Review: The Chicken Squad: “”Chicken Squad to the Rescue/A Speedy Exit” ; “The Natural/A Dirty Job”

What are you, chicken?

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS?)

Under the watchful guidance of Captain Tully, Coop, Sweetie, and Little Boo carry out missions and learn important lessons along the way.

OUR TAKE
This is, I think, the first time I’ve reviewed a series that was made for the age group that my 4-6 aged nieces would probably watch. I’m so used to being ready to discuss story themes and potential character arcs and trope after trope, none of which really apply here. It’s a bit out of my wheelhouse. I’ve trained myself to be ready to talk about shows like Attack on Titan or Amphibia or even Strike Witches with a sense of importance because I feel like every show of its kind deserves that level of respect. That said, that doesn’t mean that a show like this is necessarily exempt from critical analysis. In fact, it might be more necessary for this than some others, at least on some level. The Chicken Squad is meant to give kids who watch it a means of understanding simple but important life lessons that they will hopefully internalize for later in life. For some kid out there, this could be their Blue’s Clues or Dora the Explorer, two shows that have stayed welded in my generation’s collective psyche all these decades later because they were some of the first things we saw. So, I find myself needing to very hastily needing to shake up my methods.

I think, at least for these first two episodes, what I’m going to focus on is how effective the show is at communicating the lesson of each segment. We have four this time, though the first two and last two are related: Working together is better than working alone, focus efforts to complete one task, practice makes perfect, and don’t beat yourself up about mistakes as long as you are willing to learn from them. These are all very crucial lessons that kids watching may not fully grasp on first watch, but will likely give them the pieces to put together down the road as they are reinforced. As for characters, the first episode mainly focuses on the three kids working together, while the second gives the first half to the overconfidence Little Boo and the second half to thoughtful Sweetie. Nothing for Coop yet, but considering this season is TWENTY NINE EPISODES LONG, I’m sure we’ll be able to fit him in there somewhere. In the meantime, tackling this series for however long I’m told to is certainly going to be a bit of a challenge, especially since I’m worried I might have used up most of what there is to say in just that first paragraph. But I guess we’ll see where we go next time.