Oggy and the Cockroaches (seasons 1-4, 7)
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Note: This page is dedicated to both Olivier Jean-Marie (1960-2021) and Jean-Yves Raimbaud (1958-1998)
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Oggy and the Cockroaches (French: Oggy et les Cafards) is a French cartoon that was released on September 6, 1998, created by Jean-Yves Raimbaud, and produced by Xilam and Gaumont Film Company.
This article will focus on Seasons 1 through 4 and Season 7.
Plot
The show centers around a lazy, albeit very tender and fat blue cat, named Oggy, who would usually spend time either watching television or doing something (like his chores)... if it weren't for three cockroaches in the household: Joey, Dee Dee, and Marky (named after members of the punk group, the Ramones). The trio seems to enjoy making Oggy's life miserable, which involves mischief ranging from (in most cases) plundering his fridge to such awkward lengths, like hijacking the train Oggy just boarded.
Why These Seasons Are A Wonderful Hit With The Roach Swatter
- The plot is very creative, as it involves a blue cat going on wacky adventures while trying to avoid/chase three cockroaches. It is still a cat-vs-vermin slapstick cartoon, but how ridiculous situations can go seal the deal.
- It has very sophisticated and oftentimes over-the-top slapstick humor, such as an explosion destroying half the Earth in one episode.
- Speaking of humor, It also features bathroom jokes and gross-out humor, but like The Ren and Stimpy Show, It handles them in a clever and fun way unlike many shows afterwards, a common instance of this is a pissing penis innuendo which in another framing turns out to be a hose, or in "Globulopolis" when Dee Dee, from the inside of Oggy's body, uses his bladder as a punchbag, causing him to go to the bathroom.
- Even though Season 4 will overuse it in some episodes.
- Apart from offering us a good slapstick and surreal humor, there are also quite heartwarming moments between the characters. Like "A Dog Day Afternoon" where Oggy was playing with the puppy using his nose as a toy, amazing spying scenes, especially the ones featuring the Cockroaches with the ones seen in "Caught in a Trap" and "Mission Oggy" being some perfect examples, several fun chasing sequences in which usually a character runs after another character while dodging obstacles thrown by the opponent, as seen in "Formula 1" for instance, and interesting culture references which elder audience can enjoy, sometimes a whole episode, "Oggy and the Magic Shoes", dedicated to Fred Astaire, or sometimes a minor scene like in "Night at the Opera" in which a minor joke turns out to be a reference the french film "A journey to the moon".
- Referring to point N.4, the relationship with Oggy and his rivals is nothing but sweet and manages to soften the show's sadistic nature. Episodes like "Moving Out", "Ugly Dirty and Good", "So lonely" and "Inspector Dee Dee" know how to deliver it in a good way.
- The cockroaches are very funny and intimidating main antagonists. All of them also have distinct personalities to make them stand out, with Dee Dee being the devour-it-all and gluttonous one, Marky, the charming one and quite the idiot most of the time and Joey the belligerent gold-digger, often trying to pull pranks to Oggy and Jack.
- Very original stories, such as Oggy entering a racing competition, and Dee Dee wrestling a professional wrestler.
- Nice and glamorous animation that blends smooth 2D animation with CGI. In season 3, it especially went all out with a style that incorporates frequent smears and a rubbery which feel similar to a Looney Toons style.
- In season 3 (remastered), 6 and 7, the CGI has improved dramatically in several remastered episodes which still blends well with the 2D animation.
- Emotional moments, like when Oggy got married.
- Likable and well-written characters, such as Oggy, Jack, and Bob. (The cockroaches also count as well.)
- The episodes are interesting, creative and well-written. While some of these ideas can sound less original, the show actually manages to bring something original from it, like in "Ugly Dirty and Good" which involved one of the roaches getting amnesia and regressing back to a child while showing a very heartwarming and touching climax when Oggy teaches him to take care of himself, create a new trend of episode concepts, for example, the episode "Virtual Voyage" pioneered the internet journey, brought again by "The Fairly Oddparents", or just avoiding using clichés, for instance in "First Flight", when Oggy Is falling down, Jack doesn't wait and save him up until the last few seconds (but way before that) and it still makes the viewers display suspense.
- In Season 1 and 3 you'll never know who's going to win, unlike most other slapstick cartoons, in fact sometimes both Oggy and the roaches win!
- It also sets an example of a good rip-off as not all rip-offs are bad. There's lots of effort to make it distinct, despite the similar premise to Tom and Jerry.
- The surrealism is very humorous (though can be too weird at times).
- The soundtrack composed by Hughes Le Bars (Season 1, 3-4) and Herve Lavandier (Season 1-2) is extremely well done and quite remarkable for the great variety of genres used in music in every situation and with a leitmotiv to know the theme of each character in screen.
- The soundtrack (Seasons 5-7) was composed by Vincent Artaud despite being repetitive and lost some variety of music. It sounds very passable and even good on various songs. An example would be the episode "Oggy's Got Talent" where the music stood out a lot when Oggy played his guitar.
- There were two references to one of Xilam's earlier shows, Space Goofs, with the aliens' house being a playset in "Baby Doll", and the main cast making a cameo in "Night Watchmen".
- There are lots of amazing episodes, such as:
- Moving Out
- Oggywood (excluding the ending)
- Priceless Roaches
- Oggy And The Magic Shoes
- A Dog Day afternoon
- Casino (despite the censorship in Korea)
- First Flight
- Formula 1 (A pretty satisfying way to end Season 3)
- House for Rent
- The Pumpkin that pretended to be a Ferrari (Despite the fact that the roaches didn't appear)
- Oggy's night out
- Black & White
- Baby Doll
- A Night at the Opera
- Olivia (not a bad way to start season 4)
- The Rise and The Fall
- French Fries
- All Out of Shape
- Space Roaches (and the remaster, Alien Roaches)
- Drone Out of Control! (A good way to start season 7, also recovered from the decline of Seasons 5-6)
- Oggy's Got Talent!
- Bitter Chocolate
- The 1997 pilot (which gave the cartoon a promising start)
- Mission Oggy
- Oggy and the Giant Roaches
- Shake Oggy Shake
- Fame and Glory (which started Season 2 well)
- Octopus
- Hide and Sick
- Chatterbox
- Night Watchmen
- Honeymoon
- Duck Soup
- Wrestling time
- High Flyers
- The Ice Rink
- Control Freak
- Globulopolis
- To Serve and Protect (despite being a Jack torture episode)
- The Magic Pen
- Lightning Visit
- The Time Machine
- The Lottery Ticket
- Love & Kisses
- It's all Under Control
- Boxing Fever (despite having very little screentime focused on the Cockroaches)
- Face Off
- Journey to the Center of the Earth
- The Bathtub Race
- Virtual Voyage
- Mission To Earth
- 3 Wishes and Your Out
- Flower Power
- Golden Eggs
- Deep Trouble
- Copy Cat
- Fly For Fun
- Oggy is Getting Married! (A nice way to conclude season 4)
- From Mumbai with Love
- A Five-Legged Sheep
- Joey and the Magic Bean
- Oggy and the Magic Smile
- Teleportation
- Roachy Redneck
- Walls Have Ears
- Do Not Lean Out of The Window
- Oggy and the Flour Man
- Oggy and the Magic Flute
- Buddy Parrot
- Caviar on the House!
- Safari, So Good!
- Trans-amazonian
- Toy's R Oggy
- Pharonuf
- Now You See Me, Now You Don't
- Castaway Cats
- Inside Out
- Tooth Good To be True
- Let's Party, Guys!
- The Outsider
- Mouseagator
- Hit The Road, Oggy!
- Up to... No Good!
- Ugly, Dirty and Good
- It's a Small World
- Oggy's Double (except for one scene in which Jack strips just like in "Just Married!")
- Metamorphosis
- Wrong Side of the Bed
- One Track Life
- Jack in a Box
- Cloning Around
- The Garden of Horrors
- It's been an Hard day's noise
- Oggy and the Magic Broom
- Oggy Van Winkle
- Emergency Room
- Oggy's Clone
- Scuba Diving
- Oggy has Kittens
- The Ancestor
- So Lonely
- Washing Day (not to be confused with Wash Day)
- Oggy's Diet
- Mister Cat (except the Oggy twerking scene)
- The Lighthouse Keeper
- Keep Cool!
- Monster from the Mud Lagoon
- Run, Olivia, Run!
- Granny's Day
- Oggy Goes Snailing
- Oggy's Grandma
- The Dictator
- Saturday Black Fever
- Mayday! Mayday!
- The Pied Bagpiper
- Oggy vs Super Roach
- Happy Campers (Not to be confused with (Un)Happy Camper!)
- Rock'n Roll Altitude
- Fishing Frolic
- Heatwave
- Party Pooper
- Inspector DeeDee
- (Un)happy Camper! (Despite the episode's infamous controversial trailer scene, but now replaced by a beach scenery)
- Lost in Space
- Oggy and the Babies
- Saving Private DeeDee
- BrainChild
- Beware of Destruction
- Caught in a Trap
- Race to the Finish!
- Surf's On
- A Tip for the Road
- Sitcom (to an extent)
- The Abominable Snow Moth (not to be confused with The Abominable Snow Roach)
- Loony Balloons
- Beachcombers
- Milk Diet
- Laughing Gas
- The Wonder-Whistle
- Working Cat
- Hold Up
- The Witch Hunt (a good way to end the series excluding the remakes)
- This show apparently became so popular in Southeast Asia, it aired on the four giants of children TV:
- Disney Channel Asia (Season 3, 2009-late 2011)
- CN Asia (All seasons, late 2011-present)
- Nickelodeon Asia (Season 1-4, early 2015 - late 2020)
- Boomerang Asia (Seasons 3 remastered-7, late 2018-present)
- Like SpongeBob SquarePants, the show is getting spinoffs after the creator's death, due to it's popularity. The two spinoffs are called "Oggy and the Cockroaches: Next Generation" and "Oggy Oggy".
- However, Oggy Oggy was not well received due to a lack of awareness of the source material.
- This might mean that Oggy and the Cockroaches: Next Generation might get good reviews, as it retained the slapstick, and also focuses on the aspects of friendship and assertiveness.
- Also, due to its popularity in Asia, several live shows based on the show involving performers in costumes took place most notably in Singapore, Indonesia and India.
- It has been running for over 23 years (One year longer than SpongeBob SquarePants), which is amazing for a show to run that long. Though it did have a lot of extremely long hiatuses like The Venture Bros.
- It also has some amazing Christmas specials, such as "Toys R Oggy", "Xmas Tree Quest", "A Truce for Christmas", "Christmas Spirit", & "Green Peace".
- The sounds are great, especially the Cockroaches' canonical laughs.
- It perfectly balances the right pacing, not too fast, since there are scenes where the characters talk to each other with gibberish, reflect and expose their emotions, but not dragged on for too much causing them to be filler either.
- Every season contains a different topic:
- Season 1 gives the characters development while spending together the various festivals in Oggy's house.
- Season 2 is about Oggy finding himself in more escalated surreal adventures and battling his neighbor Bob.
- Season 3 involves Oggy and Jack doing odd jobs and has the characters take on wacky trips and later episodes focus on cat and cockroaches' relationship.
- Season 4 introduces 2 love triangles: One for Oggy and one for Joey.
- Season 5, in spite of counting as Jumping the shark, has a unique concept about setting the main cast in different historical times.
- Season 6 remasters episodes from the first duology.
- Season 7 makes the characters get familiar with modern society and devices.
Intentional Bad Qualities
- Season 7 (while still a decent season with decent episodes) has a misleading opening title sequence. Fans may think this is gonna have episodes about various different countries, but most of the episodes are remade from past seasons (20 episodes from Season 1, 38 episodes from Season 2) with only 20 original episodes in this season.
- Some rehashed moments and plots scattered in between Season 3 and 4.
- Marky so far is frequently just used as an assistant to Joey and Dee Dee's schemes, his characterization throughout not being fleshed out. What also doesn't help is that his suitor trait fade away in Seasons 3 and 4.
- The minor and background character designs, may look mediocre and ugly. particularly in the earlier seasons.
- Some sound effects can be rather annoying if reused, especially the crying sound effects.
- The series went downhill during Seasons 5 & 6.
- Even before and after the Seasons 5 & 6, there were still a handful of bad episodes, such as:
- Jealousy (since it's the first episode showing Marky's Casanova trait)
- Occupied
- The Patient (The first torture episode despite being only the sixth one)
- 7 Minutes and Counting
- Just Married (which is particularly the worst offender due to the infamous scene in the ending in which Jack is brutally savaged by the bride's father)
- Crazy Shopping
- Roach Vision
- The Piggy Bank (As well as the remake, "Locked Out.")
- Artsy Oggy
- The Mini Golf War
- The Fugitive
- My Beautiful Prison
- Back to the Past
- Off Limits
- Nine Months and Counting
- Winner Takes All
- The Carnival's in Town
- The Techno-Files (and its remaster, Oggy's Exoskeleton)
- Shoplifting!
- Olivia's Pimple
- A Jealous Guy (Not to be confused with the Season 1 episode "Jealousy", which have basically the same plot)
- DeeDee's Diet
- What a Lousy Day
- Wash Day
- Roommate Wanted!
- Jack's Nephew
- Picnic Panic
- TV Obsession
- The Joker joked
- The Bait Bites Back
- The Ghost Hunter
- What a Dump!
- Deep End
- Soldier for a Day
- Homebreaker
- Sky Diving
- A Tooth for a Tooth
- The Neighbor's Cat
- Baby Boum
- Paper Chase
- Blue Sunday
- Missing In Action
- A Streetcar on the Loose
- Oggy Splits Hairs
- Scaredy-Cat
- Steamed Out!
- Locked Outside (Not to be confused with the title of "The Piggy Bank" Remake, even though both of them are Oggy torture episodes)
- Happy Birthday
- Very Special Deliveries
- Abandoned Cockroaches (Even though Oggy and Jack get comeuppances for trying to ditch the Cockroaches)
- V.I.P Party
- High-Rise Nightmare
- Fake News
- Some harsh moments, like when Jack was beaten up by the bride’s father in the episode "Just Married".
- Like Shaun the Sheep and Zig & Sharko, the Hindi dub gave the characters unnecessary dialogue, which not only takes away the charms of the show but it also looks weird since the lip movement doesn't match their dialogue.
- This has bought a one-way ticket to having a huge cult in India though.
- Season 4, while a decent season, has problems.
- When the show aired on Nickelodeon USA, a season 4 episode called "(Un)Happy Camper!" featured a minor image of a topless woman in Oggy's trailer, complete with exposed breasts and nipples, this is highly inappropriate for an all-ages cartoon (while this is considered acceptable in France, the country this cartoon originated in, Nickelodeon never bothered to censor it when it was exported to America, so it's kinda Viacom's fault). One kid noticed this that the said episode cause the series to move to Nicktoons until May, which was no longer airing. In the later versions of the episode, the image is now replaced by a beach scenery.
- Olivia is a very flawed character. She takes the entire fun out of the show because whenever Oggy tries to whack the cockroaches, she will defend them, though at least initially within Season 4. Also, the subplot of Oggy getting on with her tend to be cliché.
- Lady K is very unlikable due to her being a Mary Sue and having very little personality aside from being a love interest for the roaches. When Olivia ‘’unknowingly’’ pours water on her, she even goes as far to feed her a poisoned apple á-la Snow White’s evil witch!
- In "Artsy Oggy", Oggy actually tortured the cockroaches, even when they weren't doing anything wrong, for money.
- The episode "The Kitchen Boy" has a scene where the cockroaches had visible buttocks due to a small incident with their skin. This was cut in some countries for containing slight nudity.
- Speaking of Which the roaches punching bag treatment were very common in Season 4.
- Speaking of "The Kitchen Boy", this and other episodes rely on slightly more obnoxious toilet humor than the other seasons.
- Season 4 was known to take things that might be copyrighted. In a Season 4 episode, the Super Mushroom sound effects from Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario World were stolen. This goes to the episodes "Butterfly Race" and "A Charming Guy".
- They even used several Windows sound effects (like when you connect a device on a computer) in some episodes like the aforementioned "A Charming Guy".
- A ton of jokes don't have subtle pacing when anything occurs. It's somewhat confusing at times.
- Some episodes can get very dark and off-putting for comedy, such as "Happy Birthday". The second half of that episode treats Oggy's suicidal mood like it's a joke, (which is also extremely insensitive and totally out of place).
- The cockroaches (Joey, DeeDee, & Marky), Bob and Jack can be unlikable sometimes.
- Oggy can be rarely unlikable when he tries to get rid of the Cockroaches, like in the aforementioned "Abandoned cockroaches".
- There are implications of zoophilia in a kids show:
- In the episode "VIP Party", Joey is seen falling in love with a woman and even tries to flirt with the woman. Also, they were holding hands and about to kiss when suddenly the woman ran away, and Joey is left heartbroken.
- Even Oggy falls in love with a woman and is about to marry her when suddenly they broke up when Marky made Oggy jealous.
- A few episodes can be filler, like "Artsy Oggy".
- While the animation is rather nice, many editing errors can be found at times, especially in Season 1 and 3, for instance in some episodes involve the cockroaches swapping colors, Bob's nose changing color suddenly or in some occasions characters lacking some body parts, like Marky's curly antennas for example.
- The backgrounds, while looking pretty good, sometimes have inconsistencies that can be noticed such as the perspective or size of each certain thing like Oggy's house or his yard which sometimes looks gigantic, other times it looks normal.
- The episode titles range from generic ("French Fries", "Baby Doll", "A Night At the Opera") to bizarre ("The Joker Joked", "Warning! Boa on the Run", "Walls Have Ears").
- The theme song of Seasons 7 was shortened to not just the music played, but also the animation shown a bit.
- In "Dumpster Diving", there is a scene where the drivers dump garbage on Oggy while there is a collage photo of cans, which is just unfair since the original isn't censored and proves how ridiculous Francois Rosso edits.
- Also in "Blah, Blah, Blah", before ending the episode, he also forgot to iris out the trash can, despite having gibberish speaking, while others are doing it as well.
Trivia
- In September 2020, it was announced that the show will be rebooted as The New Adventures of Oggy (known as Oggy and the Cockroaches - Next Gen or Season 8 before its initial release) where Oggy takes care of Piya, a seven year old elephant from India.
- It recieved a spin off called "Oggy Oggy", a preschool series which premeired on August 24, 2021 as a Netflix original.
- As of November 2021, "The Magic Pen", the second part of the fifth episode of Season 4, and the second part of the 70th episode overall, is the most viewed episode on YouTube with over 146.8 million views.
- In the episode "Picnic Panic", the name of the town where Oggy and the other characters live was revealed to be "Animville".
- Jean-Yves Raimbaud, the creator of the show, passed away after they made the pilot and before they made the first episode.
- Speaking of which, it may not even be a ripoff, but just an adaptation of a parody that was in Space Goofs' "Venus Junior". Their earliest appearance was within a show in the aliens' TV, albeit very minor.
- Hugues Le Bars composed for the show, alongside Herve Lavandier. However, since the former passed away in November 2014, Vincent Artaud became the new composer instead.
- The last episode of season 7, "Run for Shelter" (a remake of "Take Cover") might be the series finale of the show as there is no news for the show to be renewed for a eight season. It is also the last episode to be remade. However the spin off "Oggy Oggy" preceeded the show.
- Le Bars also provided character voices (according to the credits), and his clips were reused throughout the show due to its lack of dialogue.
- However, the episode "Chatter Box" also features Michel Elias, providing voices of Dee Dee and Jack constantly babbling, after they ate the chatterbox crackers.
- Other references:
- Oggy is named after the David Bowie album "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars", and Iggy Pop.
- Dee Dee, Marky and Joey were named after the punk rock group, The Ramones.
- Oggy is also the only character to appear in every single episode, since in some episodes between Season 1 and 2, Dee Dee follows Oggy and Jack in their trips alone like in "Happy Campers" and "Sea Risks..." and Marky and Joey appear by themselves in "Hip hip hipnosis" and "Perpetual motion" respectively.
- Jack's name and relation to Oggy might be a reference to Cousin Jack's Pasty Co., a shop providing cornish pasties - an alternate name being that of "oggy".
- It lost its rights to Cartoon Network/Nick India somewhere around 2012, which would then make Toonz Entertainment come up with a despicable rip-off called Pakdam Pakdai (due to the show's popularity there).
- The final episodes of season 4, "Back to the past", "North-pole panic", "Oggy is getting Married" and "From Mumbai with Love" are double length episodes.
- All the episodes of Season 3 (which aired in 2008) were remastered and aired in 2017, initially they were made in order to fix some editing errors, modernize some furnitures such as television sets, improve the textures and the CGI models, but mostly to avoid controversies, in fact they replaced hazardous objects such as guns and lighters, particularly in "Moving out", a scene in which Dee Dee pours gasoline on the floor in order to scald Oggy got cut.
- The episode "High Rise Nightmare" was the last episode to air on Nickelodeon.
- In fact, due to the show's popularity in India, the show receives a Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, and most-other-main-languages-in-India available on Sonic Nickelodeon dubs. However, the dub gave the characters catchphrases and dialogue. In fact, there was even commentary, where the narrator simply said rhyming lines to describe every scene. some of the dialogue are nonsensical as well, but the dub is weird as since the lip movement doesn't match their dialogue, as mentioned above. In fact, the dub is so bad that it is unintentionally hilarious to watch. There are other changes, such as:
- Oggy is known simply as "neela billa" (a blue cat).
- Jack is known as "Bhaiya" (brother) or "Fauji" (soldier). According to the dub, Jack is Oggy's elder brother rather than his cousin.
- Monica, Oggy's sister, is simply referred to as "Mona" or "Sweety". In fact, according to the dub, she is Oggy's best friend instead of his sister.
- The roaches, Joey, Dee Dee, and Marky, are respectively known as "Chotu", "Motu", and "Lambu" in the Nick dub, and "Jhaplu", "Paplu" and "Taplu" in the CN dub.
- Olivia is simply known as Oly.
- The girlfriends and wives of characters are known as "best friends", and weddings are called "friendship celebrations" as well.
- Men and women who appear in different episodes are also known by different names.
- It used to air in TDM Ou Mun from 2012-2013, however it was later removed to add timeslots to Chinese cartoons and also aired Pakdam Pakdai in 2020.
- Not only it was popular in India, but also in Italy, as in the period in which Season 4 came out, they sold a lot of merchandise related to the show including a sticker book. Not to mention on Discovery it received a few marathons together with "The Daltons" and "Zig and Sharko", which are other Xilam creations.
- The episode "(Un)happy Camper!" was taken off air and is not available on the Nickelodeon website because it sparked a controversy when a young viewer pointed out an image of a topless woman inside the trailer during the scene where Oggy enters the trailer after Joey exchanges the water and oil signs. For further airings, the image was replaced with a beach scenery.
- It spawned a film and it was well-received by fans who watched the show.
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