Puppy Bowl VI

2010 brings us the sixth installment of Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl. It's one of my favorite TV perennials, but just like anything else on the air for that long, it's been diluted as it stretches into the second decade of the millennium. (above: Garbanzo, a puppy)

First there are the kittens. For the record, I like kitten cats very much, maybe more than I like adult dogs in general. Despite the fact that it is the fucking Puppy Bowl, I can grasp the kitty half-time show conceptually, but it is always a total snore on the actual telecast. Sleeping kittens are cute when they are in your lap, but not the most exciting to watch in repose unless you happen to to be in the throes of a panic attack. If that was your application for this year's Bowl, more power to you. I've been there, but by and large I can't see the use in general. Isn't that what YouTube is for? Recent years have found the PB ringmasters going out of their way to try to whip our young feline entertainers into doing anything, with this year ending up being the most over the top spectacle yet, sort of an epileptic acid trick with spinning pipe cleaners and flashing lights, a sort of kitty Gitmo that bemused 100% of the feline participants. Again kittens being the the yin to the puppy yan, I can see how it looked good on paper, but come on. I don't mean to harp on this, but again: it is the Puppy Bowl. Get some puppy programming.

That said, I'd watch the damn Kitty Bowl for the duration before I'd suffer through the indignity that are/were the hamster blimp crew and the rabbit cheerleaders. Really? Again, maybe kids dig them, but did either of those groups do anything? At all? The hamster blimp facilitated some Twizzlers product placement, but the rabbit cheerleaders could have been dead for all practical purposes. And maybe not the best counterpoint to a not so exciting broadcast, huh guys? Were the rabbits related to someone big at Animal Planet? It was hands-down the most ridiculous waste of non-puppy airtime and well worth editing out. Not to mention Rabbits are dumb anyway.

All in all, a low scoring game. The puppies were cute, but I'd say it suffered from a pronounced lack of American Bulldogs and/or Rhodesian Ridgebacks. There was the dynamic duo of Garbanzo (seen above left) and her sister Fava, two Cattle Dog Mixes who very much needed to get petted. The Labrador set did a lot of the active work during the proceedings and were all around very cute, too. On the down side of things, we learned very quickly that the only thing worse than a Puggle when it comes to propagating the bastard union that foments canine Satan, it's the Chihuahua/Pug mix that made a brief, seemingly meth-fueled entrance into the proceedings, tearing all over the arena until it was assumably bound and tranquilized. All in all, not a great show. I can't think that they can't do this like fishing shows and edit it down from hours of footage, but either way, it could have been more exciting, to say the least.

The puppies were cute, and I understand a bunch of them were rescues, but is there really a shortage of cute amateur puppies available for an two hours in November? I think not.

If you're of a mind to delve more into the Puppy Bowl phenomenon, you can use this link to get to Animal Planet. Be prepared for a lot of irritating commercial lead-ins. There are some very cute puppy photos that don't require the shillfest. See you next year at VII.

R