Review: HouseBroken “Who Got Burned?” ; “Who’s Getting Up There’?”

Overview

“Who Got Burned?”

A fire forces the animals to stay at an elementary school evacuation center and Honey must make amends with Chico for abandoning the group during the fire; Chico becomes a bully in an attempt to hide the pain of his own abandonment issues.

“Who’s Getting Up There’?”

Chief befriends a canine daredevil and joins his “Chaos Crew”; Tabitha returns to the fabulous world of cat beauty pageants, but is stunned to discover she’s not there to compete; Diablo becomes a snooty purse dog and makes some fancy new friends.

Our Take

Not since the show’s series premiere can I remember a week where we got to meet THIS many new characters in one fell swoop. “Who Got Burned?” featured a number of neighborhood characters that we’ve either never seen before or seldom have in the form of bunnies, lizards, and others while “Who’s Getting Up There?” featured the “Chaos Crew” and a slew of cats taking part in a beauty contest. Add in the Amish ants that I can totally picture as a spin-off series, and we got a lot of new faces this go-round.

While I enjoyed most of the premises of “Who Got Burned?”, I think I would have liked to have seen a take on the California wildfires that was a bit more advantageous, possibly through the eyes of the animals. Stories of pets going missing, being found emaciated, and worse have come through these terrible fires that aren’t just exclusive to California but have been seen in Australia, Canada, and other parts of the United States, so certainly the plot resonates with a whole swath of people, but I could’ve taken less of Shel messing around with the sea turtles (although that in itself was enjoyable) in favor of something maybe a little more action/drama heavy.

On the other end of things, let’s talk about the excellent “Who’s Getting Up There?”. Between the psychedelic sequences, the Felix the Cat-esque interstitials, and a Steve-O fronted new character that I think worked so well I’d love to see the daredevil return. The purse-dogs bit was hilarious as well, and as a former owner of a late Yorkie, I can tell you carrying around a small dog in a bag or carriage is the manliness thing you can do. A truly fantastic episode from front to back, and would recommend everyone to really check THIS one out because its one of the best of the season thus far.

Scheduling at FOX rears its ugly head as HouseBroken takes a break until June 25th to make way for FOX’s ridiculous USFL (seriously, even as a die-hard football fan, I’d rather watch more HouseBroken than THAT shit), so it will be a while before we get any new episodes, so catch up on these guys on Hulu post-haste.