Been trying to carefully craft a Wonder Woman review as the distance of its release date keeps growing. I saw it opening night with my nieces and to clarify I did like it. But, this is not what this post is about. I’ve decided to place a spotlight on an Amazon cartoon series for children that arrived on June 30th 2017. I just completed binge-watching all of the episodes. It is called Danger & Eggs and it reminds me of Adventure Time and Steven Universe with a dash of KC Green’s Regular Show with Lauren Faust’s My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic if they were all put into a blender.
While Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time, Rebecca Sugar’s Steven Universe, Chris Savino’s Loud House, Daron Nefcy’s Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Alex Hirsch’s Gravity Falls, Mike DiMartino’s and Bryan Konietzko’s The Legend of Korra, and, Skyler Page’s Clarence have been making strides for LGBT representation, the Mike Owens and Shadi Petosky created animated show takes it one more progressive step forward. Yes, besides being hilarious, very relevant, full of lessons (and emotions), believable, and inventive, Danger & Eggs is the first animated series to have an openly trans creator (Shadi Petosky). In fact, every aspect of Danger & Eggs has some level of involvement from LGBT people, from LGBT actors, writers, animators, and storyboard artists alongside LGBT allies! Essentially in each stage of Danger & Eggs’ production, there was that kind of specific influence occurring. More importantly Danger & Eggs accomplishes this with resorting to any awful cliches whilst being as inclusive as possible! Examples include the non-binary musician Milo that D.D. and Phillip both use proper pronouns with plus the recently out trans Zaddie (voiced by trans activist Jazz Jennings) crooning a song of acceptance at the Pride festival (Not Rainbow Day or something akin to that like others have done. ACTUAL PRIDE DAY!) in front of her “chosen family”. I’m going to reference that term often from this day forward.
Truthfully, every decision concerning LGBT representation in Danger & Eggs comes of as equal parts sincere and super sweet. ❤
The series is about the adventures/situations D.D. Danger (SNL’s Aidy Bryant) and her best friend Phillip (Eric Knobel) have inside Chickenpaw Park.
D.D. is the last of a generation of record-setting daredevils. Her father Roy Danger is present in D.D.’s life as a bandaged up and impossible to understand individual, a recurring gag that manages to never get old. As such, she’s up for engaging in potentially injury causing stunts or roughhouse games. Now the inverse can be said for Phillip, a rule-following always safety-first talking egg. As the theme song says the series is, “Kinda hard to explain.” The anthropomorphic Phillip’s origin gets hinted at early on before becoming confirmed in the season one finale. His mother is a colossal chicken that only appears to cluck even though her son can speak English. Despite being clear opposites in most ways, the camaraderie D.D. and Phillip share together is amusing and majestic. Their aww-inducing familial connection is best demonstrated in the episodes “Phillipcon”, “The Big Z”, “Nightmares”, and “Trading Post.”
The supporting cast is just as diverse and inventive from the yoga instructor lesbian duo of Rad and Sweet known as the Chill Twins (courtesy of the comedian married couple of Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butler), a Mayor (Angelica Ross, Her Story) that sings her arrival, a stickler for the rules (more than Phillip!) Sheriff Luke (Stephanie Beatriz, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), and D.D.’s ice-skater film hero Trix Blixon (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, if you haven’t seen her career-defining performance in 2012’s Smashed I highly recommend it! Was in last year’s 10 Cloverfield Lane). Charlyne Yi’s (We Bare Bears’ Chloe Park) apathetic Layla introduced in “Keep Off the Grass” is one of my favorites though. So is Fringe’s Jasika Nicole bringing to life the spunky Reina in “Ren Faire” as well. Co-creator Shadi Petosky even lends her voice for the wise Pigeon Lady.
All in all, I’m astounded by how good Danger & Eggs is. Creative, excellently written, droll, adorable, bizarre, and authentic are the words I’d use to sum up the series. Have tissues ready. I sobbed happily often viewing this series, lol. Normalizing LGBT stuff for children?! SO MUCH YES! And if anything I’ve typed piqued your interest, I implore you to follow through ASAP. 🙂
Such a lovely review of our new animated show on Amazon! Thank you! ❤️❤️❤️❤️
Ookay so just, for the reference, the French text* has a very interesting different nuance here.
*(which, for the record, is absolutely amazing, I’ve no idea how close a translation it might be but it throws in puns and quirks and beautiful turns of phrases and is generally a joy to read, a lot of work and love has clearly been put into it.)
“J’ai fini par lui demander pourquoi il était toujours tellement silencieux, et j’ai bien vu que la réponse lui coûtait.”
“I finally asked him why he’s always so quiet, and it was obvious that answering took a great effort from him.” (~almost “it pained him to answer”)
“Le royaume a toujours beaucoup attendu de lui, et c’est la crainte de décevoir qui l’a finalement enfermé dans le mutisme.”
“The kingdom has always expected a lot from him, and it it’s the fear of disappointing that ended up locking him into mutism.”
“Quelle surprise ! Moi qui pensais qu’avec son talent naturel, il n’avait jamais dû connaître l’angoisse de l’échec…”
“What a surprise! Here I thought that with his natural skill, he must have never known the fear/anxiety of failure…”
please note FEAR and DISAPPOINTING and LOCKING HIM and MUTISM and FAILURE
It sounds a lot less like it was a conscious decision for Link, and much more like… selective mutism caused by stress and anxiety.
Which is why Zelda goes on to basically go “!! SAME DISORDER!!” — it’s not just the fact of being under a lot of expectations that means you’ve gotta appear strong / focus on your task: this wording sounds more like it’s literally Link’s coping mechanism in response to the stress and pressure.
“En réalité, nous avons tous nos soucis. J’étais tellement centrée sur les miens que je ne voyais rien autour de moi.”
“In truth/It turns out we all have our own issues. I was so focused on mine that I didn’t see anything around me.”
Idk if/how this is worded in the English version, but this sounds very much like she feels Link is also miserable (perhaps as much as her).
Basically, the French version goes beyond “Link is constantly dissociating” to “anxious and depressed children find each other and proceed to realize it’s ok to feel like they do and they’re not alone”.
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