Dorbees
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
| Dorbees | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 "Why don't they go away?" indeed.
| ||||||||||||
|
Dorbees: Making Decisions is the supposed pilot episode for a VeggieTales-like series known as "Dorbees", but it never happened. It was released in 1998 and features music by the Gaither Vocal Band.
Summary
The plot follows a race called Dorbees, tiny little balls that can only be seen through the lens of the most powerful microscope. Dorbees face many of the same problems as humans, such as buying appropriate clothes and listening to their parents. Jack and Mary-Jane Dorbee skip school and escape the post-columbine lockdown mechanisms their school has put into place and investigate a scary, old house, in an attempt to be seen as "grown-up". Meanwhile, Dig, a local, wealthy businessman stuck in the '70s, is visited by a Swedish immigrant named Otto who is attempting to find "clothes to fit in with the common folk", forcing him to decide between making money by exploiting Otto (to get his 8track back) or lead him to a more appropriate store. The narrator is a 73-year-old, guitar-playing, Dorbee named Delta Dorbee. He has several scenes and also serves to introduce the recurring Dorbee named Flec.
Why It Should Go Away
- As mentioned earlier, it’s an obvious bandwagon attempt to cash in on the popularity of VeggieTales, just like Gaither's Pond.
- Unspeakably nightmarish character models which look like colored peas or gumballs that have faces and limbs. Digs out of all the characters in the show has the most horrendous facial expressions.
- Despite being a religious show, God (or anything religious) is rarely ever mentioned.
- Horrendous CGI animation and the aforementioned character models that are so uncanny looking that they actually look a bit worse than Gaither's Pond, considering that The Powerpuff Girls (1998), CatDog, The Wild Thornberrys, A Bug's Life, The Prince of Egypt, and Mulan (1998), which all came out the same year as this pilot, had better animation than this. The characters and other objects keep clipping through themselves. For example, Delta Dorbee is “sitting” but his legs are through the chair. This also makes some of the actions the characters do look confusing like the shot of Jack hugging his dad when the animation unintentionally looks more like they are having incest or when Delta doesn't give eye contact to the viewer when he starts talking.
- The Mr. Poe and Yogul segment uses cel shading, making the animation look worse and also making the characters feel too out of place when they appear in the final music number.
- The recurring Dorbee, Flec, is so annoying, crazy and so much of a random character that even Delta himself admits as such.
- Another character named Norm is also just as unlikeable as Flec despite not being as recurring as the later. Norm is a pointless character who's only joke is "You're Darn Tootin" and nothing more while having attire resembling Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury.
- The short's theme is making the right decisions including staying in school. However, the school in the short is shown to be a veritable death trap belying a horrifying authoritarian society with teachers who teach students incredibly wrong things and a security system that outright tries to kill anyone who attempts to escape being brainwashed into ignorance.
- The Digs segment isn't any better as it has implied racism as Digs near the end of the segment tells Otto that he should've gone to a Scandinavian clothes shop instead of Digs' shop even though Otto literally said he moved to the US.
- The Mr. Poe and Yogul intro features generic character models that are all in a T-shaped pose, which is the default position for human-shaped CGI character models.
- The song for the German Mr. Poe and Yogul show features German stereotypes, such as pronouncing "the" as "da", and has a notable spelling error, with the word "strongest" misspelled as "srongest" in one of the images. It's also extremely laughable as well, since the man singing it (Marshall Hall) sounds like he's getting more depressed as it goes on, and just wants it to be done with it.
- Dr. Dairy, the villainous cow, is a very stupid over-the-top baddie that gives any other villain that's been despised a run for their money. Her defeat is even laughably bad as she gets defeated by Mr. Poe via the lights of car while Yogul tips her over (not making this up).
- Poor and laughable theme song, especially the line "Why don't they go away?". Speaking of which, why have a line like it since a theme song is supposed to make the audience more interested into watching your pilot?
- The song "I Wanna Be Grown Up" has its Roman numerals wrong, reading 1918 (MCMXVIII) rather than 1998 (MCMXCVIII).
- When Jack and Mary Jane fall into a hole, a news report claims that they deserved it because they disobeyed their parents, even though it caused them great pain.
- Mr. Enter points this out, but in the school scene, if you listen closely, you can hear a child laughing, it's actual child. It shows how poor the sound mixing can be at times and it's baffling they never edited out the sound.
- Extremely incoherent and disjointed collection of stories.
- The runtime, 36 minutes, is too long for a television pilot.
- The theme song ends with a lazy still image of the title card.
- Some word effects like The Mr. Poe theme song feel like they came out of Microsoft Paint due to the fonts used.
- Pointliness pop culture references that give Chicken Little a run for it's money like the Indiana Jones joke from the Jack and Mary Jane story or when Yogul sings random licensed in the Mr. Poe segment. Also, the scene where Otto dresses up as Batman during the Digs segment.
- Even though the voice acting is decent, it can range from being ridiculously annoying at worst or bland at best. Digs has a voice that is pretty hard to hear unless if you turn up the volume enough while the same can be said about Dr. Dairy. Jack has the most inconsistent voice in the show especially when he sings. And don't get us started when Yogul sings. Some characters even speak too fast that is hard to keep up.
- For some reason there is a pointless couch potato character who keeps getting bigger. The character can be removed and nothing would change.
- The lighting is really flawed as everytime the lights darken, you can barely see what is going on.
- The camera often does unnecessary close up of some characters.
- Overuse of squash and strech for the characters even for the most simplest things like opening a door.
- In one scene during Jack's speech, the audio is cut off so we can't even figure out what he was going to say.
- Every Dorbee in this show have inconsistent character lip sync. Try comparing the lip sync of Mr. Poe to that of Yogul for example or the teacher to the students.
Redeeming Qualities
- The music and songs are great and easily the best about this pilot, with "I Wanna Be Grown-Up" being the highlight of the whole thing.
- Decent voice acting.
- The morals are at least subtle and not forced down your throat.
- A few funny jokes.
- The CGI animation is so bad it's a bit funny to look at sometimes.
Reception
The show holds a 2.4/10 on IMDb, gaining negative reviews for its animation, plot, lack of any biblical references and confused moral. However, it gained an ironic cult following after Mr. Enter posted his review of the pilot, due to the bad animation making some unintentional comedy. It was briefly an internet meme between 2017 and 2018.
A second episode had been planned, but due to its negative reception, it was scrapped.
Episode
Reviews
Comments
Loading comments...
Categories:
- 1990s programs
- "It's made for kids"
- Lost or partially found shows
- Edgy shows
- Obscure shows
- Cancelled shows
- Shows for everyone
- CGI cartoons
- Internet memes
- Low-budget shows
- Shows reviewed by PhantomStrider
- Shows reviewed by Mr. Enter
- Episodes
- Shows that lasted only one episode
- Unfunny shows
- Featured on TV Tropes' So Bad, It's Horrible
- Religious shows
- TV pilots
- Shows that only lasted one episode
- So bad it’s good