Dumb and Dumber - To Bee Or Not To Bee

Since I've talked about The Mask: The Animated Series and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, I figured I'm going to have to talk about this cartoon sooner or later.

Every so often, the universe rolls a 1 when it comes to animated adaptations.

Now, remember like six months ago when I first set up this blog and said that this cartoon existed? Turns out I didn't just go into Photoshop and make the stupidest cartoon premise ever before lying to the Internet about it. This seriously existed. Some executives at Hannah-Barbera seriously watched Dumb and Dumber and thought "Hey, we should totally market this towards kids!" right before they snorted coke up their noses and gave each other total frontal lobotomies.

Luckily, it totally bombed in the ratings and those same executives were quickly fired (and later executed for crimes against humanity), or else we would've gotten The Cable Guy: The Animated Series or The Truman Show Show. And god only knows we don't need help making America's suicide rates any higher.

As you can tell from my barely concealed hatred for this show, out of the three Jim Carrey toons that exist, this one is the least liked and the least remembered. Unlike The Mask and Ace Ventura, which both had pretty sizable cartoon lifespans, Dumb and Dumber only lasted one 13 episode season. And thank whatever benevolent force you believe in for this small miracle, because rest assured, there is a pretty good reason why this cartoon has practically no fans.

I think it's probably because, unlike The Mask and Ace Ventura, which clearly can be made into animated series if you watch their films (and made very successful animated series premises), this one...is really a stretch as far as a cartoon outline goes. It's basically two guys in a silly-looking van driving around America and getting into wacky hijinks around the way with their inexplicable pet beaver.

I have to say, it was hard picking which episode to do first because, unlike other shows where there's some sort of rhyme or reason to the way episodes are structured, this show is all over the place when it comes to episode length. Some episodes run at the traditional one 22 segment, some are divided into three parts, some are divided into two parts where one half is 13 minutes while the other is 6 minutes, some are divided into even 11 minute segments...needless to say, it's a mess.

So I went with my gut and, instead of doing the first episode (like it's seriously going to explain anything), I picked the episode that has the same title as one of my favorite episodes of The Mask: The Animated Series. Because to hell with it, if this cartoon is going to insult my intelligence, I might as well pick the episode that reminds me the most of a Jim Carrey cartoon that I actually liked.

Spoiler alert: This is the superior cartoon in every way.

So, you might be asking yourself. How dumb is Dumb and Dumber: The Animated Series? Surely it's not as bad as this blog writer is saying and surely it has just as much merit as Film Roman's creation, right? Well, sate your dangerously reckless curiosity by diving into...

To Bee Or Not To Bee