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Cartoon
Capitol Critters

Animal
CRITTERS

Outfit: flannel shirt / trucker hat / disease

Tagline: Yeah, I remember the catchphrases from "Capitol Critters."  I also remember the catchphrases from "Fish Police" and "Family Dog."  All three shows had this catchphrase:  "Ooooooh why YOOOOU!!!!"  I'm being straightforward and honest with you on that.  Also, "I can't do my work!"

Plot summary: In 1992 "The Simpsons" was a huge surprise hit for Fox, prompting the other major networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) to hastily throw their own animated sitcoms into primetime.  What we got was the greatest idea since Cop Rock:  rats live UNDER the White House and REFLECT our current human government and society!  They REFLECT us.  Like a GIANT MIRROR.  Like a GIANT MIRROR UP IN SPACE IS REFLECTING US.  Like the sun has REFLECTED OFF THE GIANT SPACE MIRROR AND NOW WASHINGTON D.C. IS A BURNING CRATER GOVERNED BY RATS.  Damn, I'm being too creative again.

"Capitol Critters" is easily the most unsettling and possibly the worst show ever put on television.  The concept itself isn't particularly offensive:  Max is an optimistic Nebraska farmhouse mouse until an exterminator is called in and kills Max's immediate family.  Heartbroken for twenty minutes, Max meets up with his cousin, a hippie activist mouse, and moves into the walls of the White House with a variety of sassy rodents and cockroaches.  The problem lied with the execution.  Every episode was like watching animated vermin reinact very special episodes of Blossom.  In one episode the President's cat eats one of the rats' friends, so they plan revenge:  BY FINDING AND PLANNING TO USE A GUN ON THE CAT.  Did you read that?  THE EPISODE IS ABOUT RATS PLANNING TO SHOOT A CAT TO DEATH.  I know that I wouldn't enjoy the Simpsons as much as I do if Ralph Wiggum's cat's breath smelled like splintered head cavity.

Other episodes dealt with touchy subjects like senate corruption, drug abuse (seriously), and interracial dating.  Not surprisingly the show only lasted eight episodes, outlasting Fish Police AND Family Dog but missing out on that Simpsons train by about thirty-seven seasons.  To the people who created Capitol Critters, paraphrasing the only primetime cartoon to ever be BETTER than the Simpsons, YOUR SHOW IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD. (more)

User Comments: I'm not sure why the producers felt the need to dress the infestations in street clothes (even the cockroaches had hats).  Max was dressing like Ashton Kutcher almost a decade before anybody knew who Ashton Kutcher was, a magical time when children could dance happily in the streets.   Look at him, they even look alike.  They've got the same foam mesh hat my Grandpa was rocking to minor league baseball games in the eighties.  They've got the same shirt.  They've got the same bacteria-laden whiskers.  In this election year I think we as United States citizens should unite under the hypothesis that a wheel of cheese positioned strategically on the end of a fishing pole could lure Kutcher into the White House basement, where he will prove so boring and impossible to watch that he will be canceled and forgotten forever.  And if THAT doesn't work, we can always do the humane thing and snap his neck in a giant metal trap.

Did anybody find it questionable that the home of the leader of the free world was so infested with mice and cockroaches?  I don't think Abraham Lincoln proudly took one in the dome piece so that George W. Bush could leave his half-eaten bowl of macaroni and cheese on the floor.  You know that's what he does.   Bush eats macaroni and cheese and leaves it on the floor, I mean.  And then he dances around bowlegged shooting pistols into the air.

Not MY President!  But he IS pretty close to being my Super Villain President.  All he needs to do is start stealing national landmarks.

User Rating: 1.0/10 (1,000 votes)