‘Dog Day Afternoon’ is the weakest in season 1 so far, but it’s certainly not bad by any stretch. The comedy is generally decent, and as far as the story goes, it’s pretty good. It just doesn’t reach the same heights as something like ‘Apartnership!’
With how Vicky has been characterized so far, you’d think she wouldn’t love anything cutesy, but as it turns out, she just adores her dog Doidle. Of course, her poor treatment of Timmy doesn’t change, but when compared to how much she pampers this dog, it just makes things like giving Timmy an uncooked TV dinner hurt that much more. It’s a nice way of getting the viewer to want to see Timmy catch a break.
As a result of this dichotomy, Timmy wants to be loved the way a dog does, and so wishes to switch bodies with Doidle. One little detail I love there is that Doidle’s brain is way bigger than Timmy’s. It’s a subtle detail that you’d only really notice if you pay attention, but it’s a solid visual gag.
Once Timmy takes over Doidle’s body, things are all fine and good as he’s able to insult Vicky as much as he wants to her face with her being none the wiser, but then the time comes for Doidle to get fixed. The segment never really hints at what it means(watching it as a kid myself, I never knew what it meant either), but you can just tell from his desperation and fear that it’s something a dog would hate having to go through. It’s a pretty clever way of demonstrating to kids what being “fixed” is like without having to hear all the grisly details yet.
As for Doidle being in Timmy’s body, this is where things get rather interesting. Given that he’s in a human body, he’s more able to clearly communicate what he’s feeling through dialogue. It’s a testament to Tara Strong’s talent as a voice actress, how she’s able to give Timmy’s voice various dog qualities, for lack of a better phrase. Even when speaking as Timmy, she still gets across how a dog acts around school buses and toilets pretty much flawlessly. It also ends up making the sequence of Timmy appearing to do something dog-like all the funnier.
But once Timmy finally does encounter Doidle, it becomes clear that Doidle really is just a jerk(he even says so himself), and with that, his relationship with Vicky and Timmy makes so much more sense than it did before. With this little tidbit, it’s clear that Doidle and Vicky are basically kindred spirits in terms of how cruel they are, and anything he did to Timmy before now was most likely done on purpose just to mess with him even more. Don’t get me wrong, Doidle isn‘t super complex by any stretch, but for a character that’s most likely just a one-off antagonist, it was clever of the writers to throw in this little wrinkle that makes him that much more intriguing.
If I really do have to complain about anything, it would be parts of the Cosmo and Wanda stuff. With Timmy and Doidle having switched bodies, each fairy has to keep an eye on one of the bodies, and both of them are played just a bit too dumb for my liking. With Wanda being the more responsible one, you’d think she wouldn’t waste time gossiping with her friends about the topic. I think with a tiny rewrite in a scene or two, this could have been fixed, maybe to help play up her more careful side.
Oh, and this is probably just a nitpick, but it does feed into my issues with the Cosmo and Wanda stuff. The whole issue regarding Timmy being in Doidle’s body is that he isn’t able to speak to them beyond barking; it never occurs to them to maybe have a dog translator or something. I dunno, I could have been fine with a throwaway line or something to explain that, and it doesn’t ruin the story outright, it just bugs me.
Anyway, while ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ is far from my favorite segment so far, there’s enough good stuff here for me to say I’m glad I saw it. While we may never see Doidle again after this, at least what he did get to work with was quite fascinating, all things considered.
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