For a decade, a massive kid-friendly media empire has been growing in the form of PAW Patrol – streaming on Neon. With nine seasons now streaming, it’s perfect when you need a screen parent to take over for a bit, reports Tim Batt (even if he, an adult, is unlikely to repeat this viewing experience).
Despite being the father of a two-year-old, I had avoided seeing a single episode of PAW Patrol until this week. If that sounds like a brag, it’s because it is. Even I, the Patrol-uninitiated, have some sense of what an amazing achievement not interfacing directly with this franchise is in 2023.
The dog-centred, CGI-generated, potential-copaganda TV series is everywhere. At the mall, I see all backpacks, hats and Paw Patrol-branded kids’ jandals. Overseas, it’s the same story—it’s syndicated into 160 countries. There’s also movies, live shows and of course an official Nickeloden/ Mall of America Snowflake Ornament. In 2016, 1 in 6 British children named the show as their favourite thing on telly. That is staggering popularity and a marked improvement for a country that gave the world Jimmy Savile.
In case you don’t have kids, or you do but are also a fellow legend, PAW Patrol is a computer-animated kids series starring half a dozen dogs who each have a themed transforming vehicle at their disposal. The main one is a police dog, another is a firefighter. One of them carries the brave burden of being a girl dog.
They appear to be a private organisation for hire that people call upon when they need help. Like Charlie’s Angels but with dogs. Ryder is the human boy with Jimmy Neutron hair who acts as their Charlie, bossing the dogs around and driving an ATV even though he’s 8. He is incapable of landing a joke.
Before you accuse me of being a cynical idiot who is wasting time pointing out the lack of humour in a show designed to sell toys to toddlers—I can tell you that the show is capable of truly funny moments. Weirdly, all of them (in the ten episodes I watched) are from Mayor Goodway. She’s an off-the-wall kook with a pet chicken who appears sporadically to deliver the most unexpectedly brilliant line reads and then leaves so Ryder and the dogs can get back to saving the day and reviving ska music. My compliments to voice actor Kim Roberts for being a comedy oasis in a desert of painfully safe puns for kids.
However, dear reader, much like going to McDonald’s for a salad, pursuing PAW Patrol for biting satire or complex character-driven comedy is an unrealistic expectation. This is a show designed to be put on a tablet and handed to a child at a cafe so their parents can continue discussing interest rates. Or whatever grown-ups are supposed to talk about. Through that lens of assessing a kids show’s worthiness for kids, I rate it as… Harmless. The show isn’t hurting anyone, that’s for sure. It wears its apologetic Canadian heart on its sleeve in what I would describe as TV mashed banana. Nothing wrong with letting the kid have mashed banana, and they love it, but you shouldn’t live off mashed banana.
Young viewers will learn about problem-solving, helping others, and perhaps have some strange ideas about how our emergency services operate. In my limited experience as a dad, kids love dogs and kids love vehicles so it makes total sense that kids love PAW Patrol. It doesn’t have the adult watchability of Bluey, or the charming storybook art style of Peppa Pig but luckily, kids don’t care about that stuff.
There’s no violence, nothing even hinting at bad language and when you need a screen parent to take over for a bit, you can rest assured your kid will be safe in the hands of these helpful pups.
