“Phineas and Ferb”’s great innovation is to reverse this dynamic: Here the conflict is rote convention, and the uplift is sincere.Īfter a few episodes, though, a strange thing happens: Phineas’ cheerful goodwill wins Candace over. Candace is determined to bring all this to the attention of levelheaded Linda, though this never quite works out. Each day of summer vacation, they create some outlandishly sophisticated, often highly dangerous invention - teleporters, time machines, treehouse rock’em sock’em robots - which, unlike Doof’s inators, always work as intended. The stepbrothers are boy geniuses chatty, triangle-headed Phineas is the idea man, while quiet Ferb, who sort of looks like a walking horseradish, seems to be the more technical of the two. Just as SpongeBob and Patrick are too cheerfully stupid to notice how much Squidward dislikes them, Phineas is too genial, and Ferb too stoic, to fully absorb or care about Candace’s initially spiteful obsession with “busting” them to their mother Linda. The first incarnation of Phineas and Ferb’s relationship with Candace looks, in fact, a bit like SpongeBob and his friend Patrick’s relationship with Squidward. Early episodes betray more conventional dynamics, notably in the antagonism between stepbrothers Phineas and Ferb and older sister Candace (anachronistically preserved in the title sequence, with the brothers “driving our sister insane” and Candace furiously trying to bring down the hammer on her brothers in a figurative game of “Whack-a-Pest”). The show’s good-natured vibe is so novel and counterintuitive that it didn’t immediately click, even for the showrunners. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, an underachieving evil scientist with an endless parade of failed doomsday devices (“inators,” as in “Destruct-inator” or “Inside-Out-inator”), who has no greater ambition than to take over the Tri-State Area. On “Phineas and Ferb,” no one is really nasty all the characters are ultimately endearing, even busybody Candace, bullying Buford, and Dr. Take “SpongeBob.” SpongeBob may be as cheerful and optimistic as Phineas, but he’s also a moron other characters, like Squidward, are jerks. What most of these shows share with “Phineas and Ferb” is a blisteringly fast-paced, gag-driven, winkingly absurdist style popularized by “The Simpsons.” What all of them except “Phineas and “Ferb” share are varying levels of cynicism and misanthropy. This disconnect is only highlighted by the fact that prior to “Phineas and Ferb” Povenmire and Marsh worked together on “The Simpsons” and “Rocko’s Modern Life” Povenmire’s other credits include “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Family Guy,” while Marsh has worked on “King of the Hill.”
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Mostly, “Phineas and Ferb” shouldn’t exist because its dominant spirit of exuberance, innocence, optimism, and generosity is so out of step with the abrasiveness of TV animation in the post–“Simpsons” era. Who on earth is this show for? I mean, besides me, and my kids, and everyone I know, and everyone else. There’s lots of music, generally a mark of kiddie entertainment, yet much of the witty humor is clearly aimed at older audiences. It’s weird-looking, which isn’t much of an obstacle these days, but it goes into deeper weirdness far from the beaten path for mainstream family entertainment.
“Phineas and Ferb” should not exist, to begin with, because it’s too complicated at the same time, it’s too formulaic.
The wonder is that they ever thought they could, and that they finally succeeded, and that this amazing, oddball show - which ran from 2007 to 2015, with five one-hour specials and a small-screen feature film, “Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd Dimension” - found the audience it so richly deserves. It’s no wonder show creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh were unable to get it on the air for 16 years. There are at least a half dozen reasons “Phineas and Ferb” never should have existed, and how fortunate for viewers of all ages that it does. The subversive non-subversiveness of “Phineas and Ferb”Īll four seasons of “Phineas and Ferb” are streaming via Netflix they are also available from.
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