"Dilbert": Your Thoughts

A

(: all smiles

New member
Over the last few weeks, I've been rewatching Dilbert: The Complete Series on DVD, having not watched it since I bought it in 2004. It's also recently been made available to legally watch for free on YouTube as well. What are your thoughts on it?

Personally, while it's not perfect, I like it overall. The show employs a "smart" sense of humor, in that the majority of the jokes are wordplay and logic-based and the plots are focused around satirizing a different aspect of the office or society in general, often going to the extreme. And even though many of its out-there plots were far removed from the mundane day-to-day stuff in the comic strip, I felt the show still kept the tone of the comic, especially in the various philosophical exchanges between Dilbert and Dogbert. The show gets you to think a little bit while it makes you laugh, and if you've worked in an office, much of the humor is relatable too (such as everyone threatening Dilbert that he not to put their office next to the boss's, or the receptionist snidely remarking that god forbid she let one incoming call go to voice mail).

Of course, the voice actors help with this, and I thought they got great choices for everyone. Daniel Stern channels his "Wonder Years" narration voice nicely. Chris Elliot is just perfect as the megalomaniacal but calm Dogbert. I enjoy Kathy Griffin and Gordon Hunt as Dilbert's co-workers. And Larry Miller is also well-cast as Pointy-Haired Boss, where pretty much anything he says is funny just by the line readings.

I suppose the only flaw with the show is its animation, which is incredibly simplistic and bare bones. But being that it's based on a comic strip, I'm a little more lenient towards it. And luckily, the show at least brings some visual variety with how dramatically Dilbert's environments change, based on whatever they're satirizing.

As I've been watching, I've also found season 1 to be slightly superior to season 2. The arc of the company building and testing the Gruntmaster 6000 gave a nice foundation for the otherwise episodic plots, and it contained a bit more music than season 2. Did they lay off most of the music crew for season 2 or something?

So, your thoughts? Favorite episodes/scenes?
 
I don't think it was horrible. I was never a fan of the comic strip it was based on in the first place but Scott Adams can be clever at times.

I can't sit through multiple episodes in a single setting, though, and I usually prefer watching bits and pieces, mostly for any scenes involving Dilbert and Dogbert.

As far as favorite episodes, I liked the two-parter where Dilbert gets pregnant.
 
I've never read Scott Adams' comic strip ritually, but Dilbert: TAS was enjoyable, albeit in a quite, subtle way. Dilbert was never a "honking horns, banging cans" type of humor; it was clever word play that often worked.

It goes without saying that I'm a Dogbert fan. He's been my avatar a couple of times here at Toon Zone. Chris Eliot did a perfect job at providing the character's voice.
 
I watched Dilbert while it was on TV and I thought it had it's funny moments. It had a type of a smart comedy but It was still enjoyable. I do consider to be a small fan of the series.

Best moment to me: "Please rise for the honorable... Judge Stone Cold Steve Austin!"
 
This show was ahead of its time, its also superior to its source material. If you were to put this show on Adult Swim I think it would be a hit. By now most of the jokes that went over "average" peoples head would get a few of the more technological jokes. Only dated joke I can think of is Stone Cold Steve Austin showing up for the finale, since he was huge during the time of the show but isn't anymore, but even then his appearance is pretty awesome.

I love the show, I did enjoy Season 1's story arc but even without the story arc Season 2 was still awesome without it though I did miss it. I would have loved to seen more episodes or the show revived. And the Voice acting was perfect. Its a great show I don't know why it doesn't have more of a [cult] following.



Now for fans of the show, theres actually a second animated series. They are based on the actual comic strips, some of them at least. They are only about 30-50 seconds long each since they are based on the strips. They are hit or miss(like the comic has been the past few years), some are great while others are bad but since they are so short you don't mind it when they are bad. The voice acting while not as good is still decent, I hated it at first but they grew on me. You can also view them for free on youtube.com/dilbert or subscribe to the video podcast on itunes or dilbert.com, theres also other sites that host them and I think they may have exclusive videos but I'm not 100% certain.
 
That's actually the forth series altogether. The UPN series was the third.

The first was a series of Flash animations that ran a year or two before the UPN series began. It appeared on Shockwave.com.

The 2nd was also a webseries that was rendered in 3D. One special feature I remember was that you can change the camera angle to wherever you wanted it to be.

They were all based off previous strip materials.
 
Alas, I don't think that Dilbert would do very well on Adult Swim. It's too smart and not raunchy enough.

Dilbert did air weekday afternoons on Comedy Central, for about 5 minutes.:shrug:
 
This show might have lasted longer if it was on FOX.

UPN was a horrible fit for this series, all of their programming was catered towards the African American audience. How Dilbert even got a second season on UPN baffles me. Did it initially have great ratings in in the first season?
 
It ws pretty popular with college kids(though unfortunately that audience didnt give Home Movies a chance, and i admit i was one of those people).
 
I don't remember much of Dilbert cause I usually forgot airdates but I always remember an episode where Dilbert gives birth to an alien baby I know weird..
 
Killer theme song. I thought it was pretty cool, if subdued. Sometimes they would tell jokes that you literally would have had to work an office job to get, which might have been bad thing considering the channel it was on. Then again, it*is* Dilbert, so at least it's faithful to the comic.

For some odd reason, I think this would have flourished on a channel like MSNBC or CNN if they were to branch out the programming .
 
Such a great show. So well-written, so well-acted, and the characters were all memorable. And it was hilarious too.

It used to run on Teletoon weekday nights for a couple years, but that was years ago.

It was a very quiet, subdued comedy, which is what I prefer. I'm a big fan of The Office for the same reason.
 
I don't have Reelz, though. Luckily I do own the Complete Series boxset, which includes the set of web shorts they did a few years later.

As for Dilbert, I preferred season 1 myself, but both seasons were great. I can still hear the show's VA's when I read the strip. I just hope that if 'Pearls Before Swine' or 'Zits' ever make it to t.v., they have the same level of quality that Dilbert had.
 
As for a favorite moment of mine, I like the episode where Dilbert is put in charge of people's vacations and gets aggravated because what was supposed to be a three day vacation ends up ballooning into a week for various factors (avoiding rush hour on both the start of the break and the end being the main one).

There's also the moment in the Charity episode I liked, when Dilbert has to give Pointy-Haired Boss CPR and as he leans in, the crowd immaturely goes "Whoooooooo!", like they're in middle school. :p

The joke in the cold opening of the first episode was good, too, where Dogbert tricks Dilbert into saying a really high number while in his voice-activated shower.

Oh yes, and Pointy-Haired Boss's mixing of phrases: "He who laughs last... makes waste!"

"We've locked Loud Howard in a soundproof room."
"I hope he has air holes!"
"Well then it wouldn't be soundproof, would it?"

Man, so many good moments.
 
It's quite different from the strip but it's still faithful to it, IMO.

Different in the sense that its scope is wider and its humour is SLIGHTLY less difficult for "Joe Sixpack" to get. However, it's still a show with dauntingly insider-esque corporate office humour if you have no concept of that kind of world.

Overall, I really liked the show. I don't know if it's something I'd watch repeatedly, but my first run through was a very fascinating experience.

Ultimately, I think the show will develop a cult following should a cable network one day decide to rerun the series. I think much of its non-sequiter humour actually influenced some of Family Guy and Simpsons humour too, but Dilbert goes about it in a much more dry way.

But I agree in the end the show is just way too smart/nerdy to achieve great popularity.

Hard to say what my favourite episode is. I think the Y2K episode featuring those flashbacks of a young, motivated Wally sticks out in my mind. I kind of like Wally because sadly, he reminds me of me at times, LOL. That "The world has crushed much of my hopes and dreams so I'll just stop wasting my energy and just enjoy the little things" attitude.
 
My favorite episode was the "Comp-U-Comp" episode. A great Wizard of Oz homage, and I liked Jerry Seinfeld's guest spot. I also liked how this episode made so many jokes about the Boss' unknown name.
 
One thing I had forgotten about this show: Whenever Dilbert isn't talking, his mouth disappears so he looks like his comic likeness. That's a nice touch.
The finale was actually one of my least favorites. It felt a bit too far-removed from the relatable nature of most other episodes, and had a weak and weird ending gag. About the only parts I liked is when Dilbert first discovers he's a woman, simply because he's able to know what he's wearing even if he can't look at his clothes, while all the other male coworkers say, "I dunno..." And bits of the court case were good, too, like how each parent would have a different role in raising Dilbert's child.
 
The opening cinematic is my favorite of all time. It does such a great job bringing the viewer in, and it's a lot of fun to watch.

I loved the series, I cannot read the strip anymore without hearing the voice actors all saying their lines.

Definitely under appreciated. I do have to disagree, I think it would do well at a late slot on [as].
 
Back
Top