Revisiting Dilbert, the Animated Series

Netflix Streaming keeps telling me that I would love Dilbert the Animated Series, so I finally gave it a try. This show was only on the air for two seasons from early 1999 to late 2000. I remember it as being a show that I was interested in watching, but not enough to actually track down when it was on and watch it.

Ample credit should go to whoever made the casting decision for the vocal talent. The show featured Daniel Stern as Dilbert, Kathy Griffin as Alice, Chris Elliott as Dogbert and Larry Miller as the Pointy-Haired Boss. Although the performances were sometimes flat (perhaps by design), the choices for the main characters were sublime. The show was also smart enough to use the talents of Maurice LaMarche and Tress MacNeille with great abandon.

The biggest distraction for me at first is that Dilbert's world is a dude world. About 95 percent of the characters on the screen are male, and not just the main characters, I'm talking about background and crowd scenes as well. This is the kind of statistical inaccuracy you usually only get with, say, gay porn. And need I say, 95 percent of the male characters on the show are white. Because of course.

Conceptually, the episodes are strong. I particularly liked an episode where Dilbert finds work at an idealized, Google-like company… but his own incompetence destroys the company in the end. That's the kind of meta-commentary that a long-form show (compared to the three-panel strip) can bring to the table.

The animated series also stays true to the characters, settings and artistic style. In a world where adaptations usually destroy the thing they mimic, this fidelity to the original subject matter was a pleasant surprise.

Unfortunately, the pacing of the show was glacial, and for some reason it seemed more depressing than funny. I only watched the first five episodes before giving it up; it's possible that later episodes were an improvement. I didn't have the patience to find out.

Image copyright Dilbert/UPN