Bee and Puppycat is the "real" world-set, woman-driven Adventure Time you didn't know you needed, in handy-dandy 6-minute online-video form.
Do you have six minutes? Watch Bee and Puppycat and laugh and laugh.
Emily St. James was a senior correspondent for Vox, covering American identities. Before she joined Vox in 2014, she was the first TV editor of the A.V. Club.
That’s actually a bit too reductive, but if it gets you to watch, all the better. The series is the latest from Cartoon Hangover, a YouTube animation channel run by Frederator Studios (which also produces Adventure Time, the wonderful, whimsical Cartoon Network show that’s also well worth your time). A two-part pilot aired last year and proved so popular that the show managed to Kickstart nine episodes, the first two of which debuted Thursday.
The series’ most marked similarity to Adventure Time is in how it uses gentle surrealism to underscore universal emotions. If Adventure Time is all about growing up, then Bee and Puppycat is all about that weird period in your 20s when you’re supposed to know what you want to do with your life but don’t just yet.
Bee, voiced by Allyn Rachel, is a young woman working a long series of temp jobs (each one on a different planet) and struggling to figure out what the rest of her life looks like, even as she carries on an earnest flirtation with her best friend, Deckard. Puppycat is some sort of space creature that looks like a cat but smells like a dog and bears the voice of a vocal synthesizer.
The series’ Adventure Time bona fides are real. It was created by Natasha Allegri, who’s responsible for Fionna and Cake, that show’s gender-flipped (and species-flipped) versions of its main characters, Finn and Jake. And Allegri certainly has the “weird adventure between human and animal companion” structure down. But the bittersweet strain that has always been present in Adventure Time is front and center here, as Bee tries to figure out the contours of her life and Puppycat feels put upon by all these humans (usually hilariously). There’s also a touch of grim horror, particularly in the series’ second episode, which features the great character Stephen Root offering the voice of an alien farmer.
That’s really all you need to know to start watching, and you should. Bee and Puppycat is just the latest in a wave of exciting, online-only programs that feel unbound by the “rules” of TV. The show is cute and weird enough for kids, but meaningful enough for adults. And if nothing else, each episode will only cost you six minutes of your life. The first new episode is above, and you can watch the next episode below.
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