Doug: The Complete Nickelodeon Series

I loved watching Doug when I was a kid. That one of my favorite childhood cartoons. Lots of memories. Several episodes I've forgotten about because it's been over 27 years since I've seen Doug. Some episodes I've never seen before. Some I probably have seen but forgotten about them and I don't really recall ever seeing them. But wow, so many years. Now I have the complete collection and it's all mine.

Doug was the original Nicktoon, the flagship of a fleet that would eventually include such juggernauts as SpongeBob SquarePants and The Loud House. From 1991 to 1994, Doug ran point on a three toon squad that also included fellow trailblazers Rugrats and Ren & Stimpy, spearheading Nick’s foray into the world of original animation.The genius of Doug – the brainchild of Richmond, VA native Jim Jinkins – was its unassuming awkwardness and guileless simplicity. There wasn’t a trace of pretension or artifice in the entire series. It was a slice-of-life cartoon, a window into the world of one Douglas Yancey Funnie, the titular “painfully average 11 ½ year old”, the new kid in beet-crazy Bluffington, recently blown in from Bloatsburg, as told through the journal entries he recorded faithfully every evening. Although series creator Jim Jinkins says that Doug wasn’t autobiographical in the strictest sense of the word, it was certainly infused with elements of his adolescence and childhood, which is clearly a big part of why the show has so rung true for so many viewers for so long and held up so well over the decades.Doug wasn’t action oriented, though the titular protagonist was certainly prone to bouts of elaborate fancy. Unlike many its station mates – and a great many 90s era cartoons in general – Doug wasn’t about gross out humor or seeing how far it could push the envelope either. No, Doug was all about developing character and character development. Part of the brilliance of the show was that characters who seemed at first blush mere archetypal stereotypes – the stalwart sidekick (Skeeter Valentine), the beauty to be wooed and won (Patti Mayonnaise), the adversary to be overcome (Roger Klotz), the embarrassing drama queen of an older sister (Judy Funnie), the doting dorky dad (Phil Funnie), the wacky neighbor (Mr. Dink) – were each so much more. To a person, they were all endearing and unforgettable characters in their own right, many of them shot through with painful, awkward and motivating insecurity: Patti despite her exceptional athleticism and academic prowess, Roger’s being a driving force behind his haranguing of his classmates, Vice Principal Lamar Bone’s leading to his obsession with adhering to the rules, etc. The voiceacting on Doug was simply amazing. Billy West was brilliant, giving voice not only to our hero Doug, but also to his nemesis cum sometimes pal Roger. Constance Shulman was sweet, genuine, and tough-as-nails as Patti Mayonnaise, and Fred Newman was exuberant and incandescent as Skeeter Valentine, Doug’s faithful pup Porkchop, Mr. Dink, and a host of other voices.Speaking of Fred Newman, another huge part of what made Doug so endearing and unforgettable was its unique and charming soundtrack, composed chiefly by Mouthsounds Master Fred and his partner-in-song Dan Sawyer. Doug spawned the Beets, widely regarded as one of the greatest fictional bands of all time. What 90s kid doesn't have Doug's theme song, the Soweto inspired happy ending theme, or the Beet's iconic thrash ballad Killer Tofu etched into his soul? I know I do.In a word, Doug was sincere. This is why it was so painful and disappointing for so many when Nickelodeon declined to renew the series after its fourth season and Disney stepped in to offer a more polished, less soulful version from 1996 to 1999 culminating in the feature film Doug's First Movie. In a nutshell, many fans say that "Disney ruined Doug" – and in a way that's true – but it isn't that simple. Nickelodeon never should've abandoned this series, and when it did, Jim Jinkins shouldn't have allowed it to be stripped of its soul by Disney. Disappointed viewers often complain about thematic changes, like the Honker Burger shutting down, Roger trading in the trailer park for a mansion, or Doug's thick and confident classmate Connie Benge losing weight and becoming yet another Barbie Doll after spending the summer at Camp Make-You-Over. These are just symptoms of the sickness though, not the sickness itself, like the change in animation style and the new and soulless theme song, as far removed from its predecessor as Pat Boone's Tutti Frutti was from Little Richard's original. Or killing the running joke of the often talked about yet never seen school legend Skunky Beaumont by turning him into just another bland supporting character in the ensemble. In a word, Disney's Doug was plastic. On Nickelodeon, Doug was about a painfully average kid in a painfully average town and the only flights of fancy were in Doug's fantasy sequences, which contrasted starkly with his fairly typical schoolboy life. By the time the Disney series wound up, Roger had been hit with a shrink ray and reduced to the height of a cockroach, local middle school geniuses Al and Moo had built a functional Enforcement-Droid-from-Robocop style assault robot, and Doug and his classmates were forced to attend a school dance surrounded by a SWAT team with rifles trained on the kids and the dance floor in case a reptilian swamp monster they were hunting made an appearance. Detractors of the Disney series weren’t complaining about a few cosmetic changes to their beloved show or the evolution of the characters over time. They were complaining about a change in ethos.Nevertheless, Nickelodeon’s Doug remains pristine. I like to think that the Disney series took place in an alternate reality, or was perhaps one of Doug’s extended fantasy sequences – an especially long and disturbing one. For me, Doug ended with season four’s capper Doug’s Bad Trip, about the Funnie family’s odyssey across the American West a la Clark Griswold. Let’s hope our boy makes it back to Bluffington some day, his soul still intact.

As the name of this set suggests, this is the full and complete series of Doug from the Nickelodeon run. It does not include episodes from Disney's years (Brand Spankin' New Doug), but as most fans would agree, the only episodes worth owning are the ones in this set anyway.Several years ago, Amazon and Nickelodeon executed a deal whereby Amazon's new MOD program would produce DVD sets as customers ordered them on DVD-Rs. Among the shows included in this deal was Doug, a show from the early years of Nickelodeon's Nicktoons brand. The first three season sets released without issue, but Season 4 was labeled as "The Best of Season 4." Instead of being a true "Best of" release, though, it was simply an incomplete Season 4, missing two episodes.This set rectifies that issue. This is indeed the complete series, with all of the Nicktoons episodes spanning six discs. The discs are DVD-Rs with the purple backs, though in my usage I have not encountered any issues. Each disc is very basic, with a menu image and an option to either Play All or select an episode. There are no episode listings within the packaging, which is a shame because all prior releases had an episode listing per disc on the back of the DVD case.I cannot comment on the order of the episodes, though some quick research seems to suggest that the episodes are all in order of original airdate (someone correct me if I'm wrong and I'll update this review accordingly). When you select an episode, you either get the opening theme and Nick logo or the episode credits depending on whether the episode was the first or second segment of a full 22-minute episode.The video quality is acceptable. There is some noticeable grain and early episodes had some particularly jarring animation which improved over time. There is no remastering to speak of on this set. However, comparing it to other shows of the same era (Rocko's Modern Life, Rugrats, and Disney Afternoon shows like Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers and Ducktales), the video quality is most certainly comparable. The audio is basic stereo with some minimal right and left panning. It is nothing special, but it is functional. There are no extras whatsoever here.The real question at this point is whether you should buy this set. Completionists like myself should definitely buy it even if they already have seasons 1-4 because it's a fair price for the complete series and you get the remaining two episodes. If you've wanted the series on DVD for a long time and held off on ordering it due to the issue with Season 4, now is the time to get it. Likewise, if you're a casual fan with a passing curiosity, it's worth owning (though as of this writing, the whole series is also available to stream with an Amazon Prime membership). For those who already bought the prior season sets, it's a close call. There are two roughly 11-minute segments missing from the Best of Season 4 set which are included on this one. Whether that justifies the additional price is a matter of personal preference.On the one hand, this is something of a "too little, too late" situation where the complete series double dip corrects a problem with the prior release while failing to add any extras justifying the purchase price. On the other hand, I give it 5 stars on the basis of the fact that this is indeed the complete series and getting all the episodes justifies the score. If you've held off buying until this point, don't hesitate to get this set over the individual season releases. If you already have those, from an informative standpoint this is exactly as advertised and rectifies the Season 4 issues, so at least you know what you're getting, but it is hard to recommend the double dip for anyone who is not a completionist.

Another one of my favorite Nickelodeon shows. Its definitely boy drama with a cool dog.

These are funny and brings back memories. I miss these days. I watch these over and over.

I was very forunate to be a 90's kid where Nickelodeon released many of the best old school shows that a 90's kid could possibly love. One of those early 90's shows was "Doug" a preteen kid moving to a new town to start a new life after his dad Phil gets a job as a photographer. This show shows has an ensemble of lovable characters but is always detailed in Doug's point of view through the works of him writing in his journal about his new life in Bluffington. He's a shy/reserved kid with an overactive imagination that goes through many situations and usually thinks of the worst on what could happen when he needs to make a decision on what to do. Doug is such a positive show in a way that the theme is generally "How to do the right thing" even when you won't benefit from it and there's plenty of life lessons that's thrown in and always recommend a show that has such a positive theme. For me Doug was such a positive show it eventually influenced me to write in my own journal that because of this show it always starts out with "Dear Journal"!