Regular readers of this blog will be aware of my personal hatred of the TV series Paw Patrol. The reason why I as a 44 year old man with no children should have such a visceral reaction to a piece of media which isn't designed for me, is that I have been subjected to watching more hours of Paw Patrol, while waiting in line at the bank, than I care to have seen. The actual number of hours of Paw Patrol that I care to have seen is zero; so I suspect that waiting in line at the bank and watching Paw Patrol is in contravention to some UN Convention. I can only dread the fates of the futures that await the banking staff, which I imagine are as unpleasant as what happened to the radium girls.
In any given episode of Paw Patrol, the small town of Adventure Bay which appears to have no more than about two dozen residents, is plagued by some very minor complication which then requires a small boy named Ryder and his unholy army of puppies, to sort out. If someone's chicken goes missing, or a cat has somehow wandered into the middle of a stream, or a fire in a kitchen has trapped someone (these are all real stories), then the hideously incompetent villagers will call Ryder and the Paw Patrol, with their absurdly expensive machinery, to solve their relatively minor problem.
I think that the reason why I abhor this show in particular, is that the formula is predictable almost to the second. The complication will happen at exactly 94 seconds. There will exactly two beat points in the plot which will happen at 212 seconds and 256 seconds, with the denouement playing out from 325 seconds. There will also be the obligatory flat joke and laughter at the end. Now I am all for animated cartoons as I think that the scope can be wider than live television, but something about Paw Patrol just makes me want to bang my head violently against the coffee table and pass out on the floor.
The best rational explanation that I have come across for the reason why the very small and limited world of Paw Patrol exists, is that the small boy Ryder has suffered some kind of very serious head trauma and is in a coma. In a desperate attempt to be in control and likely induced by pain medication, his brain has constructed an entire world for him to live in; in which he is the hero and his own dead puppies have been resurrected in some kind of Gary Stu self-insertion character wish fulfillment. This theory best explains why he never has to go to school, why there is no sensible parental figure, and why this town relies upon him. Of course being a small boy, it also explains why the world is in fact so very very limited because a brain that is unable to imagine the world complexly is also unable to imagine a complex world.
In this edition of Complaining About Media Which I Haven't Seen And Have No Intention Of Seeing, I have learned of the existence of "Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie". Usually when a TV franchise announces a movie, it is the beginning of the end for the TV franchise as it is usually the last few booms of a dying supernova. In "Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie", one of the pups named Skye (and in an effort to try and correct the Bechdel Test failure of the series), has found a meteor which gives the pups superpowers. Mayor Humdinger, whom we have previously seen in prison, intends to steal the meteor. The fact that I can work this out just from the long version of the movie advert on the television while waiting in the bank, suggests that the plot can not be all that complicated.
I note that the movie is rated PG and "Contains scenes which will unsettle young children" as well as "Contains mild peril". Personally I like warnings like this as this will serve as a warning to parents that someone else's small child is going to have a very very loud cry in the cinema. They can not directly say that "this movie will make your kids cry" and so the phrases "unsettle young children" and "mild peril" are brilliant euphemisms. If I was subjected to being in that cinema then I would join them as I share their grief; as I too wish that I could cry in quivering heap.
However the existence of not one but two Paw Patrol movies suggests something even darker lying underneath the surface. As a movie is the last few bangs of a franchise shedding layers before it finally dies, just what is happening to our unseen boy in the coma? His drug induced coma appears to be getting worse. The Ryder whom we can not see, as the mind which contains this extremely small universe, is going through its last few desperate grasps for consciousness and cohesion. These last few attempts to give the pups superpowers must surely indicate that either the drugs have changed, or that Ryder is in fact dying.
That's the kindest and most rational explanation for what is going on here because if that's not what is happening, then I don't know what is. Okay, apart from the obvious that this is media designed to sell tickets because that has been the basis of professional actors type thesp since the late 1500s but in universe, the idea that the pups find a magical meteorite which gives them superpowers, is pushing it it even for this saccharine drug induced coma dream.
Aside:
PG warnings about "mild peril" and that a piece of media will "unsettle young children" are mildly amusing but G warnings that a piece of media "contains numbers", or "contains letters", or even worse that it "contains numbers and letters", are guffaw producing. Now if only they could produce some kind of warning for Cocomelon. I am sure that Cocomelon is definitely in contravention to some UN Convention.
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