Danger and Eggs
Entry updated 10 October 2022. Tagged: TV.
US animated online series (2015-2017). Amazon Studios, PUNY, Saerom Animation. Created by Mike Owens and Shadi Petosky. Directors include Sarah Seember Huisken, Mike Owens and Drew Schmidt. Writers include Sofiya Alexandra, Alex Fox, Eric Knobel, Rachel Lewis, Bob Mittenthal and Shadi Petosky. Voice cast includes Aidy Bryant and Eric Knobel. Thirteen 24-minute episodes, each with two segments, save for the finale. Colour.
The young daughter of a stunt rider, D D Danger (Bryant) enthusiastically seeks adventure and excitement in her local park ("Old Technology – WITH BUTTONS – let's push!"), at one point exclaiming, "For Amelia Earhart, Valentina Tereshkova and Gertrude Bell!" (see Feminism). Following an accident, her father is wheelchair-bound with his jaw wired shut: D D chooses to interpret his incoherent noises as encouragement for her recklessness. Fortunately, her best friend is Phillip (Knobel), a safety-conscious egg (with limbs). As a child he was comforted by the sight of a caterpillar pupating: "It is protected, cosy," but reeled back in horror as it erupted from its cocoon and flew away: "why would it do that? It could have stayed inside, but it took the darker road: a life of flying, Gravity defiance, crash worthiness". Phillip, who lives in his giant chicken mother's posterior, tries to ensure D D's rash deeds take place in a properly controlled environment.
Adventures include discovering a crashed Communications satellite that "went missing decades ago; folks thought it crashed in an inland sea or an endless hole". Wanting to make friends (it is clearly an AI), it separates D D and Phillip, then pairs them off with a copy of the other that echoes their wishes, in the hope they will stay. However, the resulting reinforcing means D D is driven to greater risk-taking and Phillip into Paranoia. As with most episodes, lessons are learnt – in this case, about Identity: "Friends aren't friends because they're the same." A racoon, identified by Phillip as an outlier ("Individuals within species are different, some individuals are static in nature, others must roam!"), steals his notebook of Inventions and – displaying impressive engineering skills – starts building them, eventually designing one of their own.
Underneath a "Keep off the Grass" sign is the entrance to an Underground cavern that once held a research laboratory. The Scientists fled when their subjects mutated – which explains Phillip and his mother, and might account for the intelligence of the racoon population (see Uplift). When a friend is less excited by the Mutants than her, Phillip comforts D.D. by quoting G K Chesterton: "There are no boring subjects, only disinterested minds." (though the friend proves to have her own depths). In another segment the pair realize the dog park is an exact replica of the human park that contains it, with the dog equivalents of D D, Phillip and other park users. Phillip notices the D D and Phillip dogs are repeating adventures from their past (making the dog park a variation on the Time Viewer), realizing that – as dogs' years are a seventh of human years – then dog Time must be catching up and a moment of synchronicity is imminent, after which the dogs will be living the pair's future lives (see Time Paradoxes): "Seeing the future is a curse, not a gift," Phillip warns, but insists we still have free will. The final episode has the park's Pride Festival interrupted by the military attempting to seal off the aforementioned laboratory's subterranean habitat, also forcing Phillip and his mother underground. When the festival attendees and other park users protest, the military resorts to a giant super Weapon. Fortunately everyone works together to defeat it.
Other segments also have fantastic elements and references: for example, when D D tries for a cartwheel landspeed record she warns, "If a Wormhole opens – do not climb through!" There is also some Satire, with "be chill" complacency mocked and political activism encouraged. Danger and Eggs has considerable LGBT representation (see Transgender SF), Petosky explaining that "We really wanted to get around the metaphors and hidden symbology [of other shows] and be overt." Though there are a couple of weaker segments, this was a notable series having two very likeable protagonists and strong, offbeat Humour (see Absurdist SF); sadly there was only one season. This must be one of the few children's shows to include a lecture on Confirmation Bias, given by Phillip when faced with a superstitious belief. [SP]
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