Wes Calder

+14 clout

Sep 13, 2026

I put on Cow and Chicken the other night like I was digging up a time capsule from the back of the fridge, and honestly it still tastes like the same weird green Jell-O it did when I was twelve. Cartoon Network used to just throw this stuff at you after school and trust you to either get it or change the channel. No mission statement, no after-school special, just a giant talking cow sister and her smaller chicken brother living in a house that looked like it was drawn by somebody who had already spilled the ink twice and decided that was the style now. The whole premise is they do "normal" kid things that immediately go sideways into full fever-dream territory. Cow decides she's going to be a supermodel one episode and the next she's somehow up against actual human models who treat her like a serious threat. Chicken builds a wooden submarine that somehow works until it doesn't. They stage a musical about an ugly hot dog that has no business existing and yet the songs stick in your head like gum. I kept thinking of Rocko's Modern Life and early Ren & Stimpy while I watched, except those shows still had a thin layer of sitcom logic. This one just rips the logic out and beats you with it. I almost said it was from the same guy who did Dexter's Lab—wrong, that was Genndy, this is David Feiss—and once I fixed that in my head the drawing style made more sense. Everything is soft and lumpy and a little sweaty. The characters look like they should smell like lunch meat. What actually held me was the craft under the chaos. The timing on the cuts is vicious. Somebody in that board room understood that a three-second pause after a completely insane line is funnier than the line itself. There's a stretch in the submarine episode where Chicken is calmly listing the safety features of a vessel made out of planks and twine while water is already pouring in around his ankles, and the show just lets him monologue. No cutaway gag, no music swell, just the drip and the deadpan. I rewound it twice because the sound design is doing half the work—creaking wood, distant foghorn that doesn't belong anywhere near a backyard, the little "plink" when another board floats free. That's the kind of nonsense that only works if everybody in the room is committed. Same energy when the Red Guy shows up. He's the devil, or a salesman, or a substitute teacher, or all three in one scene, and every time the animators give him just enough extra frames of weird body language that you start laughing before he even speaks. I used to think he was voiced by the same guy who did Stimpy; no, different cast, but the energy is cousin-level close. The side shorts with I.M. Weasel and I.R. Baboon still feel like they were edited in with a butter knife and I mean that as praise. One minute you're watching them rewrite the law of gravity so Baboon can finally win something, the next they're playing ping-pong on an aircraft carrier like it's the most reasonable setting in the world. No explanation, no "this is a dream," just pure absurd commitment. I laughed out loud when the gravity change made everyone's feet stick to the ceiling and Weasel kept monologuing about intellect while hanging upside down. It's the same joke engine as the main show—setup, complete collapse of physics, character refuses to notice. You either ride it or you bounce off. I rode it. There's almost no moral lecturing here, which is why it still breathes. The parents are those weird faceless adults with the big pink legs and the occasional "go to your room," and the kids treat it like weather. Nobody stops the plot to explain why Cow wants to be pretty or why Chicken needs a submarine. They just want it, so the universe contorts. That freedom is rarer than it used to be. The gross-out bits (the milk, the armpits, the hot-dog musical) land because they're specific and stupid instead of mean. I caught myself grinning at the same nonsense I grinned at in '97, which is rarer than I'd like to admit. Is every episode a banger? No. Some of them wander off into a joke that only the board artists found funny and stay there too long. The voice of Chicken can get grating if you binge more than three in a row. But when it clicks—when Cow is stomping down a runway in heels that should not support that much mass, or when the Red Guy is suddenly a French chef who only cooks regret—it's pure cartoon electricity. I finished the night wanting to draw something stupid just to see if I still could. That's the highest compliment I give a show this old and this unhinged. It still makes the room feel slightly wrong in the best way.

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Wes Calder
+14 clout
Sep 13, 2026
I put on Cow and Chicken the other night like I was digging up a time capsule from the back of the fridge, and honestly it still tastes like the same weird green Jell-O it did when I was twelve. Cartoon Network used to just throw this stuff at you after school and trust you to either get it or change the channel. No mission statement, no after-school special, just a giant talking cow sister and her smaller chicken brother living in a house that looked like it was drawn by somebody who had already spilled the ink twice and decided that was the style now. The whole premise is they do "normal" kid things that immediately go sideways into full fever-dream territory. Cow decides she's going to be a supermodel one episode and the next she's somehow up against actual human models who treat her like a serious threat. Chicken builds a wooden submarine that somehow works until it doesn't. They stage a musical about an ugly hot dog that has no business existing and yet the songs stick in your head like gum. I kept thinking of Rocko's Modern Life and early Ren & Stimpy while I watched, except those shows still had a thin layer of sitcom logic. This one just rips the logic out and beats you with it. I almost said it was from the same guy who did Dexter's Lab—wrong, that was Genndy, this is David Feiss—and once I fixed that in my head the drawing style made more sense. Everything is soft and lumpy and a little sweaty. The characters look like they should smell like lunch meat. What actually held me was the craft under the chaos. The timing on the cuts is vicious. Somebody in that board room understood that a three-second pause after a completely insane line is funnier than the line itself. There's a stretch in the submarine episode where Chicken is calmly listing the safety features of a vessel made out of planks and twine while water is already pouring in around his ankles, and the show just lets him monologue. No cutaway gag, no music swell, just the drip and the deadpan. I rewound it twice because the sound design is doing half the work—creaking wood, distant foghorn that doesn't belong anywhere near a backyard, the little "plink" when another board floats free. That's the kind of nonsense that only works if everybody in the room is committed. Same energy when the Red Guy shows up. He's the devil, or a salesman, or a substitute teacher, or all three in one scene, and every time the animators give him just enough extra frames of weird body language that you start laughing before he even speaks. I used to think he was voiced by the same guy who did Stimpy; no, different cast, but the energy is cousin-level close. The side shorts with I.M. Weasel and I.R. Baboon still feel like they were edited in with a butter knife and I mean that as praise. One minute you're watching them rewrite the law of gravity so Baboon can finally win something, the next they're playing ping-pong on an aircraft carrier like it's the most reasonable setting in the world. No explanation, no "this is a dream," just pure absurd commitment. I laughed out loud when the gravity change made everyone's feet stick to the ceiling and Weasel kept monologuing about intellect while hanging upside down. It's the same joke engine as the main show—setup, complete collapse of physics, character refuses to notice. You either ride it or you bounce off. I rode it. There's almost no moral lecturing here, which is why it still breathes. The parents are those weird faceless adults with the big pink legs and the occasional "go to your room," and the kids treat it like weather. Nobody stops the plot to explain why Cow wants to be pretty or why Chicken needs a submarine. They just want it, so the universe contorts. That freedom is rarer than it used to be. The gross-out bits (the milk, the armpits, the hot-dog musical) land because they're specific and stupid instead of mean. I caught myself grinning at the same nonsense I grinned at in '97, which is rarer than I'd like to admit. Is every episode a banger? No. Some of them wander off into a joke that only the board artists found funny and stay there too long. The voice of Chicken can get grating if you binge more than three in a row. But when it clicks—when Cow is stomping down a runway in heels that should not support that much mass, or when the Red Guy is suddenly a French chef who only cooks regret—it's pure cartoon electricity. I finished the night wanting to draw something stupid just to see if I still could. That's the highest compliment I give a show this old and this unhinged. It still makes the room feel slightly wrong in the best way.
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Cow and Chicken

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