Today, I’m looking for your pick for the all-time best live action TV pet (not counting pets who starred in their shows, of course).
Pop Culture Theme Time is a feature where I put a question to you to see what you think about a particular theme. I might later revisit the theme for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns or Top Five.
Pets on TV shows are very important, naturally, but I want to know which pet you think is the best on live action TV series (cartoons are obviously way too easy, so I’m eliminating them). Note that I’m not counting the pets who are the stars of the show, like Lassie, Mr. Ed or Flipper (also, Salem the Cat doesn’t count as a pet on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. If it’s a freakin’ talking cat or dog, I think we can safely eliminate it from this question, okay?).
There’s a lot of good choices, including Eddie on Frasier, but I’m going with Tramp on My Three Sons. He was such a major part of the show (Fred MacMurray and his original eldest son on the show, Tim Considine, had actually just starred in a film called The Shaggy Dog right before the series started), and his plots oddly didn’t even bother me that much (it’s hard to do good episodes starring pets. Like, REALLY HARD TO DO, and yet the show actually did a couple of decent ones starring Tramp).
Okay, that’s my pick. How about you?
Everyone, feel free to suggest future Pop Culture Theme Time topics to me at my new, much shorter e-mail, brian@poprefs.com!
Gotta go with Gary on SpongeBob
How about Lucky the cat from “ALF”? Considering one of the key jokes of the entire franchise is that Alf (and his alien race) consume cats much like we consume chickens, Lucky was one of the main sources of jokes and antics despite not being the star of the show (even if the feline is featured in the opening credits of the first 2 seasons). Alf tries to eat Lucky a few times, and even was once falsely accused of doing so when Lucky got lost. Eventually, Lucky dies (of natural causes), and Alf welcomes a new cat into the Tanner home and swears off them forever.
That was the “dark horse” choice. The easy one is Eddie from “FRASIER.”
Have to go with Abraham the goldfish from Different Strokes. What an actor!
I’d use the way back machine and vote for Ben the Bear, in the show “Life and Times of Grizzly Adams”.
James Adams was clearly the main character. But as I recall Ben the Bear was often central to the plot of show. Heck, the main character was nicknamed “Grizzly” on account of having a pet grizzly bear in his home.
The shows plot being Adams a mountain man, whom had a unique pet. Together they helped mountain visitors while protecting wildlife at the same time.
if horses count, then maybe Comet from the Adventures of Brisco County Jr
if not, then Diefenbaker from Due South
(though the real answer is probably Bouncer from Australian Soap Neighbours – possibly the best member of the cast)