Subscribe!Dennis the Menace (1986)
Originally posted on 21 February 2026First episode title: So Long, Old Paint / Trembly Assembly / Private I
How familiar with the show am I?: I was aware that America had its own Dennis the Menace, but I'd never seen any of it.
I grew up reading and watching the British Dennis the Menace, but I was aware that there was an American comic strip character that coincidentally had the same name. Dennis Mitchell is a little blond boy who is well-intentioned, but his attempts to help out always result in chaos and disaster.
As I mentioned last time, I've decided to try out a new format starting this week. Instead of going through the episode scene-by-scene and interjecting with my thoughts, I'll first do a quick summary of the episode's plot and then highlight specific things I want to talk about - characters, scenes, bits of animation, anything! Hopefully this will be more entertaining for you and more fun to write for me.
There are three segments in this one. In the first, "So Long, Old Paint", Dennis's neighbour Mr Wilson is trying to redecorate when Dennis comes over to try and help. The results include Mr Wilson getting tied up with tape, and paint getting splattered all over the room using a vacuum cleaner. When Mrs Wilson gets home, it's Mr Wilson who gets all the blame for everything!
Then, in "Trembly Assembly", Dennis and his father go to a car dealership and take a look at a shiny new "Firewhammer" car, which Dennis proceeds to play around with, giving the salesman a headache (and a face wash courtesy of the windscreen washer). When Dennis's dad decides to buy one, the salesman's boss tells him he's the thousandth customer this year and rewards him and Dennis with a tour of the factory where they can watch their car being made, with the same salesman giving them the tour. First Dennis messes around with the computer that designs cars, modelling all sorts of weird vehicles including one that looks like a vacuum cleaner. Then he messes around with things on the robot-filled factory floor, making the robots mess up the building of the car and eventually get in a fight with each other! Dennis's dad ends up having to drive away in the completely misshapen car that Dennis's meddling has created.
Finally, in "Private I", Dennis is pretending to be a detective when his mother comes into his room and tells him that their dog, Ruff, is missing. He starts interrogating people around the neighbourhood while we hear a faux-noir narration in his voice - he questions Mr Wilson and then a bunch of kid characters successively, causing chaos at every stop. He hears from a couple of people that Ruff has been seen around with a French poodle, and it turns out that the family that owns the poodle is moving away, so Ruff has just been (more or less) saying goodbye to her.
Now, obviously I'm going to be biased against this Dennis given how much I like the UK one, but I don't think it's unfair to say that this one isn't as great of a character. We're supposed to believe that he's just innocent and naive and doesn't notice the trouble that he's causing, but things get way too out of hand around him for him to stay that oblivious. Now, if he caused a lot of accidents but then apologised for them afterwards, so that we could see that he's as innocent as he's supposed to be, I would like him a lot more. That or you could go the route of the British one and have his mischief be intentional, perhaps using the innocent little boy act as a cover for it all.
I'm in two minds about how to feel about Mr Wilson. He's constantly angry whenever Dennis is around - if you're happy to see Dennis as sweet and innocent then this makes Mr Wilson come off as a bit of a Squidward, but the fact that Dennis never apologises for anything makes his annoyance understandable. Either way, it's really not fair that his wife blames him for everything!
Speaking of Mrs Wilson, the two Wilsons' first names are George and Martha, reminding me of another show I've covered - I assume both sets of characters are named after US President Washington and his wife.
There's a part during the chaos with the paint where the vacuum cleaner ends up filling up with so much stuff that it floats, taking Mr Wilson up to the ceiling with it! Obviously this doesn't make much actual sense, since it's filling with objects, not helium, but it's a funny cartoony visual.
The car salesman in the second segment is a funny character - every now and then he starts to say what he's really thinking only to walk it back and say something polite instead. Once he's made the sale and is forced to show Dennis and his dad around the factory, he seems to drop the pretense and just start being outright rude to Dennis! It seems like he already wasn't a very nice guy even before being put through all this.
I find the "thousandth customer this year" thing slightly weird, since that's hardly much of a number of sales to be aiming for in a year. Aren't those sorts of promotions normally to celebrate a more impressive milestone?
In the factory, the conceit the writers use to trap the salesman and Dennis's dad (so that they can't stop Dennis from messing with the robots) is to have them walk into a generator room which Dennis closes the door to, not knowing that it doesn't open from the inside. That seems like a major oversight for a generator room - what happens if something goes wrong with the generator and the room needs to be evacuated? Surely such a room needs to be easier to get out of than get in!
By far my favourite part of the episode is the robot fight that breaks out. First of all, Dennis's reason for messing with the controls this time is more solid than in the car - rather than just wanting to see what these buttons do, Dennis has seen the sparks flying where parts are being welded together, and, not knowing that this is how the machine is meant to work, wants to try and make things "safer". But then the actual antics that follow, which start with robots just getting in each other's way because of their new instructions and result in them drilling holes in each other and firing paint all over the place, were very funny to watch.
The start of the third segment is the only time we see Dennis's mother, and in Dennis's detective persona he refers to her as a "gorgeous dame". I don't think he's old enough to really understand what he's saying there... He did also make a joke about his mother being a bad driver in the second segment, suggesting he has learned a pretty poor view of women from the world around him.
Dennis comes off as way more intentionally mischievous in this third segment than in the first two. For example, he gets Mr Wilson's attention by tying a knot in the hose he's watering his garden with. Perhaps when he's hiding behind an alter-ego he feels free to let his less innocent side out.
One of the kids Dennis asks for information is a black boy called Jay, who I believe is the only visibly non-white character in the episode, and he comes across as a little bit of a stereotype - he uses the word "rap" to mean "talk", and won't tell Dennis what he knows unless Dennis can score a point against him at basketball (which Dennis succeeds at). Apparently though, the original comics contained a black character called Jackson who was way more of a racial caricature, so this would seem to be an improvement.
The last person Dennis asks for information is a red-haired girl called Margaret that Dennis is a real jerk to for no reason, forcing a frog in her face until she talks to him. Perhaps other episodes featuring her would show that she's horrible enough to deserve it, or perhaps Dennis is still at that "girls have cooties" age - and remember what I said about his attitude towards his own mother!
Overall, while I was never going to love this show as much as the Dennis I'm more familiar with, I feel I gave it the chance it deserved and it still didn't manage to impress me as much. There were definitely parts that I liked though - the antics caused by Dennis's behaviour were often funny even while I don't like him as a character as much.
Thanks for reading, and for joining me on this experiment! The article has ended up shorter than in the past but I feel that the ratio of meaningful content to just spelling out what's in the episode is way better now. But please, get in touch and let me know whether you think this new format is an improvement!