No, it’s not one of the awful live-action shows that features terrible child actors and adult actors who are arguably even worse. (They’re obviously on kid-targeted shows for a reason; the audience can’t tell how bad they suck and, thus, why they are stuck on a horrible fucking kids’ show.)
No, this is not The Suite Life of Zach and Cody or Wizards of Waverly Place or, God forbid, Hannah Montana. I’m talking about Phineas and Ferb.
The title characters in this gem of an animated series are a pair of precocious brothers who devote their time to building and accomplishing extraordinary things. This is done, as we’re told in the theme song and opening sequence, as the young fellas try to find a good way to spend each day of the summer break from school. Among their achievements: building a roller coaster in their backyard, a portal to Mars and robots of themselves … which would, of course, allow them to accomplish even more great things.
Prolific.
Naturally, there are subplots too. After Phineas decides on each day’s mission, which always leads to the declaration that’s used as the title of this blog post, the boys notice that their pet platypus is gone. Where could he have gone? Glad you asked. You see, Perry the Platypus is actually a secret agent. While our shrewd title protagonists plot their daily adventure, Perry sneaks underground to learn of his latest assignment, which always deals with the evil Dr. Doofenshmirtz, head of Doofenshmirtz Evil, Inc.
Come on, tell me this isn’t great stuff.
But what really helps make the show work is big sister Candace. She’s everything you’d expect in a teenage girl; in particular, she’s quite loud and quite unstable -- not that those qualities are necessarily reserved for only adolescent females. The character also likely brings the show some street cred with the slightly older Disney crowd since she’s voiced by Ashley Tisdale, also known as the blonde from the High School Musical franchise.
What makes Candace a great character is her desperation. She’s always out to bust her younger brothers for their daring daily antics, and she can never quite do it. Despite her efforts each day, somehow all evidence of Phineas and Ferb’s unbelievable escapades disappears just as Candace is dragging her mother into the backyard to expose it. This often happens with the inadvertent help of Perry while he’s foiling the sinister plans of Dr. Doofenshmirtz. Of course, no one else even knows that’s going on.
Further adding to Candace’s misery, and therefore adding to her overall value on the show, is her tireless pursuit of a boy. Her infatuation with Jeremy rivals only her determination to get her brothers in trouble. And as these two primary objectives overlap, Candace’s frustration, confusion and failure obviously add up to great comedy.
The writers of the show are clearly pushing the right buttons, and they even know how to pull at the pop culture heartstrings of an adult like myself. Never has it been more evident than in the episode "Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo." It’s a clear tribute to Back to the Future Part II, one of the most underrated mainstream movies of the 1980s.
This episode finds Phineas and Ferb travelling 20 years into the future in search of a new tool that they need for their latest project, and they happen to be spotted by future Candace in the process. With the rush of painful memories of their successes and her failed attempts to stop them, future Candace decides to go back in time to make sure her brothers get busted. But much like the greed that led Marty McFly to purchase the Grey’s Sports Almanac in 2015 (Jesus Christ, that’s only five years from now), Candace’s greed to demoralize her brothers has unpleasant and unforeseen consequences.
When future Candace returns to 2029, she doesn’t find herself back in her content suburban life in Danville; instead, she finds a dreary dystopia ruled by Dr. Doofenshmirtz. Like Marty upon his return to the alternate 1985 that featured a city of Hill Valley that was essentially owned by Biff Tannen, Candace believes she’s erroneously travelled to a different time. However, the drastic societal change was in fact due to a chain of events she set off by altering the time continuum. A paradox, as Dr. Emmett Brown would point out.
Candace’s new reality is devoid of children. They’ve essentially been frozen until adulthood in an effort to curb the kind of dangerous creativity that Phineas and Ferb had exhibited 20 years earlier. Without getting into further and perhaps unnecessary detail (my wife says I’m a terrible storyteller because I drone on far too long and in far too much detail), I’ll just say that Candace has to do a little more time travelling and enlist the help of her younger brothers just to get the world back where it once was and where it now belongs.
Genius, I tell you.
I urge you to think outside the box and consider this as a new alternative on television. Like most Disney shows, who fucking knows if Phineas and Ferb truly has its own timeslot; rather it tends to just be on … a lot. You should have plenty of opportunities to check it out.
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But what does all of this, a nearly 1000-word breakdown of an animated television series, mean in the proverbial grand scheme of things for me?
Should it be viewed as an indictment of my standards for television excellence? I can just hear my dad judgingly saying, “You’re watching a cartoon?”
Should I be seen as someone who considers things far too critically rather than simply accepting them at their superficial face value?
Maybe the answer is yes to both of those things, but what I’m truly trying to point out is that, quite simply, this is what I do. I watch quite a bit of Disney Channel and don’t necessarily watch/do much of what I want these days. It’s the resignation one must make in many cases as a married man with children.
That’s why it was so disconcerting to hear my wife recently say, in the context of me using two vacation days in late March simply to watch college basketball, “It must be nice to be Steve.”
That statement clearly implies that this Steve character has a great deal of personal freedom that everyone should be so lucky to have. I don’t know who this guy is, though, because he sure as hell isn’t me.
The Steve who I portray in real life sees just as much Disney Channel as he does college basketball these days. In fact, he’s probably watched fewer sporting events over the last couple of years than he has in the any of the last 20.
This Steve still doesn’t have a separate TV in his nice finished basement for his sports escapes. He still essentially shares one main television with at times as many as four other people, three of whom are single-digit aged.
He’s come to accept that Phineas and Ferb can be an entertaining escape, an escape that can be achieved even with his children surrounding him and enjoying it at the same time.
Yes, this Steve is me. I love my wife and love my children more than I could possibly say. But please, for the love of God, don’t for a minute think I’m living the dream of a sports fanatic. Don’t for a minute think I have the freedom to think and act independently. Those days are long gone.
I’ve come to accept that. There’s no reason to rub it in my fucking face.
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