“Poochinski” Could Have Been the End of Television As We Know It

This is a weird argument we want you and your friends to have today: is television today, with its nearly endless supply of shitty sitcoms and reality shows centered around scum, worse off than it was in the early 90s when a show about a dead detective that was reincarnated as a bulldog was bring kicked around from studio to studio?

You can argue that shows like the failed 1990 pilot Poochinski at least displayed some signs of creativity lurking beneath its mounds of mind numbing garbage. But, then again, the show was about a dead detective that was reincarnated as a bulldog that was voiced by Peter Boyle. And, lest we forget, the show was about a dead detective that was reincarnated as a bulldog that was voiced by Peter Boyle… whose character’s name just so happened to be a shitty canine-related pun.

We don’t know, man. Jon and Kate Plus 8 is sounding pretty fucking good to us right now.

But let us, for a moment, think about how the world may have been different had Poochinski not only made it to air, but was a massive success. Take LOST, for instance. When LOST became a massive hit, suddenly we were bombarded with hour-long dramas that revolved around a central mystery. NBC’s Surface comes to mind. Along with ABC’s Invasion. And ABC’s Flash Forward. None of those shows would have been given the time of day had LOST not been a huge hit.

If Poochinski were a LOST-sized success, would we have seen NBC’s Para-Legal? A show about a parakeet that’s also a paralegal? “When renegade paralegal Roger Keet decided to impress his boss with some fancy legal work, he died and got turned in to a parakeet…THAT’S ALSO A PARALEGAL!” As the rules of television dictate, if Para-Legal became a hit, it would have spun off a new series, Para-Eagle.

Would Fox have then responded by green lighting Foxy Ladies?  A Sex in the City pre-curser about four oversexed women that get turned in to actual foxes by a wizard.

The worst of the bunch would have been CBS’s terrible entry in to the genre, Murder She Bear. Angela Lansbury gets turned in to a bear and has to solve crimes. As a bear.

Of course, ABC’s current semi-hit Cougar Town would have been about an actual fucking Cougar.