Review: The Chicken Squad “Critter Sitters”; “The Problamatic Puppy”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The squad babysit for their eight younger siblings, and then learn the importance of boundaries.

OUR TAKE

The main lessons for this week are that you shouldn’t underestimate your responsibilities…I think. Or that you need to do things right, not easy. At least, that’s what I think you could pull from them needing to take care of their younger siblings so their mom can get some rest. Actually, I may not have been paying full attention, but this is the first time I realized that the three chickens were supposed to be siblings. Come to think of it, the squad is three, while their siblings count up to eight. I guess it’s possible that their mom just had more at once later, but you have to wonder, are there five members of the Chicken Squad out there that were either killed by stray animals or abandoned on street corners? That’s right, you thought going deep into Lorax lore was the weirdest route, but get ready for THE CHICKEN SQUAD LORE POSTING. Either that, or when we get a timeskip in Season 5, three of the eight younger chicks will take over and become poor rehashes of the original three. It’s just the way these sorts of shows go. Hopefully they learn to keep this show seasonal so they don’t catch up to the manga too fast.

Kidding, kidding. Anyway, the other segment is the one that I actually find a little bit more interesting and worth talking about, as it puts Coop in a morally complex situation of trying to dance around his friends feelings when really he just needs to focus on work. And even more interesting is that he is on both sides of this situation when he ends up accidentally bothering Captain Tully while she’s working, which leads to him understanding things a little better down the line. Sometimes you need to focus on the task at hand, but you don’t want to hurt the feelings of someone who wants to spend time with you. Though luckily everyone talks things out and comes to an understanding because this is a show for very little kids and we need to present that as a possibility in conversations…even though sometimes it very much isn’t. But it’s still a pretty good lesson to teach, as I’m sure many kids will find themselves on one or both sides of that and they should be prepared for how to approach that when the time comes. How many of these do we have left?