I just found the box set of Dilbert. IIRC it only ran on television for three weeks. I never got to watch it due to having to be at work when it came on.
The story I remember was it was canceled as a failure after two seasons.
The animation is great, especially for the time it was released. The story lines don’t seem out of whack, The Simpsons had even wackier stories.
It seems to me that of all the animated toons people watch Dilbert would have been a hit of some sort. So any ideas why Dilbert was canceled after only two seasons??
I think I remember when it originally aired and wanting to watch it because I was a fan of the strip. Wasn’t it one of those shows that they kept moving around time slots so that I could never know where or when to find it? I remember that I caught a random episode or two but for some reason it never made it to my regular viewing habits…the only reason I can think of is if it was moved around or constantly pre-empted (the way Fox used to love to do to force cancellation of shows that I liked!)
I thought it was great, but then, I’ve *lived *the Dilbert life as a cubicle-bound engineer.
My strongest memory was how GREAT the voice casting was. Larry Miller as the pointy-haired boss, Daniel Stern as Dilbert, and Chris Elliott as Dogbert. Somebody in that production company truly grokked the characters.
As I recall, it can out towards the end of a period when dozens of bad animation series had been made in an attempt to imitate the success of The Simpsons.
I remember it being moved around a ton, too - I always wanted to watch it, but could never find it. Of course, that might be more a product of my faulty memory than UPN, but I remember it being difficult to find.
Netflix offers some (all?) of it on streaming. I watched a couple episodes a few weeks back. I thought it was dreadful. The pace was too slow, the jokes just weren’t funny, for the most part. It relied too heavily on the storyline of the absurd office to be funny, without adding enough to it.
I remember tons of individual Simpsons gags – so do a lot of people of my generation – but nobody goes “Oh, remember when Homer became safety inspector?” They go, “Disco Stu does not advertise!”
Too me a little Dilbert goes a long way. I love the comic strip, but like Peanuts, it seems too forced to carry it over a half hour show.
How many comic strips really do a good job when going to TV? *Hazel * was probably the most successful of the lot and in that program Hazel was toned down a lot from her character. Dennis the Menace, was so bland. Jay North, TV’s Dennis, was not even close to being a menace but really just a inquisitive kid.
So I agree pacing is hard to do with comics. They’re set up for a one-two-three-punchline for the most part
The biggest thing is Dilbert has no mouth in the comic strip.
The biggest problem (or so said Scott Adams) was that it initially ran against Buffy, and there was an amazing overlap of fans. The network moved it to a later time slot, but that put it up against Angel. Yeah, not a big help, there.
I suspect if it had run on any night but Tuesday, it would have done much, much better.
Considering how Adams chaffed under the PacBell yoke, I wonder what how long he could have survived working in the world of television writing/production?
Family Guy came out a week later, Futurama two months later. King of the Hill and South Park were already around for 2 years.
I think there might have been a saturation of adult cartoons at the time. I am not sure that is was an accepted fact that, outside of the Simpsons, a cartoon comedy could be as popular as a sitcom. I also think times have changed a lot since then. Many of these cartoons have proven themselves, CN runs Adult Swim, and audiences have grown up with cartoons aimed at adults.
“Garfield and Friends” would like a word with you. It was even better than the “Garfield” comic strip.
Interesting trivia: The voice actor for Garfield was Lorenzo Music. Lorenzo Music also played Peter Venckman in “The Real Ghostbusters” cartoon. Both the characters of Garfield and Peter Venckman were played by Bill Murray on the big screen.
Murray reportedly caught a few episodes of the “Real Ghostbusters” and wanted to know why his character sounded like Garfield. The producers of the cartoon apparently took this as criticism by Murray (“Oh my gosh, one of our stars isn’t happy.”), when that wasn’t actually the case, and replaced Music as the voice of Venckman with Dave Coulier after season 2. So, Murray was indirectly responsible for Music losing a role he played in 65 episodes, although I’m sure that was not his intention.
