and Eddie hot on their trail following them)
Frisky: "Uh oh! We've got company. Its Ace Hart and his youthful ward, Dick Greyhound."
Eddie: "That's Eddie!"
Frisky: "Whatever.."

*****************

(Frisky and Bruiser both quiver in fear as they see the huge Mad Dog)
Bugsy: "Relax, he would not dare bite the hand that feeds him."
(Mad Dog 's huge head appears and bites the top of Bugsy. Bugsy snaps out as his head and shoulders re appear from under his waist)
Bugsy: "The head and shoulders yes, but the hand remains intact."

******************

(Frisky spots an outhouse as Bugsy's gang is running from a giant Mad Dog)
Frisky: "Quick. In here!"
(Frisky, Bruiser and Bugsy all head into the outhouse to hide)
Frisky: "Move over. Stop touching me!"
Bruiser: "Hey stay on your side!"
Bruiser & Frisky: "Bugsy he's touching me.."
(Mad Dog bends down and roars loudly at the outhouse causing it to fall revealing the three gang members and a firehydrant)

******************

(Frisky, Bruiser, Bugsy, Ace Hart and Eddie all hang from a cliff as Mad Dog stands under them trying to bite up towards them)
Elliot: "How will Ace Heart escape this perillous peril? Can it be the end of our heroic hero? And if so, what type of beverage goes best with dog meat?"
(All five hanging from the cliff yell through the paper to Elliot saying "HEY!" )
Elliot: "Stay tuned to the answer to this and many more irrelevant questions!"

FINAL NOTES:

*This episode was the last season of Dog City which lasted for only 3 years. Each season had fewer and fewer then the previous. The show was on Fox Kids on Saturday mornings and was made by the Jim Henson Production studios.

*Mad Dog actualy ends the episode still in his giant dinosaur form, never having changed back. One of the few times something like this will happen but not the only in a macro episode. Of course the next weeks episode will have Mad Dog back to normal and nothing referenced to this episode or how he was changed back.

Errors--

Factual -- Mad Dog's clothing and collar and even the rope around his collar all grew even though that shouldn't be possible due to Mad Dog having eaten the Genetic Soup so only something actualy part of his living body should have changed in size.

Continuity -- When the five dogs are hanging off the side of the cliff Ace is at the bottom of the stack holding onto Eddies Legs. Ace falls out and almost gets eaten by Mad Dog only to jump back up and grab Bugsy who is now where Eddie was while Eddie is standing atop the cliff and at a tree, with no explanation of how he got up there.

Continuity -- Is Genetic Soup a devolving formula or a growth potion. When used on Mad Dog it made him grow into a dinosaur version of himself. When Bugsy uses it on a newspaper and Ace uses it on a hydrant both grow in size. The formula was established as a way to turn creatures into dinosaurs, never said to be a growth potion or should it have worked as such.

Contiunity -- Mad Dog's size as a Fidosaur altered a lot. When he first grew he was gigantic when compared to Ace's car below him. In scenes later on he wasn't as big. In later scenes he wasn't towring over the other characters like he was earlier espeicaly when he was trying to bite them while they hung onto the cliff and when he had his three former associates in his muzzle swinging them about.

+ :MMad Dog makes for a good choice to become a dinosaur and fit in very well to the whole situation surrounding the Jurrasic Bark segment of the episode. Cool moments and funny lines and situations make the episode that much more enjoyable. Great take on Jurrasic Park placing dogs in the place of dinosaurs.

- :Too much with the Yven N Steven segments really slowed things down due to it not being funny or enjoyable. A few glarring continuity errors that really should have been noticed. Could have had more with the other Fidosaurs then the brief moments we get. A lot of history and details left out to explain how things got to be how they were before Ace and Eddie arrive. The voice actor doing Mad Dog's voice needs some work as his sounds were all the same when trying to imitate a dinosaur. Not very original or creative at points, could have been better.

PICTURES OF MAD DOG and FIDOSAURS

Nothing like a nice face full of Dinosaur Soup

That's one way to get a sunroof on a car

I hope that car was insured for dinosaur damage

He wouldn't bite the hand that feeds him

All this growing sure has made Mad Dog hungry

Rubber chew Ace toy. Does the trick everytime

Frisky does his impression of a chew toy

Even preshistoric dogs know how to court a female

Another outhouse? Boy the island is full of em

AVI:

55 Seconds
Mad Dog gets devolved into a gigantic rampaging dinosaur. Now even his own boss has no control over this huge fidosaur. This includes most of the begging moments involving Mad Dog including his growth and chase moments. Not a full episode of course.