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The Angry Beavers

From Nickelodeon

The Angry Beavers is a Nickelodeon animated series about Daggett and Norbert Beaver, two brother beavers who have left their mom and home to become two bachelors in the forest. Their many adventures spark them to release their ugly sides very often, drawing in the name Angry Beavers. The show premiered in 1997 after the 1997 Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards and was canceled amid controversy in 2001 (with a handful of unaired episodes remaining). It was created by Mitch Schauer. The series has, so far, not yet come to DVD, most likely never will due to the controversies despite a large fan base. The show continues re-run on NickToons until 2007/2008 when it was dropped from NickToons due to unknown reasons.

Contents

[edit] Characters

→ Main article: List of The Angry Beavers characters.

[edit] The 2 main characters

  • Daggett: Dag is the younger brother of Norbert by four minutes. He is very crazy, extremely hyper, and sometimes funny. He says an assortment of strange phrases and likes calling people names. His trademark phrase is "That was nuts!" and is also known for adding 'eh' at the end of sentences (which Zim did as well in the episode Door to Door, in homage to Dag). He is dark brown with a red nose, and voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz.
  • Norbert: Norb is Dag's laid back, older brother. He uptakes many hobbies and frequently (and perhaps intentionally) pronounces words incorrectly. His trademark phrase is "Biiiiig hug!" or "Biiiig Beaver Hug" (often accompanied by him hugging Dag). He is light brown with a purple nose, and voiced by Nick Bakay, or Salem of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (TV series) fame.

[edit] Angry Beavers And The Public

Angry Beavers was a generally popular show during its airtime. Angry Beavers was 'the show' that kept adolescents and adults interested in Nickelodeon in the late 90s. It had a more adult, sophisticated sense of word play jokes and culture references that made up its humor, but was silly and unrealistic enough to attract the attention of young children too. Unfortunately, it was aired in the midst of the success of Rugrats, and many fans believe it did not earn the popularity it deserved. Many people compare it to Rocko's Modern Life and Ren & Stimpy as one of the most influential Nickelodeon cartoons of the 90s. Its influence is evident in other current shows too. SpongeBob SquarePants has a notably similar humor pattern and animation style to this show, and it has the same backing music as Jimmy Neutron.

Character quirks, like Dagget's compulsive adoption of a superhero alter-ego named "Muscular Beaver" (whose pathetic costume consisted of an ill-fitting ski mask, a stuffed sweater, vent-front white briefs, stockings, socks and a cape), kept older and younger audiences' interest, but entertained them on different levels. For example: children and adults would be amused by the costume, but adults might get some additional mileage from finding the name "Muscular Beaver" to be vaguely risqué.

Angry Beavers' popularity with the more "adult" scene managed to get it some recognition. Radio stations also used Dag's catch phrase "That was nuts!" for promos for music marathons, and the show even had a small merchandise line that included T-shirts and plush toys.

The Angry Beavers have a small but devoted cult following, especially since the show started re-airing on the Nicktoons Channel.

[edit] Controversy

The whole controversy surrounding the series first started in 1998, when Alley Oops! had Norb saying "Oh, shut up, Dag!"

When this episode was first televised in the US on Nick, the "shut" in "shut up" was bleeped out. Apparently, a currently unknown individual complained about the phrase "shut up" sounded like "shit up" in a Nick program. However, the bleep only caused even more controversy, causing people to think that the bleep was there because there was vulgar language in the dialog. Between airings, however, Nick changed Norb's line to "Shush up, stupid!" It was only one of the few times a Nicktoon had a line changed between airings since Rocko's Modern Life and Ren and Stimpy. Many people believe this was ridiculous, and it has been shown that many other Nickelodeon programs that aired before and even after (Spongebob Squarepants used shut up several times) Angry Beavers did use "shut up" and in fact, language that is generally considered to be worse (ex. Hey Arnold, which, particularly in its early episodes, used a few words many people believe should not air in children's programming), that the Angry Beavers did not use. Regardless of these claims, this was edited by the producers.

The final straw was an un-aired episode titled Bye Bye Beavers, which was going to be the show's last episode, involving Norb having to convince Dag that they're just characters on a TV show, thereby indicating fourth wall. Staffer Micah Wright said that Nickelodeon hated this episode, as it made fun of the station's practice of not making new episodes of their Nicktoons, preferring to air reruns instead. It is unclear if it was even part of foreign syndication. Also, the episode had broken Nick's "code on Nicktoons": When you're going off the air, don't tell your viewers!

This is a quote from Wright's website about Nick canceling the show: "Nickelodeon hated this episode because it actually told the kids the truth: that the show was ending! Nick likes to just rerun their shows forever and pretend that they're still making new episodes and this show idea drove them up a wall!"

All in all, 63 episodes of the show were produced, because Nick cut 2 episodes out of the planned 65. Later new episodes have been added, creating a total of 108.

Many of the show's fans were extremely upset when the show was cancelled, and an on-line petition has been created.

[edit] Current Status

The Angry Beavers was brought back to Nicktoons TV on June 20th, 2005 until 2007/2008.

[edit] In-jokes

There were several in-jokes throughout The Angry Beavers entire run. One particular one involves Richard Steven Horvitz himself being mentioned.

[edit] Episodes

→ Main article: List of The Angry Beavers episodes.

[edit] See also

Category:Television Shows]]l links==

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