Kipper (1997)
First episode title: The Visitor
How familiar with the show am I?: I certainly watched it when I was young, but I remember little of it.
Kipper is a dog. A dog with a slipper, the opening informs us, and he demonstrates how well he can twirl it. It also feels the need to clarify the difference between a toad and a frog, perhaps for a lack of rhymes. But I don't care about that. You know why?
This show is adorable.
The first thing that surprised me when the show actually started was the fact that Kipper is his own independent person rather than someone's pet - what with the basket-style bed, the dog toys, his nakedness, and the fact that the theme song says something about "would you like a dog like Kipper", I just assumed he would be more of an animal.
When the episode starts, it's night, Kipper is sleeping in his doggy bed, and the sounds of rain and thunder are coming from outside, half waking him up. But then there are more noises - a honking and a tapping. Kipper opens the curtains to find a small duck-like bird, out in the rain, tapping its beak on the window! It looks so pitiful, and of course Kipper has to open the window.
The bird gets swept in on a gust of wind and is immediately dripping water all over the floor. The inside of Kipper's house is just a blank white void, by the way, which makes any messes stand out even more.
Kipper is sympathetic, bringing a towel to dry the bird off, which he does, and a cardboard box for it to sleep in - he puts it in there, but as he observes, it doesn't look like a comfortable way to sleep:
So Kipper goes and gets his bear slipper - the one from the opening! - and repurposes it as a makeshift bed in the box. The little bird settles down to sleep, and looks adorable doing so. Which is not to say that Kipper doesn't look cute as he gets in bed too.
When Kipper wakes up in the morning, he finds that the bird has gotten into his bed with him! He seems pleasantly surprised until he looks around to see muddy bird footprints all over the floor, leading from the box. It's a lot of mud for such a tiny bird!
He brings a bucket and mop and starts mopping the footprints up, waking the bird up in the process. The bird's response? It hops into the bucket and starts splashing around, making more mess! It's hard to be annoyed at the innocent little bird, but Kipper decides a better place for the bird right now would be the bath.
Once the bird is in the bath, it's swimming around and continuing to honk. Kipper adds some pink bubble bath and the bird briefly ends up with a little bubble bath hat! Kipper then adds a rubber duck to the bath, and leaves the bird alone so he can go and sort out breakfast... but as he's going back downstairs, he hears a lot of honking and goes back up to see what's happening. Somehow, the bird has gotten into a fight with the toy!
Is it just me, or do the blank staring eyes of the rubber duck come off as creepy next to the living bird that's fighting it? No wonder it's scared!
Kipper has to explain that the duck is just harmless plastic. He removes the bird from the bath and dries it off, fluffing up its feathers and making it look like some kind of cute little fuzzy egg:
Kipper dries the bird off with a hairdryer, but that's too much force for such a tiny creature, and it's blown across the room. That scene ends with a weirdly ominous close-up on the rubber duck - now it seems even creepier!
Now it's breakfast time. Each of them has a bowl of what looks like corn flakes, to which Kipper is adding milk from a jug. Kipper demonstrates how to use a spoon to pick up some of the cereal, saying "like this", but I don't know how he expects the bird to copy him because it doesn't have paws and he doesn't appear to have given it a spoon anyway. The bird just rapidly pecks at the cereal instead, causing yet another mess:
Kipper puts a napkin around the bird to stop it getting any messier, and continues to give it cereal and milk even as it causes some of both to go everywhere. The bird doesn't know it's being a nuisance, of course, and it's still so adorable...
So in the next scene, Kipper is vacuuming all the spilled cereal. The bird approaches with a ball, but Kipper, starting to sound annoyed by this point, tells the bird he's busy cleaning up its mess! The bird sadly walks away as Kipper continues to clean. This cartoon is making me feel sorry for this little bird! Aaaaah!
The bird comes back with another dog toy of some kind, one of those little worm things, and places it next to the ball, then wanders off again. Kipper, not looking where he's going, accidentally sucks it up into the vacuum:
All Kipper sees is that something has been sucked up, and he clearly thinks he's accidentally vacuumed up the bird! He turns off the vacuum and starts shouting "Hello?" into it! I'm glad it's clear to the viewer that the bird is okay, because for the young target audience this could be potentially traumatising!
The bird comes back with a book, and when it drops it on the ground, it attracts Kipper's attention, and he's relieved that the bird is fine after all, giving it a hug. All trace of his earlier annoyance has of course disappeared.
The two of them go back to the doggy bed to read the book together. It's a picture book about animals, showing the adult and baby forms of various species - a sheep and a lamb, a pig and a piglet. The bird starts honking angrily when it sees a hen and a chick - apparently it's mistaken the chick for the rubber duck from earlier! Kipper gets it to calm down, and turns the page to find a young bird that looks exactly like his visitor!
Yes, this page is of a goose and a gosling, and now Kipper has finally worked out what kind of bird he's been taking care of, as if all the honking wasn't a big enough clue! The picture also features a V formation of geese in the air, and now Kipper understands how the gosling got separated from the other geese in the storm. Kipper is amazed to learn that the gosling has been able to fly this whole time - what kind of bird did he think it was?
Just at that moment, they hear bird noises from outside, and when they look out the window, there is a V of geese up in the sky! Weirdly, the sky is full detailed and full of clouds, but Kipper's house is a white void even from the outside, the window simply being attached to nothing...
Kipper encourages the gosling to fly off and join its fellows, and after a shaky start, the bird is able to start flying... and flies right back for a moment, to give Kipper a little kiss and a hug, before flying off for good. It's a genuinely sad moment! I didn't expect it to affect me like that but the hug got to me. Surely not every episode can be so emotional!
