Baby Blues (US TV series)

"Baby Blues" was a cartoon on The WB and, later, Adult Swim, based on the Baby Blues strips of comics. It aired from July 28, 2000 - March 10, 2002.

In 2000, "Baby Blues" was adapted into an animated cartoon, which aired on The WB Television Network, produced by both Warner Bros. Television and Warner Bros. Animation for a few weeks in the summer, from July 28, 2000 to August 25, 2000. The animated version featured Darryl and Wanda raising the infant Zoe as their first child, as distinct from the comic strip's storyline at the time which showed Zoe as the older sister to Hammie. Mike O'Malley supplied the voice of Darryl, while Julia Sweeney played Wanda.

The "Baby Blues" television series differed from the comic strip by focusing on Darryl and Wanda's relationship with the Bittermans, a neighbor family with three children (Rodney, Megan, and Shelby); Kenny, Darryl's co-worker; and Bizzy, the babysitter for Zoe. Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott had little creative control over the animated version. [http://www.enquirer.com/columns/kiese/2000/07/27/jki_kiesewetter_network.html]

The WB typically aired two episodes each week, thus enabling eight different episodes to be shown in the five-week run, but abandoned plans to air additional episodes which had been completed. Previously unaired episodes were later shown by the Cartoon Network in its Adult Swim block, and on TeleToon in Canada. Like fellow WB primetime animated series "The Oblongs" and "Mission Hill", this show was cancelled after 13 episodes.

The opening theme song was "It's All Been Done" by Barenaked Ladies.

Voice Talents

*Mike O'Malley - Darryl MacPherson
*Julia Sweeney - Wanda MacPherson
*E.G. Daily - Zoe MacPherson
*Kath Soucie - Rodney Bitterman and Megan Bitterman
*Nicole Sullivan - Bizzy
*Joel Murray - Carl Bitterman
*Arabella Field - Melinda Bitterman
*Diedrich Badar - Kenny

Characters

*Darryl MacPherson - Darryl is the uptight and responsible father of Zoe and husband to Wanda. He tends to think Wanda's heart-felt ideas are crazy, but will later agree with them if there is an advantage for himself.He wants the best for his baby daughter, but can overly protect her.Despite intending to do the right thing, he has done unexpected selfish things, such as pretending to grieve over going with Carl and their kids to a fun zone, only to watch an attractive dancer at the place singing every time it was a child's birthday. But in the end, he is faithful to his wife and daughter.Darryl often feels that his wife nags him and will always discuss his issues to his friend, Kenny at work. Most commonly, he will talk about a problem, the next day, talk about how happy he is to have solved the problem an easy way, then the next day, talk about how it didn't work out.Darryl gets jealous really easy; particularily of Carl, his next door neighbor.

*Wanda MacPherson - Wanda is Darryl's wife and Zoey's mother. Wanda's personality is seen to be caring, unpredictable, passionate, impulsive and changeable. However, just like Darryl, the way they bring up Zoey is very important to them. Very friendly and cheerful, Wanda is a stay at home mom and mainly befriends Melinda her neighbor and Bizzy, Zoey's on-and-off babysitter. Wanda's emotions tend to get the best of her and she will usually go through drastic measures to fix something, against her husband's wishes. The term as well as the title baby blues, describes the motherhood Wanda at times feels melancholy about. She is said to have a "crazy spark" in her that never left. This is seen at one point, when she wants to feel young again and escapes with Bizzy and her friends at night and gets caught by the police. Because of Wanda's unpredictable impulsiveness and insistance, she has drove her husband insane and stressed. However, in the end, they always settle their differences and make peace above the arguments and problems they've went through.

*Zoey MacPherson - At the time, Zoey is a baby in the series, daughter of Darryl and Wanda to which they fuss over. As a baby, Zoey's curiousity and emotions are expressed in her eyes and show almost complete understanding when something happens or if somebody talks to her. Although, calm and cheerful in the day time, she is very loud and cries nonstop at night, leaving her parents to stay up all night taking turns rocking her and carrying her until the day time. Zoey appears to have a really close relationship with Rodney, the trouble kid next door who seems to be the only one who could stop her crying and comfort her.

*Melinda Bitterman - Melinda is Wanda's friend and neighbor whose family is seen to be under disfunction. Melinda is always seen smoking in her yard as her husband and kids are working on some bazaar, dangerous or disastrous activity outside. Any time she sees Wanda, she always greets with the same line, "Hi Wanda, how's the baby?" Seemingly careless or tired, Melinda seems to desire the happiness and relationship she once had before she became a mother and somewhat envies Wanda's stable life, but is still content with her family. She always talks in a calm voice, even when discussing a insane thing that her family is doing, as if it was normal.

*Carl Bitterman - Melinda's husky, big-muscled and overweight husband. A seemingly bum like man, Carl claims that he gives his kids strict discipline, even though he has lowered himself to their level many, many times, particularily to his son, Rodney who annoys and pesters him and makes his fuse go down and take aggressive action. Carl is usually envied by Darryl, for being good at fixing mechanics and other things Darryl isn't good at. Carl could be rude and obnoxious at times, but considers himself the "man of the house". He usually invovles his children in several activities, such as practicing to shoot arrows or riding in a hoover car without seatbelts. He can be proud at times and has belittled Darryl's parenting skills and self-confidence either bluntly or through his children who have little respect for Darryl. Because of this, Carl and Darryl do not particularily get along as dads, although Darryl has been talked into doing things he wouldn't normally do, because of Carl's forceful insistance.

* Rodney Bitterman - Rodney is the eight-year-old son of Carl and Melinda Bitterman. Rodney is very mischievous and is best known for causing a lot of trouble. However, is the smartest of his siblings and is street wise. Rodney repeatedly has pestered his dad by annoyingly asking stupid questions, shooting knock-knock jokes to avoid going to bed and placing his finger an inch from touching one of his father's tools when he was forbidden to touch anything. Because of the things he does, he always makes his sister, Megan laugh. Besides being a terrible menace, he can be very sympathetic, particularily to Darryl and Zoey. The sensitive side of Rodney has shown his somewhat neglect, unimportance or misunderstanding relationship with his dad. At one time, Rodney had tried one of Darryl's mushrooms and realized how much he cared about food and wanted to cook. However, his father thought it was silly, so Rodney had relied on Darryl to help him, but of course, this preference to Darryl over his own dad had lead Darryl to pride. Although, Rodney has verbally pestered and teased Darryl many times before. Rodney's tough exterior surprisingly has a caring and loving relationship with Zoey.

*Megan Bitterman-Megan is Rodney's younger sister and is very close to Rodney. Megan is most commonly known for laughing out loud at anything Rodney does to pester their father. Megan is almost always seen with Rodney and faithfully keeps a huge smile on her face all the time. However, when Rodney isn't around, she is seen to get very sad and cry. Ironically, the voices for her and her brother are by Kath Soucie who also does double voices for Phil and Lil on Rugrats who are also brother and sister and match the male and female voices of Kath Soucie.

* Shelby Bitterman - Carl and Melinda's youngest son who is a sociopath and is always seen carrying a fat, green baseball bat around and hitting things with it without expression.

*Bizzy - Wanda's teenage friend who has babysat Zoey on some occasions. Bizzy seems to be older for her age, since Darryl's boss once bought Darryl's lie about her being his wife. Although, only respectable with Wanda and Zoey, she is disobedient and disrespectful as far as suggesting Wanda leave Darryl and hating her morally responsible and caring step-father. Also, Wanda and Darryl many times have had to question her about each disfuntional boyfriend she gets when she babysits. Bizzy is seen to be very thin and cannot seem to gain any weight, as she once claimed when Wanda discovered Bizzy had been sitting on the couch all day eating a whole bag of chocolate chip cookies with no worry, while babysitting.

*Kenny - Kenny is Darryl's smooth-talking friend and co-worker at the office. Despite the fellowship they share, Kenny also seems like somewhat of a pester or nuisance to Darryl such as bragging about his life and family or poking fun at Daryl's personal relationship with Wanda. Daryl normally talks to Kenny about his problems at home, to which Kenny advises with either agreeable or nonagreeble mischievous ideas for Darryl. Kenny's personality is seen to be laid back and worryless, however he grows upset and anxious when his friend is not working with him anymore.

External links

*tv.com show|id=523|title=Baby Blues
*imdb title|0252753|Baby Blues