Grizzy & The Lemmings

Warning/Reminder: It has been established by Eybi 14 that, while having a 7.1/10 on IMDb, this show has been disliked and is considered bad by fans and critics due to its qualities and out-dated nature, it may not be one of the worst shows of all time, but it is not the best either.

Grizzy & The Lemmings
"'Tabodi!"
Genre: Comedy Animation Running Time: 22 minutes (7 minutes for each segment) Country: France Release Date: August 8, 2015 – present Network(s): France 3/4 Boomerang Netflix Cartoonito (Brazil) CBBC (seasons 3-present) Created by: Josselin Charier, Antoine Rodelet Distributed by: Hari Productions Starring: Pierre-Alain de Garrigues Josselin Charier Seasons: 4 Episodes: 78 (312 segments)

Grizzy & The Lemmings (French: Grizzy et les Lemmings) (Later on called Grizzy & The Lemmings World Tour in its Third Season) is a French computer-animated television series produced by Studio Hari with the participation of France Télévisions and Boomerang.

It is a silent comedy focusing on a grizzly bear, named Grizzy, having to deal with the group of the eponymous lemmings, who he is irritated by. The show has no real dialogue, as characters will speak gibberish. The three-dimensional designs are by Bertrand Gatignol for the characters and Édouard Cellura for the sets.

Summary

The series follows Grizzy, a grizzly bear, and a race of chipmunks called Lemmings as they live together in a shack and go through many adventures. Grizzy and the Lemmings are set in Nutty Hill National Forest, a fictional Canadian park, at the hillside cabin of the park's mostly unseen forest ranger. When the ranger leaves for work each day, Grizzy, a grizzly bear, slips into the cabin and takes advantage of its numerous amenities, usually seeking to relax, watch television, and snack on either fish, chocolate spread or both. He always finds his peace disturbed by a pack of rambunctious and mischief-making blue-gray chipmunks called Lemmings who all have similar personalities.

As Grizzy and the lemmings are drawn into the conflict, various pieces of high-tech equipment and sometimes magic objects in and around the cabin come into play, as the lemmings seek to make more mischief and Grizzy tries to stop them. The fight almost invariably spills onto the passing highway, leading to high-speed chases. Most (if not every) episode ends in a bad ending for both parties as they have backed themselves inextricably trapped or stuck in a mess (Strangely, they seemingly are back the next episode) and even look at the viewer (breaking the 4th wall) while making uttering annoyed expressions. These endings were supposed to mean the moral of Greed leading to Extreme Karma.

In Season 3, while Grizzy and the Lemmings are fighting over a Chocolate Spread, the jar flings into a nearby harpoon gun as it fires and laches onto a plane, which cause the whole shack to be pulled in, and after a while it detaches and now lands in China, and ever 13 episodes, one of Grizzy's and/or the Lemmings' shinanikings will cause the Shack to move to an all new locations in which Grizzy & The Lemmings will have similar adventures like they do at a forest.

Why It Deserves No Chocolate Spread

1. Outdated mechanics and plot device: The most fundamental problem with Grizzy & The Lemmings is that the show itself feels incredibly dated, which is unacceptable for 2015-present standards. The show mechanically and in terms of its plot is reminiscent of shows from the late 1990s, more specifically the era of early televisions from the era of Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, YTV, or Hub shows, only with partially modern graphics.
   • To add salt to the wound, this was made in the year 2015, also known as the same year that both Star vs. the Forces of Evil and Dinotrux were created, and both Steven Universe and Gravity Falls got their second seasons.
2. While not unlikable, the main characters are all bland and one-dimensional, with Grizzy being a basic bear who is a rip-off of Boug from Open Season trilogy and the Lemmings are a HUGE rip-off of the Minions from the Despicable Me series, except that the Lemmings are so unfriendly, while the Minions, despite always causing mistakes and some unfriendly, are still nice and innocent.
3. It entirety a bottle show during the first two seasons, with most of the series taking place in a shack, and while there are other locations, there are only two other locations such as the power plant and the store in Seasons 1 though 2.
4. Little-to-no voice acting at any point in the show, as it lacks any dialogue and only has animal noises, with the Lemmings saying an annoying phrase "Tabodi!", which gets old pretty fast.
5. Though out the show (Seasons 1, 2 and 3), there are other characters that make an appearance, but unlike both Grizzy and the Lemmings, they're nothing more than average, normal everyday animals, and as such, their carbon-cutouts.
6. Specking of which, though out the show, there's a She-Bear who also makes an appearance and is a love interest for Grizzy, but so far, it never gets resolved at any point in the show.
   1. On the topic of the She-Bear, for some strange and buzzard reason, in season two she got a redesign.
7. Very few rosters of characters, Grizzy and the Lemmings are so far the only characters though out the whole show, with the other animal-based characters being nothing more than average, normal everyday animals and the She-Bear just being there for the sake of a love interest.
   1. While some episodes do introduces other non-animal characters later on in Grizzy & The Lemmings(such as "Spider Lemmings", "Fake Brothers", "Baby Sitting", "Ranger Lemming", "Ice & Bears", "Electrio Rangers Lemming", "Yummy Fly" "Lemmings Plant" and "Uncouth Bear"), they are only one-time characters, so it means that after their appearances in that episode, they are never seen or mentioned again.
8. Perhaps the most infamous reason as to why Grizzy & The Lemmings have been dislike is because of its overall premise of its episodes, many of which are extremely repetitive, as the plot for most episodes of Grizzy & The Lemmings is basely just the same over and over again, and it goes as follows:
   • Grizzy doing his routine before being annoyed by the Lemmings.
   • Grizzy and/or the Lemmings finding a plot device that becomes the main focus of that episode.
   • Grizzy and the Lemmings fighting over said plot device.
   • The infamous example is when the "climax" takes place on the street.
     • This is also the main reason as to why Grizzy & The Lemmings feels really outdated, as this kind of plot feels more like something out of the mid-1990s, not something out of the mid-2010s, most of which nowadays have shows with more complex plots.
9. In the intro theme-song, there's a Forest Ranger who makes an appearance, but he's so far never seen in picture nor does he even interact with the characters, he does not even make a single appearance in the third season.
10. It has a selection of meteoric episodes, most of which (as stated in the #8 segment) plays the same plot again and again.
11. The CGI animation (by Studio Hari who did well-received The Owl & Co and The Owl (The Chouette)) is rather cheap and looks unpolished for 2010s standards. It also somewhat lazily re-used models that takes pages from Donkey Kong Country, as in Grizzy & The Lemmings tends to re-used character models just for a sake on a "new character". In fact, it's even worse as they try to make that re-used model look like a totally different animal.
    1. In the episode "A Midsummer Bear's Dream", Grizzy fights what's "supposedly" is a giant dragon, when in truth, it is a larger version of the chicken, but is colored green.
    2. In the episode "Rainbow Moose", there's a rainbow colored moose that has a single horn on his head, which "supposedly" makes it a unicorn.
12. Many episode titles rip off other titles from other media, such as "Super Grizzy Bros.", which is a rip-off of Super Mario Bros., and even the game that Grizzy and the Lemmings play looks similar to Mario Kart.
    • On that note, there is also Sound Recycling, one such example is in the episode "Augmented Bear", where the song that plays is the Super Mario Bros. Flag Pole theme.
13. While season 2 is a bit better, it has some episodes can get mean-spirited and are just painful to watch.
    1. "Bear Diet", is an extremely evil Grizzy tortur episode, as all he wants is to open the fridge to get his chocolate spread, yet the fridge has devises that prevents him from opening it and makes him exercise by making him run on a treadmill, and meanwhile when attempting to either open up the fridge and/or even trying to be thin, the Lemmings start bugging him just so they could ride the treadmill that makes Grizzy exercise.
    2. "Uncouth Bear" is yet another Grizzy torture episode as a large Sabor-Tooth Bear consistently bugs Grizzy to eat his food.
14. Grizzy & The Lemmings has so much missed potential, both in its plot and some episodes.
    1. In the episode "Babysit Bear" it shows that the She-Bear has a female cub, because of a new introduction to a character, you would think that the female bear cub would be a recurring character, yet she only makes one appearance and is never seen or mention again.
    2. "Intensive Care", is not only mean-spirited, but is also an extremely wasted potential of an otherwise great episode as it follows the Lemmings getting a cold, during the first couple of minutes of the episode, the plot is about Grizzy having to take care of them. It gives it the potential of having numerous hilarious slapstick that involves Grizzy helping the Lemmings in creative ways and even include some heart-warming moments as Grizzy and the Lemmings could have been closer friends, which the episode itself could have easily been about. But all that makes a hilt mid-way in the episode as the Lemmings now become better, but alto, rather than letting them go, Grizzy literary throw them out the shack with a shovel (like he was originally gonna to prier to finding out that the Lemmings have a cold), which now cause the Lemmings to fake another cold to get Grizzy's attention again.
15. Bland soundtrack that plays the same song repeatedly.
16. In its re-release on Netflix, the episodes from Grizzy & The Lemmings are all singles, rather than be in pairs of three like on the programs, this is also an odd choice as every episode is 7 minutes long, because of how short the episodes are, why couldn't they pair the episodes in threes like they did in the programs?
17. Some terrible endings for most of the episodes that take inspirations from the Boomerang cartoon series, Lippy the Lion & Hardy Har Har.
18. Quantity over Quality: Similar to Alvinnn!!! and the Chipmunks, this show has gone on way too long with a total of over 234 episodes in three seasons, and still no sign of it ending.
19. Concluding from this, because of all these reasons above, this show is fells more like an attempt to cash in with Xilam and their shows (e.g. Oggy and the Cockroaches & Zig & Sharko).

Redeeming Qualities

1. Some occasional funny moments.
2. Passible background music and intro.
3. Seasons 3 and 4 are tiny improvements.

Reception

Despite having a 7.1/10 on IMDb, the series has received mixed-to-negative reception from audiences, critics and fans alike for its bad humor and repetitive story-lines.

Comments

Loading comments...