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The cartoon
  
Watching Fire Dogs 2 is a frustrating experience. Along with Onward and Upward, it was made at the very beginning of the Adult Party Cartoon production cycle (Ren Seeks Help aired before it, but everyone at Spumco who has commented on it refers to Fire Dogs 2 as the second episode to be produced), and thus shows all the flaws of a new crew struggling to find its feet. It all seems a little too self-conscious - there is a real effort to evoke the atmosphere of the original show, from opening with a callback to the end of the original Fire Dogs to the notorious "Circus midgets!" line - and yet most of the time it falls flat. For every good gag there is one that doesn't cut it, and a lot of the characters' reactions simply feel clumsy.
The whole thing revolves around the non-sequitur of the Fire Chief from the original Fire Dogs cartoon turning into Ralph Bakshi, a former associate of John K. (they produced The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse together). Already we're in dangerous territory: this sort of thing is simply too self-conscious to carry an entire 25-minute show. I gather that many of the cartoon's gags require a level of insider knowledge of Bakshi that the average viewer simply does not possess. Perhaps once this episode is released on DVD, complete with John K. commentary, I'll be able to better appreciate it. Until then, however, it is the closest thing to a limp turd in the entire six-episode Adult Party Cartoon line-up.
Fire Dogs 2 aired over the course of two weeks (because Spumco was late in delivering the completed episode, naturally), the first installment encompassing around nine minutes of footage and book-ended by the original Fire Dogs and a live action parody of The Honeymooners featuring Bakshi himself (the funniest part of the episode, in my humble opinion). The second part is significantly stronger than the first (which I would almost describe as embarrassing), but it still has its share of problems. The cartoon doesn't really go anywhere - it just plods from situation to situation and then suddenly ends, in the worst Bob Camp fashion.
Standout moment: The "circus midgets" bedroom scene, which contains some of the best posing and cutting in the entire cartoon.
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Fire Dogs 2
- Story by John K., Richard D. Pursel, Eddie Fitzgerald, Vincent Waller, Jim Smith
- Storyboard by John K., Jim Smith, Eddie Fitzgerald, Vincent Waller, Jose Pou
- Animation by Big Star & Carbunkle Cartoons
- Animation directed by Bob Jaques
- Directed by John K.
Writings
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