Dorbees

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.

Dorbees

"Why don't they go away?" indeed.

Genre:	Animation Christian
Running Time:	35 minutes
Country:	United States
Release Date:	September 8, 1998
Created by:	Benjy Gaither Scott Harper
Starring:	Tyler Byrd Benjy Gaither Marshall Hall Amy Hayes Lana Ranahan Tim Schoepf Tyler Smith

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 that have faces and limbs.
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.
The recurring Dorbee, Flec, is so annoying, crazy and so much of a random character that even Delta himself admits as such.
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 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.
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.
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.

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.

Episode

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