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Description

I never had a history with Catscratch except I remember seeing Gordon as a trophy on a video game I remember playing, Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots. That was when I first heard about this obscure Nicktoon, and later on I decided to review it. And oddly enough, for a seemingly generic cartoon, I decided to re-review the whole thing from scratch roughly 4 years after releasing this scorecard since my perspective on the show has changed thanks to the cartoon community: it went from a forgotten Nicktoon of the mid-2000’s to a beloved, underrated classic appreciated by pretty much everyone in the community who thought the show should’ve lasted longer than it should’ve. That sentiment reignited my interest in what I initially saw as weak and forgettable, curious to understand and see if it’s as good as the cartoon community calls it. Also, this is one of those reviews that has poorly aged in my opinion due to my constant comparisons to other shows and how it sounds like I’m accusing the crew of plagiarizing with no valid proof, so I’d thought I wanted to fix the review with better and stronger points.

And ouch! This one's a pretty bad casualty for yet another animal-centered Nicktoon. Initially, I didn’t find any episodes I liked, but if it weren’t for that re-watch, I wouldn’t at least have liked those two episodes. Despite myself brightening up a bit, it actually seems worse than I had come across with only around a quarter of the episodes being MEH. As a matter of fact, the BAD episodes dominate two-thirds of the show, which is really harmful. However, I’d say it isn’t worth that hard of a panic when most of the BAD episodes are on the lighter side of that rating.

Since the description for the pie chart is pretty short, I will expand it some more with my thoughts on the writing:

A couple of words to describe the writing as a whole is honestly not that generic, actually. However, that doesn’t mean I like the writing. The premise alone isn't very interesting since it feels like another one of those “group of characters go on crazy adventures” type of cartoons I’ve felt so many times already. But the catch is, they live in a mansion! Wow! But for a show that seems pretty generic, I’ll give them this: it oddly has a lot going for its premise. Not just action, but tons of supernatural elements are thrown in as well. That sounds weird, but at the same time feels like something the show tries doing to this old formula. Unfortunately, I’d still turn away from it because the many, bizarre ideas Catscratch incorporates ends up being bland and clichéd from the mansion attracting otherworldly creatures thanks to it possessing something they desire to even an idea like “The cats go to space to collect rocks for a ribs contest” because it sounds like this show will do little to nothing exciting with it. And some of it becomes a reality in execution, thanks to the action scenes where to put it simply, they’re super repetitive and unconvincing. Taken when the cats battle a kraken, which is something I don’t see much in cartoons. However, it ends up feeling forgettable because the show does not make the kraken an interesting and different monster full of shocking surprises where all this kraken does is smash parts of the ship, grab and eat the inhabitants and that's it. Characters getting beaten multiple times repeatedly further makes this creature and its action sequences more repetitive and boring, combined with the lack of silliness, craziness, and freshness and that’s what you get. You can expect surprising foreshadowing, but the show seems to not fully understand what that is where it simply misses the point of what happened earlier. Or, expect a deus ex machina as well that has similar faults as the show’s sense of foreshadowing. And let’s not forget to mention how repetitive the goal is with most of them being about one of the cats saving their brothers.

But outside of execution, let’s now question what these strange things are doing in a show about three brothers fighting around. Well, how they connect with the series can sometimes make sense. On one hand, the way they can be set up can feel ridiculous but something that is otherwise reasonable like the cats going to the Arctic to retrieve an iceberg to cool themselves in the middle of a heatwave, and in a surprise twist greets a mammoth stuck in there. Yet on the other hand, the mansion can obtain random things out-of-nowhere with no explanation and let the craziness ensue. And that’s the problem with how this show tries being more interesting: it backfires due to major plot holes or in this case, poor reasoning. Especially with setups such as the “mansion attracting otherworldly creatures” story I mentioned earlier. Plus, it can happen throughout an episode, with "Clan Destiny" that burdens its neat Scottish atmosphere with stereotypes mocking enough to make Gordon lose his identity and eventually “jump into a lake” over…not having dumb physical features that Highland Quid Clan members have from beards to no Highland Quid Clan tattoos. That’s pathetic. It can also end poorly as well with Mr. Blik disregarding what he learned earlier as well as how kindly other characters treated him and instead bath in his claimed glory.

I’m not done yet and I know you’re going to reply “But you forgot the comedy! That’s the best thing in this show and you cannot forget about it!”. Which is why I’ll be talking about it right now and to be honest, I like some of the gags this show delivers. They’re not hysterically funny by any means, but sometimes its irony and slapstick can be pretty good. They come equally from who I often expect portrays each aspect respectively from Waffles being the comic relief and many others as the butt of other jokes. But what weighs a lot of Waffles’ moments down is because of not just the awkward and unfunny facial expressions Waffles make but also Kevin McDonald’s bad delivery; sounds cute and whimsical, but also trying to be more neutral to attempt dry humor and it doesn’t mix at all with Waffles, who has a more high-pitched voice than McDonald’s other performances. And that’s the thing: the comedy in this show is, for the most part, weak, forgettable, and typical attempts at slapstick that’s not wacky or amusing. You got characters being bonked multiple times and things getting broken, sometimes falling on the characters’ misfortune. Sounds unfunny and predictable, but after that sequence, the show cuts along to the next shot, forgetting that joke without giving it a punchline. END JOKE! Now I know that not all jokes must have a punchline, but when you have a character falling down the stairs, only for it to jump to a normal conversation as if that didn’t happened, then you’re dealing with a forced and pointless joke. And no, this, alongside much of the other gags, is not a “simple but effective” case, they’re really just one, cheap joke. Finally, this show hopes you enjoy burping cats, Waffles armpit farting, and Gordon disgustingly eating food because kids enjoy watching them do that! Speaking of the armpit farting, it happens in random moments in the episode as well and boy how cringey it feels especially when it's used to end off the episode for absolutely no reason ("Big-Eyed Bunny"). It’s funny how a comedy has a lot going for ideas than jokes, because the latter seems better than failed attempts at getting engagingly supernatural even though not much kicks were given out of the humor department.

Writing a show involves hard work, but the crew here put little effort in either category. Yep, same thing goes for the animation style, but quite the opposite for their acting:

Honestly, I don’t have much to say regarding the animation. While it can have some of its fairly colorful and imaginative moments like the cats going to unique places not thought up of from various other shows like a planet full of kraken, most of them are undermined by its typical animation style. We’re not just talking about how the bright colors makes the show look bland, but the underwhelming, and sometimes weird looking, expressions and reactions also doesn’t help the poor comedy as well. Moving towards the designs, the cats themselves are pretty ugly looking, though I liked how each cat is given a different color. However, by judging by their looks, I can't really tell who these characters are due to their appearance. Sure, they have the triangular-shaped ear and long tails that normal cats have, but when you slap more body parts like long ears, really big feet, and more, you can't really tell what the characters look like. As for the human designs, while the way they’re modeled is nothing special at all, the dark and down-to-earth coloring of some of them make them feel out-of-place. It makes sense for some of the antagonistic humans like the Chumpy Chumps, but then you have Kimberly who looks like she’d be a good companion for the three bullies. Undeniably, the supernatural designs like krakens or more heroic figures look the best in the series despite feeling out-of-place since you got to admit how carefully drawn and detailed they look to look professional. But what isn’t so professional is the voice acting, though then again this is a comedy we’re talking about. The voices aren’t just generic for a kids show as you have voices that sound so attached to the characters’ personalities plus their wacky and cartoony tone to make them really feel like they’re for a cartoon, but it can get so loud and in-your-face at times to the point of feeling juvenile and annoying from the cats crying and yelling to bragging at each other, it all sounds unsatisfying. While there are other shows I like that have loud voices, their voices and performances are charmingly catchy unlike this show. And that is commonly the case of Mr. Blik whose prideful and leaderful personality feels like it’s meant for tones like that. But actually, Waffles’ voice is my least favorite out of all of them since while Mr. Blik is alright without being so loud, I couldn’t get used to Waffles’ high-pitched voice that blends poorly with other emotions. The animation is overall nothing to write home about besides having fairly ugly designs and the voice acting can get annoyingly immature and loud.

I would say the animation is pretty average despite having a few of its moments. The voice acting, on the other hand, seems to do some damage to the characters:

Catscratch having generic stuff around the mansion moves towards the litter box as we meet many typical handlings of their respective, overused tropes and characteristics I see a bunch of times in kids cartoons. You got Mr. Blik as the prideful and greedy cat, Waffles as the dimwitted and naive numbskull, and supporting characters like Kimberly as just the sweet girl character and nothing more besides one other trope (and because she’s a girl, guess which one it is. It’s incredibly difficult!). But then there’s Gordon who actually feels a little more original than the rest, but the issue with him is how inconsistent he can be from a cultured Scottish-like cat who is the most moral one of the bunch to another selfish and childish cat of the trio. Speaking of the latter, that’s what the main cast are: childish and immature whose interactions are repetitive with them bragging, nagging, or fighting over something. And sometimes, it's not funny or humorous but just sad and mean with Gordon and Mr. Blik looking down on Waffles for his stupidity and irresponsibility. But in the end, after all that tension, they care for each other, which doesn’t make them as bad as they seem…perhaps if they have a reason other than “they’re family and they can’t leave each other behind”. And that’s where another big weakness of the show steps in: it sucks at making emotional moments. Mainly because of the lack of chemistry or emotional bond between the three or other outside folks, making me care less about those possibly strong moments. While Mr. Blik, the meanest character of the bunch, do get his fair share of these ineffective scenes, other times he tosses them away after getting what he wants and not learn anything from it. So, we got a bunch of characters who already feel generic for a cartoon show. The show tries doing a little more with them and makes them feel pretty forced in the long run.

If I have to answer on why this show is so forgotten, it’s likely because this show looks and feels generic whose comedy and execution aren't on the same level as other wacky and comedic cartoons aimed at children like The Fairly OddParents. However, for those who picked up on how much of a gem this cartoon is, good for you and I understand why. But for me, this doesn’t feel like an underrated show that deserves attention as it's more of a generic cartoon filled with clichéd and predictable writing and mediocre humor that isn’t just overused and poorly executed but also juvenile, alongside the loud voice acting and increasingly forgettable characters handled like any other trope. Despite having weird, supernatural elements, emotional moments, and a decent sense of irony here and there, they kind of make the show worse than it already is: they leave a good chunk of plot holes as well as missing something important to really make them effective. And because of how ineffective this cartoon is overall, alongside a lack of positives regarding Catscratch, it makes living in the cats’ mansion inadequate (32%). After 3 shows in a row where I don't recommend at all, I want to move onto another network. Another network where it's more interesting to talk about rather than keep discussing Nickelodeon's failed attempts at making animal-centered comedies. I forgot everything about this show that Thanksgiving when I first reviewed it, and I possibly will again after re-reviewing it roughly four years later.

Description

I never had a history with Catscratch except I remember seeing Gordon as a trophy on a video game I remember playing, Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots. That was when I first heard about this obscure Nicktoon, and later on I decided to review it. And oddly enough, for a seemingly generic cartoon, I decided to re-review the whole thing from scratch roughly 4 years after releasing this scorecard since my perspective on the show has changed thanks to the cartoon community: it went from a forgotten Nicktoon of the mid-2000’s to a beloved, underrated classic appreciated by pretty much everyone in the community who thought the show should’ve lasted longer than it should’ve. That sentiment reignited my interest in what I initially saw as weak and forgettable, curious to understand and see if it’s as good as the cartoon community calls it. Also, this is one of those reviews that has poorly aged in my opinion due to my constant comparisons to other shows and how it sounds like I’m accusing the crew of plagiarizing with no valid proof, so I’d thought I wanted to fix the review with better and stronger points.

And ouch! This one's a pretty bad casualty for yet another animal-centered Nicktoon. Initially, I didn’t find any episodes I liked, but if it weren’t for that re-watch, I wouldn’t at least have liked those two episodes. Despite myself brightening up a bit, it actually seems worse than I had come across with only around a quarter of the episodes being MEH. As a matter of fact, the BAD episodes dominate two-thirds of the show, which is really harmful. However, I’d say it isn’t worth that hard of a panic when most of the BAD episodes are on the lighter side of that rating.

Since the description for the pie chart is pretty short, I will expand it some more with my thoughts on the writing:

A couple of words to describe the writing as a whole is honestly not that generic, actually. However, that doesn’t mean I like the writing. The premise alone isn't very interesting since it feels like another one of those “group of characters go on crazy adventures” type of cartoons I’ve felt so many times already. But the catch is, they live in a mansion! Wow! But for a show that seems pretty generic, I’ll give them this: it oddly has a lot going for its premise. Not just action, but tons of supernatural elements are thrown in as well. That sounds weird, but at the same time feels like something the show tries doing to this old formula. Unfortunately, I’d still turn away from it because the many, bizarre ideas Catscratch incorporates ends up being bland and clichéd from the mansion attracting otherworldly creatures thanks to it possessing something they desire to even an idea like “The cats go to space to collect rocks for a ribs contest” because it sounds like this show will do little to nothing exciting with it. And some of it becomes a reality in execution, thanks to the action scenes where to put it simply, they’re super repetitive and unconvincing. Taken when the cats battle a kraken, which is something I don’t see much in cartoons. However, it ends up feeling forgettable because the show does not make the kraken an interesting and different monster full of shocking surprises where all this kraken does is smash parts of the ship, grab and eat the inhabitants and that's it. Characters getting beaten multiple times repeatedly further makes this creature and its action sequences more repetitive and boring, combined with the lack of silliness, craziness, and freshness and that’s what you get. You can expect surprising foreshadowing, but the show seems to not fully understand what that is where it simply misses the point of what happened earlier. Or, expect a deus ex machina as well that has similar faults as the show’s sense of foreshadowing. And let’s not forget to mention how repetitive the goal is with most of them being about one of the cats saving their brothers.

But outside of execution, let’s now question what these strange things are doing in a show about three brothers fighting around. Well, how they connect with the series can sometimes make sense. On one hand, the way they can be set up can feel ridiculous but something that is otherwise reasonable like the cats going to the Arctic to retrieve an iceberg to cool themselves in the middle of a heatwave, and in a surprise twist greets a mammoth stuck in there. Yet on the other hand, the mansion can obtain random things out-of-nowhere with no explanation and let the craziness ensue. And that’s the problem with how this show tries being more interesting: it backfires due to major plot holes or in this case, poor reasoning. Especially with setups such as the “mansion attracting otherworldly creatures” story I mentioned earlier. Plus, it can happen throughout an episode, with "Clan Destiny" that burdens its neat Scottish atmosphere with stereotypes mocking enough to make Gordon lose his identity and eventually “jump into a lake” over…not having dumb physical features that Highland Quid Clan members have from beards to no Highland Quid Clan tattoos. That’s pathetic. It can also end poorly as well with Mr. Blik disregarding what he learned earlier as well as how kindly other characters treated him and instead bath in his claimed glory.

I’m not done yet and I know you’re going to reply “But you forgot the comedy! That’s the best thing in this show and you cannot forget about it!”. Which is why I’ll be talking about it right now and to be honest, I like some of the gags this show delivers. They’re not hysterically funny by any means, but sometimes its irony and slapstick can be pretty good. They come equally from who I often expect portrays each aspect respectively from Waffles being the comic relief and many others as the butt of other jokes. But what weighs a lot of Waffles’ moments down is because of not just the awkward and unfunny facial expressions Waffles make but also Kevin McDonald’s bad delivery; sounds cute and whimsical, but also trying to be more neutral to attempt dry humor and it doesn’t mix at all with Waffles, who has a more high-pitched voice than McDonald’s other performances. And that’s the thing: the comedy in this show is, for the most part, weak, forgettable, and typical attempts at slapstick that’s not wacky or amusing. You got characters being bonked multiple times and things getting broken, sometimes falling on the characters’ misfortune. Sounds unfunny and predictable, but after that sequence, the show cuts along to the next shot, forgetting that joke without giving it a punchline. END JOKE! Now I know that not all jokes must have a punchline, but when you have a character falling down the stairs, only for it to jump to a normal conversation as if that didn’t happened, then you’re dealing with a forced and pointless joke. And no, this, alongside much of the other gags, is not a “simple but effective” case, they’re really just one, cheap joke. Finally, this show hopes you enjoy burping cats, Waffles armpit farting, and Gordon disgustingly eating food because kids enjoy watching them do that! Speaking of the armpit farting, it happens in random moments in the episode as well and boy how cringey it feels especially when it's used to end off the episode for absolutely no reason ("Big-Eyed Bunny"). It’s funny how a comedy has a lot going for ideas than jokes, because the latter seems better than failed attempts at getting engagingly supernatural even though not much kicks were given out of the humor department.

Writing a show involves hard work, but the crew here put little effort in either category. Yep, same thing goes for the animation style, but quite the opposite for their acting:

Honestly, I don’t have much to say regarding the animation. While it can have some of its fairly colorful and imaginative moments like the cats going to unique places not thought up of from various other shows like a planet full of kraken, most of them are undermined by its typical animation style. We’re not just talking about how the bright colors makes the show look bland, but the underwhelming, and sometimes weird looking, expressions and reactions also doesn’t help the poor comedy as well. Moving towards the designs, the cats themselves are pretty ugly looking, though I liked how each cat is given a different color. However, by judging by their looks, I can't really tell who these characters are due to their appearance. Sure, they have the triangular-shaped ear and long tails that normal cats have, but when you slap more body parts like long ears, really big feet, and more, you can't really tell what the characters look like. As for the human designs, while the way they’re modeled is nothing special at all, the dark and down-to-earth coloring of some of them make them feel out-of-place. It makes sense for some of the antagonistic humans like the Chumpy Chumps, but then you have Kimberly who looks like she’d be a good companion for the three bullies. Undeniably, the supernatural designs like krakens or more heroic figures look the best in the series despite feeling out-of-place since you got to admit how carefully drawn and detailed they look to look professional. But what isn’t so professional is the voice acting, though then again this is a comedy we’re talking about. The voices aren’t just generic for a kids show as you have voices that sound so attached to the characters’ personalities plus their wacky and cartoony tone to make them really feel like they’re for a cartoon, but it can get so loud and in-your-face at times to the point of feeling juvenile and annoying from the cats crying and yelling to bragging at each other, it all sounds unsatisfying. While there are other shows I like that have loud voices, their voices and performances are charmingly catchy unlike this show. And that is commonly the case of Mr. Blik whose prideful and leaderful personality feels like it’s meant for tones like that. But actually, Waffles’ voice is my least favorite out of all of them since while Mr. Blik is alright without being so loud, I couldn’t get used to Waffles’ high-pitched voice that blends poorly with other emotions. The animation is overall nothing to write home about besides having fairly ugly designs and the voice acting can get annoyingly immature and loud.

I would say the animation is pretty average despite having a few of its moments. The voice acting, on the other hand, seems to do some damage to the characters:

Catscratch having generic stuff around the mansion moves towards the litter box as we meet many typical handlings of their respective, overused tropes and characteristics I see a bunch of times in kids cartoons. You got Mr. Blik as the prideful and greedy cat, Waffles as the dimwitted and naive numbskull, and supporting characters like Kimberly as just the sweet girl character and nothing more besides one other trope (and because she’s a girl, guess which one it is. It’s incredibly difficult!). But then there’s Gordon who actually feels a little more original than the rest, but the issue with him is how inconsistent he can be from a cultured Scottish-like cat who is the most moral one of the bunch to another selfish and childish cat of the trio. Speaking of the latter, that’s what the main cast are: childish and immature whose interactions are repetitive with them bragging, nagging, or fighting over something. And sometimes, it's not funny or humorous but just sad and mean with Gordon and Mr. Blik looking down on Waffles for his stupidity and irresponsibility. But in the end, after all that tension, they care for each other, which doesn’t make them as bad as they seem…perhaps if they have a reason other than “they’re family and they can’t leave each other behind”. And that’s where another big weakness of the show steps in: it sucks at making emotional moments. Mainly because of the lack of chemistry or emotional bond between the three or other outside folks, making me care less about those possibly strong moments. While Mr. Blik, the meanest character of the bunch, do get his fair share of these ineffective scenes, other times he tosses them away after getting what he wants and not learn anything from it. So, we got a bunch of characters who already feel generic for a cartoon show. The show tries doing a little more with them and makes them feel pretty forced in the long run.

If I have to answer on why this show is so forgotten, it’s likely because this show looks and feels generic whose comedy and execution aren't on the same level as other wacky and comedic cartoons aimed at children like The Fairly OddParents. However, for those who picked up on how much of a gem this cartoon is, good for you and I understand why. But for me, this doesn’t feel like an underrated show that deserves attention as it's more of a generic cartoon filled with clichéd and predictable writing and mediocre humor that isn’t just overused and poorly executed but also juvenile, alongside the loud voice acting and increasingly forgettable characters handled like any other trope. Despite having weird, supernatural elements, emotional moments, and a decent sense of irony here and there, they kind of make the show worse than it already is: they leave a good chunk of plot holes as well as missing something important to really make them effective. And because of how ineffective this cartoon is overall, alongside a lack of positives regarding Catscratch, it makes living in the cats’ mansion inadequate (32%). After 3 shows in a row where I don't recommend at all, I want to move onto another network. Another network where it's more interesting to talk about rather than keep discussing Nickelodeon's failed attempts at making animal-centered comedies. I forgot everything about this show that Thanksgiving when I first reviewed it, and I possibly will again after re-reviewing it roughly four years later.