Neither sexiest nor racist; wholesome for kids!
By Kit Karamak
I’m going to explain PAW patrol for PARENTS from a centrist parent who wants to help parents make good choice for their daughters AND sons.
There are three girls, Skye, Everest, and Ella.
There are more boys, true. But they get saved by the girls evenly. The male pups include: Chase, Marshall, Rubble, Rocky, Zuma, Tracker, Tuck and now Rex.
The cameo characters are Everest, Tracker, Tuck and Ella who are twins, and now Rex. These characters come in as their voice actors’ schedules allow.
The main cast, including Skye, is a group of search and rescue dogs who work to keep the town of Adventure Bay safe.
They work for a 10-year-old prodigy named Ryder, who has become the de facto all-service provider for the town.
Rubble will repair infrastructure with his bulldozer. Marshall will fight fires and rescue cats from trees. Zuma handles water rescues in his hovercraft. Rocky handles recycling and garbage collection.
Skye typically saves the team with her chopper, when they get in over their heads, when she isn’t also saving people with a harness lift, fixing things that a crane can’t reach, etc.
Chase, the police dog, is the reason why some people suddenly targeted the show.
Chase does NOT have arrest powers, he does NOT write speeding tickets. Nothing like that.
He sniffs out clues for Ryder, he puts out cones when his teammates are performing a rescue, he uses a net to catch falling people and a tennis ball launcher (because, lol, dogs love tennis balls) to perform tasks like popping an out-of-control balloon that was lifting someone off the ground.
The main four characters, in order of the most speaking lines, is Marshall (the fireman is also the team klutz), then Chase and Skye, then Rubble, Rocky, and Zuma.
There are sometimes episodes that center around lesser used characters.
Everest, a husky that has the most cameos, has a snow plow machine, and shows up every season in one way or another.
Tracker shows up once in a great while, and speaks easy-to-learn Spanish phrasings. He is a Chihuahua and uses his large ears to hear things that aid in rescues. He is typically with his owner, who is studying jungle ruins as an archeologists, so most Tracker episodes feature a jungle theme / setting.
Tuck and Ella, only show up in the Mighty Pups episodes, when the pups use space-meteor-given super powers to save the day. Their presence is a little bit of a shout out to the Wonder Twins from back in the day. The sister can become many stories tall, allowing her extra strength and the size to hold up a bridge or catch a falling ally upon her back.
Tuck can become microscopic, allowing him to climb into a grid of laser bars, or crawl into a computerized control panel and turn off the antagonist’s defenses.
The twins are cameo characters because they are given a task to handle a master thief calling herself Ladybird, as she goes around the globe taking shiny things. Tuck and Ella only show up when she is in town.
The episodes usually center around helping Mayor Goodway, the lady who keeps Adventure Bay running. Or, the team has to find a way to fix something the neighboring town’s leader, Mayor Humdinger, has caused by accident while trying to make his town look better.
The joke, here, is that he is the town of Foggy Bottom, which is a nickname for Washington DC. He constantly causes trouble by trying to compete against Adventure Bay in a (race, friendship day competition, host for sea turtles, various sports, etc).
When Humdinger’s latest scheme falls through, it usually ends up in him needing to be rescued, or the entire town needing help.
The cast of various antagonists don’t always cause trouble.
Sometimes, a young stunt lover named Daring Danny (X!) will borrow Skye’s jet pack, or Everest’s snow blower, and try to make a video of himself flying, snowboarding a half-pipe, etc, and he will royally mess things up. Other times, he is just a town extra and part of a soap box racer episode.
Mayor Humdinger just wants recognition but sometimes he is just in the episode because his nephew is trying to become the first kid mayor by acting like his uncle Humdinger.
Other antagonists are ONLY bad guys. Ladybird, for example.
My favorite one is The Copy Cat. My wife is always amused by his amusing word tracking and schemes.
Sometimes, the antagonists team up but spend the episode arguing about how to make a scheme work.
This is usually between Harold and his uncle, Mayor Humdinger, but it occasionally happens with other characters, like Harold, Ladybird, and Copy Cat trying to take the PAWPatrol’s MIGHTY PUP meteor.
The show’s sole existence is a way for Spin Master to make toys.
Each toy line is based on the repeating theme of a season.
Spy stuff for Mission PAW.
Ultimate Rescue Pups led to large toys like an enormous fire truck, Skye’s helicopter turning into a Chinook chopper, etc.
Sea Patrol had a series of water toys like a submarine and base ship.
Air Patrol never took off.
Mighty Pups was a very popular cycle leading to super hero themed toys.
Ready Race Rescue pups was racecar themed.
And now, the current cycle, Dino Rescue, which is on sale now, with dinosaur episodes in the latest volume of episodes.
My youngest son LOVES the Dino Wilds episodes. The reoccurring cameo, Rex, is in a dog-wheelchair, speaks dinosaur, and it’s just completely wholesome to see such an energetic youth not held back by needing his rear legs in a motorized wheelchair made for dogs.
Each of the characters, good & bad, is from all walks of life and all backgrounds and genders. We have female antagonists like Ladybird. We have disabled characters like Rex. We have a Spanish set of characters with Tracker and his owner, Carlos.
Mayor Goodway never states her background, but she has a very deep tan compared to, say, the balding blond fair-skinned Mayor Humdinger.
Marshall’s racing idol is a black race driver named The Woosh.
I’ve run out of space, but just know, the show is wholesome and fun for all!
