Karina’s Capsule: Unleashed

By Jun. 13, 2007, 5:00am PT 2 Comments

“Animation is a fad,” says a human character in a recent episode of Unleashed, an animated series about struggling animal actors, which is now in its third season. “Before long people will tire of it, just as they did plate spinning, ventriloquism, and that Larry the Cable Gentleman.”

That joke is typical of Unleashed‘s signature, self-critical self-awareness. To me, the key question ghosting the world of online video is to what extent the “old” modes of storytelling will continue to apply within the new genres. For online media makers, it seems like disavowing a connection to the old school has become the cool thing to do.

I’ve written here before about shows like Clark and Michael and Net.Work, which basically wrap conventional storytelling practices in the totems of new media cool; on the other side of the spectrum might be something like Lonelygirl, which holds on to fairly traditional character development, but otherwise is pretty much entirely steeped in the ad hoc methods of YouTube culture. Unleashed, at its core, is about anxiety over abandoning classical modes of storytelling in the face of very seductive fads.

To be fair, it’s also about a world in which talking animals interact seamlessly with human beings, and where everyone still has a landline and uses an answering machine. The third season thus far focuses on a dog named Dog, who has pretentions of being a serious actor. Dog’s agent Stan, a Brooklyn-accented sleazeball with a thing for Jayne Mansfield, wants Dog to audition for a commercial for a new-fangled invisible fence. Dog, who takes an acting workshop in the basement of a bowling alley, wants to perform The Crucible as a one-dog show at a coffee house.

Unleashed pitches itself as a comedy, but it’s really a character drama cloaked in jokes. In longish passages of dialogue, both humans and animals bemoan the changing state of the entertainment industry. In beginning of Season 2, Stan loses his cash-cow client, a horse, because “no one wants Westerns anymore — all they do now is gross out comedies and, uh, superhero.”

In the most recent episode, two dogs commiserate over their inability to make a living off of serious art; if you look off to the side, you’ll notice that there’s literally an elephant in the room. Once you register that there’s an at least half-serious lament here for classical narrative, the whole show seems to be a bittersweet ode to the old. It may not fashionable, but it’s fascinating.

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