I don’t watch quite as much kids’ TV these days as the sproglets are older and can watch Space Unicorn School Rescue or whatever on their own quite satisfactorily. I enjoyed a bit of banter on twitter the other week about Postman Pat and Fireman Sam, and wanted to note down the bottled-up fury I’ve had on this show for a Very Long Time. I should say, I am a big William Gibson fan and his more recent stories feature “the Jackpot”, a non-specific series of events that lead to huge depopulation of Earth but a sudden technological advancement of the remaining people. Here are my thoughts.
Adults have been infantilised – the Mayor’s duties consist only in hosting parties or events (often races), and she’s obsessed with her pet chicken. Mayor Humdinger equally exists only to rival Adventure Bay. Although we see other adults, they are almost all merely consumers or bystanders. There are some exceptions – the guy with the ski lodge, the guy with the boat, the guy with the boat’s cousin who is French and basically dicks about being an explorer/holidaymaker and Mr Porter who has the restaurant (who is a grandfather to an ~8 year old boy, although about 40 himself). There are two farmers too, but small scale. Oh, and the train driver of the occasional train that needs rescuing. This gives the first indicator – the lives of the adults are long and futile, so they can just indulge whatever hobby they wish.
Young adults are effectively in charge – Humdinger’s son, the pet shop owner, Danny X and of course, Ryder, who seems to be in charge of the entire emergency services budget for at least a town, possibly a broader area. This budget is clearly monstrous and would be far and away the greatest expenditure of the Adventure Bay district. This is a big clue – society has evolved beyond classic economical structures. Also, the teenagers can clearly do whatever they like, whether that’s running a pet shop, taking astonishing risks, criminal theft and damage or running the police force etc, that’s just fine.
Dogs have become sentient, capable of speech and interacting with complex machinery. Interestingly, this is NOT just a genetic enhancement programme run by Ryder on otherwise normal dogs. In one episode, we get a flashback to Rubble’s arrival when he could ALREADY talk. This same change did not happen for other animals, although there is some evidence of partial enhancement of cats. Therefore, there was some kind of event which deliberately or accidentally, force-evolved dogs. I suspect conflict of some kind with nuclear or genetic weapons which had this mutative effect.
The location, Adventure Bay, in a seemingly isolated part of Canada is another key clue. Probably this was a last bastion of surviving humanity against the rigours of hard radiation fallout beyond. The only TV programmes they ever watch are about superhero dogs. The news never features – because there is no news outside of Adventure Bay. They do travel to a jungle on occasion where Tracker is based – in all likelihood a single, small scale preserved jungle ecosystem biosphere.
RoboDog is unsettling. Is he an agent of the AI running Adventure Bay, indeed the world? Did the AI impose RoboDog in season 2 (?) due to the close shaves encountered in season 1? Why would you use a robot dog to drive a bus using the steering wheel, when the robot dog never does ANYTHING else? He’s not even that good – he has no clue how to drive on ice, for example.
In summary, behind the happy rescues and primary colours of Paw Patrol, there is clearly an existential darkness that could be looked at in the same way as Threads. Don’t get me started on the “everyone’s a superhero due to space rocks” nightmare or the “British dog wants to be Queen” storyline that seems to have taken over more recent seasons. That’s just bullshit.
Timsformational 