The Rosey and Buddy Show

"The Rosey and Buddy Show"
This just goes to show that most cartoons based on comedians don’t really work
Series: Roseanne Part of Season: 1 Episode Number: Pilot Air Date: 1992 Writer: Tom Arnold Roseanne Barr Leo Benvenuti

The Rosey and Buddy Show is an unsold pilot made by Nelvana for ABC focusing on animated versions Roseanne and Tom Arnold.

Plot

Rosey and Buddy, the animated alter-egos of husband and wife comedy duo, Roseanne and Tom Arnold cause trouble in Cartoon Land.

Why It Should Get the Number 14 (Hit by a Mallet)

1. Rosey and Buddy make very unlikable protagonists where they refuse to follow the rules of CartoonLand, eat anthropomorphic food, and outright kill The Lunchbox Kids with a steamroller.
2. The voice acting can get pretty annoying.
3. Way too many shoehorned-in cameos and references to other cartoon characters:
   • Droopy, one of the CartoonLand residents, being afraid of Rosey and Buddy's arrival.
   • The Care Bear cousins having their picnic ruined by Rosey and Buddy.
   • During the scene where the Powers that Be tell Rosey and Buddy that they don’t belong in CartoonLand, they mention The Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, and Transformers (where they refer to them as really, really big robots that shoot beams out of their eyes, probably to avoid getting sued).
   • A clinic named after Betty and Veronica from Archie Comics.
   • Tom and Jerry and Popeye (mentioned) being some of the classic cartoon characters locked up in the Betty and Veronica Clinic.
   • A green Beetlejuice suggesting the patients to watch the baseball game in a lame Cuckoo's Nest homage.
   • Alice from Alice in Wonderland as one of the clients on the People's Court parody.
   • Daffy Duck being guilty of infidelity on 60 Cels.
   • Wile E. Coyote's stunt double getting interviewed.
4. The pilot has a lot of inappropriate and disturbing stuff in it. Examples:
   • Rosey and Buddy eating anthropomorphic food.
   • Doggie Houser playing with a patient's bone.
   • The daughter becoming pregnant in the Sugar Shockers commercial.
   • Daffy Duck supposedly having sex.
   • Wile E. Coyote's stunt double saying "Four thousand hells". Yes, they got away with saying hell in a cartoon that was supposed to be for kids.
5. Very weak attempts at humor. Examples:
   • A gorilla acting like a huge sissy and screaming like a little girl after hearing that Rosey and Buddy are coming to CartoonLand, even though most gorillas in media are supposed to be portrayed as being tough.
   • The Doggie Houser M.D. segment, which is an unfunny take on Doogie Howser M.D..
   • One of the nurses being called Nurse Wrench.
   • The ending where Rosey and Buddy crash into the backdrop.
6. A few segments drag on for too long such as the People's Court parody and 60 Cels where Buddy talks to Wile E. Coyote's stunt double.
7. Way too much filler such as Rosey and Buddy eating food, the commercials, and the aforementioned People's Court parody and 60 Cels.
8. Beetlejuice is green instead of light purple, which they did to probably avoid copyright since this special aired on ABC and Beetlejuice was airing on Fox Kids, even though Nelvana already owns the rights to Beetlejuice: The Animated Series, so why make him green?
9. Overall, this special feels like it’s trying to cash in on the success of other zany self-aware cartoons of the time like Tiny Toon Adventures and Garfield and Friends, but didn’t realized what made them work.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The animation is okay, even for Nelvana standards.
2. While the voice acting can get annoying at times, it’s still tolerable.
3. Although shoehorned, it was nice seeing cameos by Droopy, Tom and Jerry, and Beetlejuice.

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