Review: The Chicken Squad “Tully’s Troublesome Trainee; Sweetie Undercover”

OVERVIEW (SPOILER)

Tully trains a potential recruit and Sweetie goes undercover.

OUR TAKE

Besides giving us a chance to hear Yvette Nicole Brown’s incredible pipes during the musical portion, the first segment of this week’s episode was a pretty interesting opportunity to bring forward the topic of having a mental disability. I could be reaching since I had to grow up with that myself, but the plot followed a puppy who initially intends to live with Tully and go through the same training she did, only to find he has some real trouble focusing on his tasks, even after many added tools. Still, it’s shown that the puppy isn’t doing this out of malice or lack of caring, just that holding attention is a considerable difficulty for him. This might be more reflective of ADHD, which I don’t personally have, but growing up with what I came to understand was Executive Dysfunction, I faced similar hurdles when I needed to focus or change tasks that other kids around me didn’t have to worry about. So, seeing this sort of issue portrayed here in an easily understandable way, along with showing that the puppy does find a home in the end, is incredibly nice to see. Sometimes people just need different ways of being raised or helped than you did and that’s okay.

The other segment focuses on Sweetie going undercover to stop some raccoons from pulling a heist. These raccoons are recurring characters, but honestly I can’t be bothered to look their names up so sue me. The point of this story is that it starts seeming like it will be about Sweetie needing to be mean in order to stop or blend in these evil nefarious scoundrels (they even do an evil laugh, though I honestly wonder if they just came to believe they were evil based on how they were treated by others, though that might be over thinking things even for me). But what ends up actually happening is that Sweetie’s…well, sweetness wins out in the end, as she instead decides to help them make brownies instead of let them steal the ones they intended to. I think the lesson to take away from this would probably be that you should reach out to someone and help them become self sufficient or at least teach them how to obtain the thing they want through legal means. A teach a man to bake and he’ll eat forever sort of thing. Not as compelling as the first one though.