Animation
Over the Garden Wall
Balancing the warm feeling of a fall cider with chilly spookiness and humor, ‘Over the Garden Wall’ is a niche autumn tradition for some. But for kids, this miniseries has some skeletons in the closet.
Let’s go back to the Mesozoic Era. The Age of Dinosaurs. A time when scientists say that prehistoric creatures roamed the earth.
Some came with bony plates on their backs, or noise-making horns on their heads, or club-like growths on their tails, or tons of other oddities that I don’t know about and don’t have time to research right now.
So let’s focus on one of the kings–the one that every boy loves to carry around in his toddler years.
The Tyrannosaurus Rex.
According to Netflix, the T-Rex is the king of all the dinosaurs in their animated kids show Bad Dinosaur.
This TV-Y7 animated series follows a mama T-Rex and her three babies. She is, as you would suspect, a carnivore who takes care of her rambunctious younglings, but she also gets annoyed by their shenanigans.
And shenanigans are the premise of this entire show.
Co-creator Joel Veitch said of the creation process in Animation Magazine: “I felt it would be funny to make some dinosaurs who were ‘terrible’ as in ‘not very good at dinosaur-ing,’ rather than ‘terrible’ as in ‘terrifying and mighty.”
And that holds true here.
Each episode is about 22 minutes long, divided into three short segments. Each one follows the sometimes loveable, mostly mischievous dinos as they take food away from one another and attempt to fly, jump and get into other silly, perilous situations.
Since this is a silent show (think Tom and Jerry Tales, but with baby dinosaurs), you won’t have to worry about perverse or profane language. The bulk of the silliness here comes from a few “violent” scenes as the baby dinos chomp on other sea creatures (mostly off screen) or hit one another. They also love to laugh about their own flatulence and frequent belches and throw a tantrum or two.
If you’re thinking your kiddos might learn something educational from this, the chances are they probably won’t. But they’ll probably laugh.
Three baby dinos fight over a single fish to eat. One dino passes gas and belches multiple times, bites a pterodactyl’s rear and throws a tantrum when it can’t get what it wants.
Baby dinos eat sea creatures, and the remains of one lay scattered beside them in one scene. These same dinos get really angry at one another and roar and stomp around.
An angry mother T-Rex gets overwhelmed by her three dino babies as they destroy their nest, and she roars out of frustration.
Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).
Balancing the warm feeling of a fall cider with chilly spookiness and humor, ‘Over the Garden Wall’ is a niche autumn tradition for some. But for kids, this miniseries has some skeletons in the closet.
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