It’s kind of hard to describe 2 Stupid Dogs in a nutshell… it’s about two dogs… they’re stupid, and they get in to all sorts of mishaps. Occasionally it’s wacky, sometimes witty, and other times absolutely surreal, the series centered on two orphaned dogs—The Big Dog (Brad Garrett), a large grey English Sheep Dog and The Little Dog (Mark Schiff), a small Dachshund—looking for happiness in the simple things life has to offer. Featuring a near perfect friendship, the duo unwittingly walk into all sorts of madcap misadventures, whether it’s getting launched into space or wreaking havoc on Noah’s Ark.
Created by Donovan Cook and set into development by Hanna Barbera and Turner, which was in a state of re-inventing itself during the mid-90s, the 2 Stupid Dogs was such a sharp-witted show that it often didn’t need much dialogue, instead relying on its wonderful animation and theme music to punctuate how outlandish and hilarious the situations often were. One episode (“Where’s the Bone?”) finds Little Dog looking for his favorite bone… that happens to be resting on his head the entire time. Another episode (“Love in the Park”) finds Little Dog falling in love with a toy puppy that barks and flips, all the while Big Dog goes looking for the owner of a Frisbee—that’s the entire episode! You could almost call 2 Stupid Dogs a show about nothing (with dogs) as it relied mostly on random, goofy situations. Often times the plots were so simple you could describe them in one sentence.
While the series did revolve around The Little Dog and The Big Dog, it also served to host a variety of other short cartoons including a rebooted Secret Squirrel series titled Super Secret Secret Squirrel which revolved around Secret Squirrel and his sidekick Morroco Mole as they try bring down all kinds of international villains. One episode, for instance, finds the pair fighting an art-loving chameleon who could mimic his favorite pieces, while another finds the pair fighting an evil Gingerbread Man collecting the world’s candy. The shorts were later pulled from 2 Stupid Dogs during Season 2, due to viewer confusion, and was given its own spinoff. Sadly, it only lasted thirteen episodes.
Incidentally, the show also became a launch pad for many well-respected aspiring animators such as Genndy Tartakovsky, Craig McCracken, Butch Hartman and Seth MacFarlane—just to name a few. Watching the series now, it’s easy to see the influences of these creative visionaries went of to change the face of pop culture with their own original series like Powerpuff Girls and Family Guy.
2 Stupid Dogs lasted for two seasons, ending in 1995 with twenty-six episodes total and originally aired on TBS in America, while later being syndicated on Cartoon Network and its sister network, Boomerang. Since its end, many fans still speak very highly of it as a random and very funny buddy comedy that took its influence from Ren and Stimpy and created its own odd entity. To date there hasn’t been a DVD or Blu-Ray release of the entire series, which is just criminal… and WR-O-O-NG!
