"Dilbert": Your Thoughts

[(: all smiles]

Over the last few weeks, I've been rewatching Dilbert: The Complete Series on DVD, having not watched it since I bought it in 2004. It's also recently been made available to legally watch for free on YouTube as well. What are your thoughts on it?

Personally, while it's not perfect, I like it overall. The show employs a "smart" sense of humor, in that the majority of the jokes are wordplay and logic-based and the plots are focused around satirizing a different aspect of the office or society in general, often going to the extreme. And even though many of its out-there plots were far removed from the mundane day-to-day stuff in the comic strip, I felt the show still kept the tone of the comic, especially in the various philosophical exchanges between Dilbert and Dogbert. The show gets you to think a little bit while it makes you laugh, and if you've worked in an office, much of the humor is relatable too (such as everyone threatening Dilbert that he not to put their office next to the boss's, or the receptionist snidely remarking that god forbid she let one incoming call go to voice mail).

Of course, the voice actors help with this, and I thought they got great choices for everyone. Daniel Stern channels his "Wonder Years" narration voice nicely. Chris Elliot is just perfect as the megalomaniacal but calm Dogbert. I enjoy Kathy Griffin and Gordon Hunt as Dilbert's co-workers. And Larry Miller is also well-cast as Pointy-Haired Boss, where pretty much anything he says is funny just by the line readings.

I suppose the only flaw with the show is its animation, which is incredibly simplistic and bare bones. But being that it's based on a comic strip, I'm a little more lenient towards it. And luckily, the show at least brings some visual variety with how dramatically Dilbert's environments change, based on whatever they're satirizing.

As I've been watching, I've also found season 1 to be slightly superior to season 2. The arc of the company building and testing the Gruntmaster 6000 gave a nice foundation for the otherwise episodic plots, and it contained a bit more music than season 2. Did they lay off most of the music crew for season 2 or something?

So, your thoughts? Favorite episodes/scenes?

[Carol Ann]

I don't think it was horrible. I was never a fan of the comic strip it was based on in the first place but Scott Adams can be clever at times.

I can't sit through multiple episodes in a single setting, though, and I usually prefer watching bits and pieces, mostly for any scenes involving Dilbert and Dogbert.

As far as favorite episodes, I liked the two-parter where Dilbert gets pregnant.

[Allissa]

I've never read Scott Adams' comic strip ritually, but Dilbert: TAS was enjoyable, albeit in a quite, subtle way. Dilbert was never a "honking horns, banging cans" type of humor; it was clever word play that often worked.

It goes without saying that I'm a Dogbert fan. He's been my avatar a couple of times here at Toon Zone. Chris Eliot did a perfect job at providing the character's voice.

[stephanielovexx]

I watched Dilbert while it was on TV and I thought it had it's funny moments. It had a type of a smart comedy but It was still enjoyable. I do consider to be a small fan of the series.

Best moment to me: "Please rise for the honorable... Judge Stone Cold Steve Austin!"

[a?aMoon Bellea?a]

This show was ahead of its time, its also superior to its source material. If you were to put this show on Adult Swim I think it would be a hit. By now most of the jokes that went over "average" peoples head would get a few of the more technological jokes. Only dated joke I can think of is Stone Cold Steve Austin showing up for the finale, since he was huge during the time of the show but isn't anymore, but even then his appearance is pretty awesome.

I love the show, I did enjoy Season 1's story arc but even without the story arc Season 2 was still awesome without it though I did miss it. I would have loved to seen more episodes or the show revived. And the Voice acting was perfect. Its a great show I don't know why it doesn't have more of a [cult] following.



Now for fans of the show, theres actually a second animated series. They are based on the actual comic strips, some of them at least. They are only about 30-50 seconds long each since they are based on the strips. They are hit or miss(like the comic has been the past few years), some are great while others are bad but since they are so short you don't mind it when they are bad. The voice acting while not as good is still decent, I hated it at first but they grew on me. You can also view them for free on youtube.com/dilbert or subscribe to the video podcast on itunes or dilbert.com, theres also other sites that host them and I think they may have exclusive videos but I'm not 100% certain.

[I am a lion.]

That's actually the forth series altogether. The UPN series was the third.

The first was a series of Flash animations that ran a year or two before the UPN series began. It appeared on Shockwave.com.

The 2nd was also a webseries that was rendered in 3D. One special feature I remember was that you can change the camera angle to wherever you wanted it to be.

They were all based off previous strip materials.

[ocarina of time]

I loved this show. This and 'The Critic' are the two shows that desperately need airplay again somewhere.

[halshy2]

That one airs on the Reelz Channel several times a day.

[gfxrelay]

Alas, I don't think that Dilbert would do very well on Adult Swim. It's too smart and not raunchy enough.

Dilbert did air weekday afternoons on Comedy Central, for about 5 minutes.:shrug:

[Valencia]

This show might have lasted longer if it was on FOX.

UPN was a horrible fit for this series, all of their programming was catered towards the African American audience. How Dilbert even got a second season on UPN baffles me. Did it initially have great ratings in in the first season?