TUFF Puppy was the third cartoon created by Butch Hartman. Normally, you'd expect a person whose been working in the same professional for so long to only get better at their craft, but unless the craft is "making cartoons as cheap as possible" then Hartman hasn't exactly been excelling at anything.
The show has all the board pieces needed to create a sensational cartoon. Interesting characters, a few talented voices, a colorful and cleverly imagined world. So where did it go wrong? For starters, the dialog at parts can be cringey. Hartman has had a quirk involving running gags which he cannot shed, a character will shout something random and typically unrelated to anything anyone else is talking about, and proceed to do this two more times throughout the show. This happens a lot in new Fairly OddParents episodes as well. There are just too many forced attempts at being funny when there is no need to be. That doesn't mean this cartoon isn't ever funny, because it is, but you tend to remember the misses more than hits and this cartoon misses a lot. Hartman's humor is perpetually stuck in 1970's Hanna-Barbera mode.
Also hurting this cartoon was the lack of direction, which while Hartman may think he can get away with in Fairly Odd Parents, for an action cartoon like this or Danny Phantom it helps to actually have some sort of end goal to be striving to reach. Instead, the heroes capture the villains, who are then released (typically off-screen) by the next episode. Catch and release, just like a recreational fishing pond. It gets boring very quick especially for kids. What if Avatar: The Last Airbender just had Aang and friends sending a comically inept Zuko blasting off again Team Rocket style every episode instead of actually having a journey? TUFF Puppy had three main villains who quickly became too inept for even the writers to take them seriously, and the occasional one episode wonder villain who was sometimes clever, sometimes not.
Still aside from the shortcomings, the show being rated as low as it is of the time me writing this (about 4.8) is an absolute ruse. It's not worse than the likes of Uncle Grandpa or Sanjay and Craig, this show actually has a sense of style and sensible act direction, and the handful of animation awards its won are mostly deserved. That's the wonky 10 point review system for ya, if you like a cartoon is a 10 if not its a 1 and there is no reason to rationalize a middle ground. Some of the bad reviews I read seem focused on apply logic to cartoons ala "Why hasn't Dudley been fired for his antics?" or something silly, thats what happens when you spend too much time on TVtropes.
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