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| The Angry Beavers | |
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| Format | Animated series |
| Run time | 30 minutes |
| Creator(s) | Mitch Schauer |
| Starring | Richard Steven Horvitz (voice) Nick Bakay (voice) |
| Country | USA |
| Network | Nickelodeon Studios |
| Original run | April 19, 1997 – January 1, 2000 (On the regular Nickelodeon channel) |
| No. of episodes | 63 (62 aired) |
The Angry Beavers was a Nickelodeon animated series about Daggett and Norbert Beaver, two brother beavers who have left their mom and home to become two bachelors in the forest. Their many adventures spark them to release their ugly sides very often, drawing in the name Angry Beavers. The show premiered in 1997 after the 1997 Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards and was canceled amid controversy in 2001 (with a handful of unaired episodes remaining). It was created by Mitch Schauer. The series has, so far, not yet come to DVD, most likely never will due to the controversies despite a large fan base. The show continues re-run on Nicktoons TV.
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Angry Beavers was a generally popular show during its airtime. Angry Beavers was 'the show' that kept adolescents and adults interested in Nickelodeon in the late 90s. It had a more adult, sophisticated sense of word play jokes and culture references that made up its humor, but was silly and unrealistic enough to attract the attention of young children too. Unfortunately, it was aired in the midst of the success of Rugrats, and many fans believe it did not earn the popularity it deserved. Many people compare it to Rocko's Modern Life and Ren & Stimpy as one of the most influential Nickelodeon cartoons of the 90s. Its influence is evident in other current shows too. SpongeBob SquarePants has a notably similar humor pattern and animation style to this show, and it has the same backing music as Jimmy Neutron.
Character quirks, like Dagget's compulsive adoption of a superhero alter-ego named "Muscular Beaver" (whose pathetic costume consisted of an ill-fitting ski mask, a stuffed sweater, vent-front white briefs, stockings, socks and a cape), kept older and younger audiences' interest, but entertained them on different levels. For example: children and adults would be amused by the costume, but adults might get some additional mileage from finding the name "Muscular Beaver" to be vaguely risqué.
Angry Beavers' popularity with the more "adult" scene managed to get it some recognition. Radio stations also used Dag's catch phrase "That was nuts!" for promos for music marathons, and the show even had a small merchandise line that included T-shirts and plush toys.
The Angry Beavers have a small but devoted cult following, especially since the show started re-airing on the Nicktoons Channel.
The whole controversy surrounding the series first started in 1998, when Alley Oops! had Norb saying "Oh, shut up, Dag!"
When this episode was first televised in the US on Nick, the "shut" in "shut up" was bleeped out. Apparently, a currently unknown individual complained about the phrase "shut up" sounded like "shit up" in a Nick program. What that bleep did, however, was it generated more interest in the show, as some felt that it had vulgar language in the dialog. Between airings, however, Nick changed Norb's line to "Shush up, stupid!" It was only one of the few times a Nicktoon had a line changed between airings since Rocko's Modern Life and Ren and Stimpy. Many people believe this was ridiculous, and it has been shown that many other Nickelodeon programs that aired before and even after (Spongebob Squarepants used shut up several times) Angry Beavers did use "shut up" and in fact, language that is generally considered to be worse (ex. Hey Arnold, which, particularly in its early episodes, used a few words many people believe should not air in children's programming), that the Angry Beavers did not use. Regardless of these claims, this was edited by the producers.
The final straw was an un-aired episode titled Bye Bye Beavers, which was going to be the show's last episode, involving Norb having to convince Dag that they're just characters on a TV show, thereby indicating fourth wall. Staffer Micah Wright said that Nickelodeon hated this episode, as it made fun of the station's practice of not making new episodes of their Nicktoons, preferring to air reruns instead. It is unclear if it was even part of foreign syndication. Also, the episode had broken Nick's "code on Nicktoons": When you're going off the air, don't tell your viewers!
This is a quote from Wright's website about Nick canceling the show: "Nickelodeon hated this episode because it actually told the kids the truth: that the show was ending! Nick likes to just rerun their shows forever and pretend that they're still making new episodes and this show idea drove them up a wall!"
All in all, 63 episodes of the show were produced, because Nick cut 2 episodes out of the planned 65.
Many of the show's fans were extremely upset when the show was cancelled, and an on-line petition has been created.
The Angry Beavers was brought back to Nicktoons TV on June 20th, 2005.
They have also been released on DVD, however, those DVD's are not endorsed by Nickelodeon.
TVonDisc 62 episodes
Web-Worldwide.net 63 episodes
There were several in-jokes throughout The Angry Beavers entire run. One particular one involves Richard Steven Horvitz himself being mentioned.