PIG, GOAT, BANANA, CRICKET IS ACTUALLY A GOOD SHOW?!?!

1/22/17

Pig, Goat, Banana, Cricket is a cartoon on nickelodeon that takes place in a world in which some fruits, and vegetables are sentient and anthropomorphic.

The team sharing a high-five.

Image from variety.com.

This show was particularly interesting because I went into it with low expectations, but somehow, I found it pretty entertaining.  First off, the humor is much better than Teen Titans Go (not to compare the two).  Some jokes caught me off guard and I ended up laughing at them.  Let's just say that the comedic timing is on point for most of the jokes.  In season one, episode six, they were able to fit in a historical reference using Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and even Betsy Ross.  However, there definitely were times where the only supposedly funny thing was supposed to be the character getting hurt, or something gross, which I can excuse because of the mostly young demographic.

Thomas Jefferson and Goat.

Screenshot from Season 1, Episode 6 on Nickelodeon.

Moving onto the art style and visuals, it really feels like I'm reading some sort of Sunday comic strip.  The art-style is relatively simple, and there are just enough colors to make it pop.  They aren't just vomiting an entire color scale onto us, which is perfect.

Color Scale Visual
Image from gimp.org.

The episode structure is usually split into four different stories, each following the main characters Pig, Goat, Banana, and Cricket.  This causes the show itself to feel like it's just a few shorts, which is actually an interesting idea that I don't see too many cartoons today try to do.

Pig Goat Banana Cricket Logo
Image from logopedia.

The aspect that causes Pig, Goat, Banana, Cricket to miss out on its perfect rating is its inability to teach children helpful lessons or morals.  There was an attempt to do this in a certain episode, but it ended up being about betrayal and greed.  Goat and Thomas Jefferson need to pay a toll in order to reach the other side of a gate bar because there is a valuable object on the other side.  They try washing a few cars in order to make the money, but once the money is made, Jefferson runs off with it and uses it to pay the toll for himself.  They end up being five cents short, so Goat condenses Jefferson into a nickel to use it as payment.  It seems like they were trying to teach children about teamwork, but they end up with a totally different result.  This cartoon gets 4 Bananas out of 5 for its great art-style, and jokes, but its failure to teach useful lessons to kids.

Banana.
Image from Nick-Asia.