Review: Big City Greens “Uncaged”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Bill’s ex-wife Nancy returns from jail and right away is breaking the law much to the chagrin of Gramma. The kids decide to crash over at their mother’s pad, but first, they run amok around town. When labeled as “good kids” by their mother, Cricket and Tilly decide to walk on the wild side and do a little something that makes them look a bit edgier;…they decided to free all the animals from the zoo!

Officer Keys shows up and has some questions for Nancy who is busy arguing with her kids as to why it’s wrong to free animals from the zoon. They get Remy to help find all of the animals that are galavanting around town and now both Keys and Bill are hot on everyone’s tail. Nancy and the kids are able to round up all the animals, but not before Keys stops them and threatens to take down Nancy once and for all.

Instead of getting the kids in trouble, Nancy leads the cops and Bill on a high-speed chase while the kids get the animals back to the zoo safe and sound. Instead of seeing their mom taken away, Cricket and Tilly agree to take the fall for their mom just in time for BIll and Gramma to see that they should trust Nancy with the kids more often.

Our Take

Divorce is a sticky issue. As a child of divorce, I can tell you, all I had was Batman to get me through the fucked up times. Fortunately, we have a show like Big City Greens that takes the issue head-on, just that it’s somewhat veiled in a safe space that’s atypical of the other series on Disney. There’s nothing really mind-blowing or advantageous here other than the divorce bit, but that doesn’t mean Big City Greens isn’t fun. Cute animals from the zoo and silly characters are indicative of the type of things you’re gonna see in Big City Greens, with the quiet calm of slight parental worry about the divorcee. I’m not sure Big City Greens does enough to really dig into the realities of both parents being in the picture of their kids growing up, and it’s something I’d like to see more of, a show that takes more chances until I see that we’re more or less getting run-of-the-mill here.