I love this show!!
I always thought meerkats were cute, but I had no idea they had such a complex society. Sean Astin’s narration is just perfect - it brings out the distinct personalities of each member of the gang (“gang” is actually the correct collective noun for meerkats) and lets you get surprisingly attached to the little critters. It’s like a cross between a soap-opera and a reality show.
It’s on at the same time as Doctor Who, so I have to TiVO one or the other, but eventually I watch both.
I like the show too. It’s like I, Claudius with fuzzy widdle cweatures. I wish I knew more about how the show is shot and edited. I know they edit for maximum drama in the story, but I wonder if it reflects reality at all. Regardless, I like watching them scamper around – they’re especially cute when they go into battle mode.
Cute, cute, cute. of course, but the manufactured suspense really gets on my nerves. They mention “Valient Little Shakespeare” all over the promos for this season, and then he’s dismissed in one lline–never seen again. Same with Tosca, who they got us all invested in, and then dropped the same way.
And now this last show: a meerkat lies dead, and two of the guys aren’t home. Which one is it?
Neither. They both show up. It’s some poor red-shirted walk-on. The only ones in suspense were the audience.
Just let the story unfold, stop manufacturing this stuff!
But: what can I say, watching them leap into battle, tails up; watching baby meerkats emerge for the first time; watching them play red light, green light with a snake–I’m in for the long haul.
I agree about the manufactured suspense, but Shakespeare and Tosca didn’t so much get dropped as they died horribly (but offcamera), which is at least a decent payoff for that suspense.
I didn’t want to see what happened to Shakespeare and Tosca (really, really, didn’t). It’s just, if they weren’t going to be major players, they shouldn’t have been advertised so much.
(Valient Little Shakespeare was very hyped in the promos for the coming year.)
Ok, I haven’t seen the promos for the show. We TiVo it, so we miss all the ads and such. That’s kind of lame for them to promote a character who wasn’t even on the show this season.
I know! The promos kept saying something like Season 2 would have clues to the fate of Shakespeare, but there’s been nothing. I finally did some poking around online today for spoilers because week after week nothing new was forthcoming. Supposedly, nobody has seen him since the fight. He never emerged from the tunnels. He’s missing presumed dead. I guess there are hundreds of feet of tunnels under the desert, and they don’t have cameras everywhere, so it’s assumed he was fatally injured and crawled off to die in a remote tunnel.
I was bummed about the fate of Tosca, too. I had hoped that rogue Carlos would stay with her and start a new family, but nope, vanished. Shame they took that radio collar off of her; otherwise they’d at least know her whereabouts. I wonder why they don’t collar all the meerkats? Or at least all the ones that get kicked out (Tosca, Mozart), or tend to roam (Youssarian, Carlos).
It’s probably not practical. The filmmakers aren’t the ones collaring the meerkats; a team of researchers are, and that team’s also following about a dozen other habituated meerkat gangs. I can’t see how they’d be able to afford to collar several hundred animals. Collaring the leaders only is easier, as it only requires the use of a dozen or so collars, and it still allows each group’s location to be known (if not the exact location of every gang member).