TV – Pain In The Bud

Ricky Gervais’ ‘Alley Cats’: These Cartoon Felines Could Go Easier On The Swearing And The Sugar

The new Netflix animated comedy from Ricky Gervais has its moments, but it’s overly dependent on litter box humor and its attempts at redemptive sweetness border on the diabetic.

Ricky Gervais’ eponymous alley cats have one thing in common with Buddy: they think they’re the toughest, most fearsome creatures on the block.

They might recoil in horror, jump back a dozen feet and soil themselves when a vegetable delivery man drops a cucumber on the sidewalk, but approximately half of their obscenity-peppered banter involves discussing other living things they reckon they’d destroy.

Among them: snails, elephants, meerkats, portly humans, sharks and anything besides spiders who are, invariably, referred to as “a bunch of c—s.”

When they’re not praising themselves for being fearless apex predators, hunting mice or watching “a bit of telly,” they’re ripping on Rupert, the only house cat in their gang, by reminding him he no longer has his testicles.

In an early episode the gang is poised on the wall of a cemetery, impatiently waiting for a “dead c—” to get buried so they can go hunting for mice when Rupert pads up, says hello and announces he’s already eaten: chicken and rabbit in gravy “with extra calcium.”

The others tear into him, asking him if his humans brushed him or gave him pudding afterwards.

“I have my pudding during the brushing,” he says, explaining that brushing is stressful and a simultaneous dessert “takes the edge off.”

That prompts another round of full-throated laughter and ball-busting over Rupert’s lack of them. Ricky Gervais’ Gus and Andrew Brooke’s Fang – a big bruiser tuxedo tom – lead the charge, making kissing sounds and mocking Rupert for being a sweet pet to his “mummy and daddy.”

When the scrawny Puke (David Earl) uses the freshly-dug grave as a litter box and Rupert protests, Gus waves a dismissive paw, insisting all humans are scum anyway.

“Not all of them,” Rupert says. “Attenborough. Malala. My owners, for instance.”

“His owners!” Fang says, breaking into mocking laughter.

“Do you hear yourself?” Gus says.

“They are my owners,” Rupert sniffs. “They paid a tidy sum for me, and I’m grateful. Otherwise I’d be rotting in a shelter or worse, living in a dump like you lot.”

Which, of course, prompts another round of mockery about Rupert’s missing bits.

After agreeing they’re the toughest, baddest cats on the block, Gus and the gang are terrified by the sight of a single cucumber.

That’s Alley Cats in a nutshell, no pun intended, until the appearance of a lost kitten gives the gang a purpose and brings out their humanity. (Catanity? Felinity?)

At first the alley cats are tempted to make a snack of the little one until Olive (Diane Morgan) reminds them she’s a baby, she’s lost, and they’re big, strong cats, which they’re always reminding everyone of.

Amid all the obscenities there are moments acknowledging that being a street cat is not an easy life. One minute the strays are joyously knocking flower pots off a window sill, the next they’re staring shocked at the body of their friend who was hit by a driver.

“He didn’t even stop,” one of them says. “He didn’t care.”

“Humans never do,” Gus replies matter-of-factly.

Later they find another one of their mates, an elderly tom, stuffed in a carrier.

“Off to the vet,” their friend says from his confinement.

“He’ll fix you right up,” Gus says.

“Nah,” the scraggly old tom says sadly. “I overheard ’em. This is a one-way trip.”

With their earlier exuberance wiped out, the alley cats decide to retreat for the day, prompting the kitten to ask them uncomfortable questions about mortality and what kind of life a cat can expect.

For Gus, it means being put in a tough spot. He clearly cares for the kitten, even inviting her to snuggle up with him when she’s whimpering alone at night, but he has a reputation to maintain. He’s Gus, fearless and tough street cat!

Gus fancies a tabby from his neighborhood, but usually keeps his distance for fear of her intimidating boy(cat) friend.

Alley Cats is not for everyone. There will be people who reach for the remote within the first two or three minutes because it is relentlessly obscene.

I’m not particularly bothered by foul language if there’s a genuine purpose to it, but too often it feels like it’s in the script in lieu of genuine jokes, as if Gervais is elbowing us like “See what I did there? I called him a c—! Haha! That’s funny, innit? My character is a cat who calls everyone c—s and tw–s! Brilliant.”

The UK press has savaged the show, concluding Gervais is capable of comedic brilliance but has become lazy and formulaic.

And that’s true to a degree, just like it’s accurate to say South Park is a festival of fart jokes. But just like the latter show also has a sharp satirical edge and functions as an equal opportunity eviscerator of the ridiculous, Alley Cats tries to say more. It just isn’t always successful.

Heathcliff and the Catillac Cats are the family-friendly animated template for Alley Cats. Reruns of Heathcliff were part of after-school cartoon blocks in the late 80s and early 90s.

Whether you stick around for the bigger themes depends on your personal tolerance for the banter they’re wrapped in.

Unfortunately it’s also true that the reflective moments are a little too formulaic, like the lesson-of-the-day from after-school TV years ago. Balancing comedy with earnestness is already a difficult task that requires timing and a degree of self-awareness that I’m not sure Gervais possesses at this stage of his career.

Reviewers who have soured on the UK comedian are increasingly convinced he requires the tempering influence of his The Office co-creator and writer, Stephen Merchant.

They may be on to something, but I also think it may cut both ways.

I really enjoyed Merchant’s HBO series, Hello Ladies. It was unlike anything else on TV and felt like a genuinely fresh approach to comedy. But it also operated at a default cringe level orders of magnitude more uncomfortable than other shows.

There were times when the situations in Hello Ladies became so embarrassing, so completely detached from the norms of social behavior, that I had to pause the show and take a break.

Gervais and Merchant could temper each other’s worst instincts as they did in The Office.

I’m not the only one who felt that way. Reviews at the time were fixated on the improbably powerful osmotic cringe effect, and Merchant didn’t know when to let up. Just as you felt so mortified that you’d swear things couldn’t possibly get worse, Merchant found ways to crank it up.

The career trajectories of both men indicate a reunion just might be the best thing for them. If Netflix gives Alley Cats a green light for another season, Merchant could fit right in with the gang as a lanky Savannah, a wannabe Lothario who prompts Gervais’ Gus to lean less on the c-word and more on genuine humor, while Gus could bring Merchant’s cat back down to Earth by reintroducing him to reality every once in a while.

I’m sure that, whatever might come from a new collaboration, it would be better than the moderately funny Alley Cats.

Heads up: Recently I discovered a content scraper was skimming posts from this site and repackaging them as books priced at $40 each. I was able to get that person’s online shop terminated, but have since discovered there are at least two others, including one who repackaged my “Amazing Cats” series. The other is even more exorbitantly priced and appears as part of a trove of materials on an Etsy shop marketed to people who want to put out their own books, and claims to offer chapter modules that can be assembled into custom books, which can then be listed for sale on Amazon et al.

Please do not buy them. These people are NOT affiliated with Pain In The Bud and they do not have permission to use content from this site. The posts they pilfered from are free and remain on this site available to everyone. I’d hate to see people buy this stuff believing they’re supporting the site and end up getting ripped off.

Ricky Gervais’ ‘Alley Cats’ Drops Trailer: ‘Do You Know How Good It Is To Be A Cat?’

The comedian’s animated show for adults imagines life through the eyes of sarcastic street cats.

When a lost kitten says he wishes he’d never been born, scruffy tomcat Gus is in disbelief.

“Don’t ever say that! Life is a gift, and you’re a cat!” Gus says. “Do you know how good that is, to be a cat?”

“Pretty good?” the kitten asks.

“It’s f—ing great!”

That’s one of a few short scenes revealed in the first trailer for Alley Cats, a new Netflix show created by Ricky Gervais. The comedian plays Gus and an ensemble cast provides the voices of the other neighborhood strays, who seem to spend most of their time veering from one lazy activity to the next while zinging each other with one-liners.

Warning: NSFW language in this trailer:

Although it’s animated, Alley Cats is a comedy for adults. Think South Park except with cats and a much more sarcastic, dry sense of humor. As the trailer makes clear, it’s irreverent and over-the-top, and it seems to tie cat humor in well with broader comedy.

Alley Cats is slated for an Aug. 7 release.

No Matter What The Kardashians Say, Please Don’t Declaw Your Cat

A Kardashian admitted she had her cats declawed, but wouldn’t take responsibility. People who are thinking of adopting should know declawing is mutilation and makes cats miserable.

Khloe Kardashian says she regrets having her cats declawed, admitting on her podcast this week that the kitties are “miserable” since she had them mutilated.

But she stopped short of taking responsibility, electing to blame an unnamed party for allegedly telling her it was okay to have her cats’ toes amputated at the first knuckle.

“I was really misadvised about getting my cats declawed. I’ve never owned cats before. I didn’t even know that was a thing. I feel really, really terrible that I did go in this direction,” Kardashian said.

Look, I get it. Learning stuff is, like, hard. If only someone would invent a worldwide network, an “internet” if you will, where one might access the entire sum of human knowledge with but a few keystrokes!

In the absence of such a miraculous technology, how are we to know that chopping off a cat’s toes will cause them a lifetime of pain and discomfort?

Sarcasm aside, I’m not interested in going on at length about the Kardashians or litigating this decision online. Plenty of people are doing that. There’s really no point.

What I am concerned about is the unfortunate fact that the Kardashians have influence.

Because Kardashian isn’t taking responsibility, and she brought up her decision to declaw her cats in the context of her feelings and her regret, she is not effectively communicating why declawing is wrong, nor what it does to cats.

If you don’t know what it is, you should know declawing is mutilation. It is the amputation of your cat’s toes at the first knuckle.

It permanently changes a cat’s gait, leading to early onset arthritis. It makes simple tasks like walking and using the litter box painful.

It causes psychological problems because claws are a cat’s first and primary defense. Without them, cats feel vulnerable. That can manifest in several different ways, leading them to become fearful, or to become quick to bite because they have no other options.

Khloe Kardashian was previously caught “face tuning” her cats, meaning she applied filters to them to make them look different.

Declawing is cruel, barbaric and has no place in a civilized society. It is illegal in most of the world, and US states are finally joining civilization with laws banning the procedure. Kardashian lives in California, where it is banned, so presumably she had it done before the ban or despite it. If it’s the latter, the chances of her facing legal consequences are slim to none.

If you’re worried about protecting furniture, there are much better options, but you should also know cats have normal behaviors that don’t always align with the concept of a perfectly-kept house. Your cat will test boundaries, throw up when she’s had too much food too fast, knock things over, get into places you never thought he’d get into, cough up hairballs and more.

You will be surprised. Things will be broken.

But that’s part of the feline appeal: they’re curious, playful animals, and you have to earn their trust. Once you do, they’ll be your pals for life — and you don’t want to betray that trust by making life miserable for them.

Choupette, The World’s Most Famous Cat, Did Not Like Kim Kardashian And Isn’t As Wealthy As Reported

Despite rumors of lavish excess, a staff of personal servants and even her own chef, Choupette’s reality is much less extravagant: she lives quietly with Lagerfeld’s longtime former maid in a Paris apartment.

When the people behind the Let-Them-Eat-Cake orgy of excess known as the Met Gala announced 2023’s event would honor the late designer Karl Lagerfeld, the natural question was whether Choupette would show up.

The Birman cat with striking blue eyes was the German fashion designer’s most beloved muse, and he was so besotted with her that he included her in almost everything he did.

If Lagerfeld wasn’t photographing the fluffy feline in the arms of the world’s best known supermodels or bringing her as his plus-one to fashion world events, he was pining for her presence: she was his favorite subject in interviews, for which he had no shortage of superlatives to describe her.

Initially the plan was not only to include Choupette in the Met Gala fundraiser honoring the memory of her “daddy,” but also to pair her with that timeless icon of taste and high culture, Kim Kardashian.

So Kardashian, working with Choupette’s agent (yes, she really does have one), traveled to Paris to meet with the imperious kitty.

It did not go well.

The organizers think Choupette did not like the sound of Kardashian’s synth leather jacket, but I like to think the pampered puss found Kardashian too artificial even for the circles she and her late human moved in.

Regardless, after several bouts of prolonged hissing and a lunging attempt at clawing the reality TV star, both parties called a halt and decided Choupette would not be attending the gala.

This detail, along with other interesting tidbits, were revealed in a story published by The Atlantic today.

The lengthy article provides a little more background on how Lagerfeld was instantly converted into a cat servant, as well as a breakdown of the situation involving Lagerfeld’s will.

In short, while everyone in the know agrees Lagerfeld did put aside a considerable sum for his beloved feline’s continued care and comfort, a tax dispute between the French government and his estate has effectively frozen disbursement of Lagerfeld’s money, assets and real estate.

Lagerfeld with Choupette. The designer died in 2019.

An expensive piece of property owned by Lagerfeld is in Monaco, attorneys for his estate contend. French authorities naturally disagree, insisting it’s technically in France, which means there’s a substantial back tax owed.

French law does not allow animals to inherit money, so the sum Lagerfeld intended for Choupette was willed to her caregiver. Not a single Euro has been paid out as lawyers haggle over the tax issue.

Choupette isn’t on the street or anything close to a pauper. She remains in the care of Lagerfeld’s longtime maid, Françoise Caçote, who was the feline’s primary caretaker in the German designer’s absence. They live in a comfortable apartment in Paris, where Choupette eats and naps well, and is watched over by Caçote, her husband and children.

Media reports of a vast fortune, a personal chef serving up gourmet cat food and a round-the-clock team of professional pamperers do not reflect reality, but Choupette doesn’t care.

“The most important thing is that she’s happy, surrounded by love and affection, and protected as Karl would have wanted,” Caçote told The Atlantic’s Chris Heath.

While Choupette skipped the Met Gala, actor Jared Leto went all out with a costume that captured her look.

For Choupette, that’s all that matters. Max Renneisen, a German artist who has painted portraits of Choupette, pointed out our remarkable ability to turn animals into anthropomorphic characters. (A sin I’ve never been guilty of, obviously. Little Buddy dictates his musings and I merely serve as stenographer.)

“All the fuss we do about her, all this concept of celebrity, giving a meaning to her, everything—this is us, for the humans,” Renneisen observed. “Choupette is not a diva. She’s a cat, and we want to see the diva in her.”

Australian Footballer: Eating Cat Was ‘The Yummiest, Like The Most Delicious Rotisserie Chicken I’ve Ever Had’

The footballer stars in a TV series that calls cats “unwanted ecological trash” that can be repurposed as “culinary gold.” One cast member claims eating felines is a heroic endeavor: “In some cases you should and could eat it into eradication.”

Earlier this week we noted an Australian celebrity chef’s enthusiasm for eating a “pussycat sandwich,” but Maggie Beer isn’t the only famous Aussie who has raved about eating cats.

An Australian football (soccer) player, Tony Armstrong, spoke in glowing terms about eating cat meat in an interview with The Guardian a year ago, enthusing that it was “the yummiest.”

“We had it in the Western Desert and cooked it in a fire, wrapped in foil,” Armstrong told the newspaper. “It was like the most delicious rotisserie chicken I’ve ever had.”

Armstrong’s interviewer, Sian Cain, the Guardian’s deputy culture editor for Australia, didn’t bat an eye or consider the answer worthy of a follow-up question. She just moved on, asking him if rising early for “breakfast telly” was as difficult as keeping in shape for football.

Armstrong consumed the cat meat for his television show, Eat The Invaders, which casts it as an attempt to “turn our unwanted ecological trash into desirable culinary gold.”

That’s what the life of a cat is casually referred to in certain mainstream segments of Australian culture: “unwanted ecological trash.”

Armstrong and his castmates say they’re on a noble quest to eradicate invasive species by eating them.

As we noted in our post about Beer’s “pussycat sandwich,” the casual way this is talked about in Australia provides a window into the way some people there think about animal life in general and felines in particular.

Not all of them, of course. There are lots of people for whom the idea of eating intelligent companion animals is extremely disturbing. But the idea is widespread enough to make it onto mainstream Australian television without much of an uproar, undoubtedly because Australians are constantly told felines — not industrialization, pollution, pesticides, traffic collisions, man-made environmental hazards, and habitat loss — are almost solely responsible for declining populations of native fauna.

When the choice is between modifying our own behavior or blaming animals who cannot speak for themselves, it’s always easier to shift the blame than to, say, derail development projects or outlaw the use of harmful chemicals.

Just look at the decades-long controversy involving the weedkiller Roundup despite the damage it does to other plants, animals and the people working directly with the substance. Despite successful lawsuits on behalf of cancer patients and evidence that chemicals in the herbicide cause cancer, the EPA says it’s safe. Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides are widely used in Australia as well, but that fact is rarely raised in discussions about protecting native fauna and flora.

In a promo for Eating the Invaders, after blaming “colonial ancestors” for introducing non-native species and repeating the claim that cats kill 3 billion animals per year in Australia (an assertion for which there is no evidence), Armstrong casts himself as a crusader righting ecological wrongs.

“But what if we could help,” he asks in a voiceover, “by reimagining this problem as a tasty solution?”

In the series, Armstrong works with chef Vince Trim and “artist and curator” Kirsha Kaechele, who credits herself with staging “immersive feasts [that] transform invasive species into art.”

Armstrong, Kaechele and Trim. Credit: Eat The Invaders

Kaechele says she has no qualms about eating intelligent domesticated animals.

“In some cases you should and could eat it into eradication,” Kaechele says.

Just as there is no hard evidence that cats are the primary force behind species extinction, there is no data to support the idea that randomly killing and eating cats has any positive impact on species survival.

But eating cats isn’t just about saving the world, Kaechele explains. It’s about aesthetics as well.

“In these feasts,” she says, “every element has to be art.”

By that she means she fashions cutlery, centerpieces and containers from the deceased animals.

Kaechele is no stranger to controversy. As an amateur troll, she’s known for attention-grabbing stunts. She’s faced legal complaints for opening an Australian lounge/art gallery that admitted women only, “so men feel as excluded as possible,” and attended one of her subsequent hearings with 20 female supporters who dressed like her and moved in sync with her.

The appearance was “performance art,” she claimed. The judge disagreed, calling it a disrespectful display. Kaechele was also blamed for gentrifying a New Orleans neighborhood after Hurricane Katrina, snapping up and later allegedly abandoning five properties and allowing them to decay. They were subsequently taken over by squatters while Kaechele was MIA, presumably globetrotting and enlivening people’s drab existences by “transforming them into art.”

“Women are better than men in every respect,” Kaechele says in one video, echoing the provocateur Dick Masterson’s assertion that “men are better than women.”

The difference is that Masterson is a character created by a comedian. Whether individual people find his act amusing or not, Masterson performs for an audience of men and women who are well aware his schtick is tongue in cheek. Kaechele may or may not believe what she’s saying, but one thing she’s not doing is comedy. No one’s laughing.

She’s a deeply unserious person who shouldn’t be anywhere near any conversations about conservation.

As for Trim, he can’t bring himself to admit he’s cooking cats. To him, they’re no different than anything else in his fridge or pantry.

“It’s really exciting to be using a lot of these invasive ingredients that we have,” he said.

It’s one thing to consider the possibility that species like cats are signficant drivers of native species extinction, and another to prove they are measurable contributors compared to the hundreds of ways human behavior impacts animal life.

But you have to be really far up your own ass to keep a straight face while claiming you’re saving the world by eating cats, and even more divorced from reality to characterize it as a form of artistic expression.

Perhaps most concerning, telling people that cats are “yummy” could inspire others to try it for themselves, and turning it into a trend would be an entirely new level of barbarism.

Say what you will about people who participate in China’s infamous Yulin dog meat festival. At least they plainly admit they eat dogs and cats because they like the taste without clinging to any pretense that they’re creating high art or saving the planet.