Cancelled too soon: Dilbert

There was a time not that long ago, but long enough to be forgotten, when adult animated humour was composed with wit and charm, and was enjoyed mostly by those forward-thinking innovators who made Western civilization great. Sadly, this period of comedic enlightenment was not to last, and soon fell into repetitive fart jokes and unnecessary musical numbers. Many quality programs disintegrated into regular crude and cringe-worthy political comment (The Simpsons), and some were dissolved altogether (Futurama), only to be reconstituted as some strange and lazy shadow of their former selves (Family Guy). Some actually survived and improved (South Park) but they were exceptions to the general rule. Amid this raft of animated comedy shows, however, one in particular tantalised the intellect and torpedoed modern culture – and it was called Dilbert.

Based on the American comic strip of the same name by Scott Adams, Dilbert, like its printed forerunner, featured the trials and tribulations of Dilbert, a white-collar engineer who works for a large, un-named multinational company. His work colleagues include Alice, a bland woman who is usually very angry about everything; Wally, the extremely lazy office-body with no sense of personal or professional loyalty; Loud Howard, who, as his name implies, is incapable of saying anything below one hundred decibels; and Asuk, an intern from the Indian subcontinent, who is hopelessly naïve and much smarter than everyone around him. The series’ plotlines usually involved Dilbert and friends contending with the grossly incompetent and lackadaisical office manager, the Pointy Haired Boss; the evil head of the company’s human resources department, Catbert (an anthropomorphic red cat); and the teams from sales and marketing, who frequently made decisions on how to sell a product with absolutely no understanding of its basic functionality.

In his home life, Dilbert enjoyed a close master-servant (although it was never quite clear who was which) relationship with his white dog, Dogbert, who was fiercely intelligent, sarcastic, and often cruel to the point of sadism, along with his ‘pet’ rat, Ratbert, and Bob the vegetarian dinosaur, who – when Dilbert calculated that dinosaurs couldn’t be extinct and therefore must be in hiding – was discovered hiding behind the couch. Dilbert’s interactions (often pleas for help) with Dogbert provided much of the series’ comedy, as despite being a canine, Dogbert lived a much more flamboyant and materially exciting life than Dilbert – he was seen variously as an international jewel thief and diplomat, became an astronaut for a short period, and had access to the Supreme Court and captains of industry, as well as his own private helicopter. Dilbert’s household was supplemented by short visits from his mother (who never stayed very long and cheated outrageously at scrabble, manufacturing her own letters) and weekly visits from the mysterious garbage collector, who spoke in a deliberate hushed drawl, was present at Dilbert’s birth for unknown reasons, and enjoyed discoursing on quantum physics with Stephen Hawking. Dilbert went on many dates throughout the series, and they all ended in disaster.

What made Dilbert stand out from the crowd of other adult-orientated cartoons, though it only ran for two seasons, was both its wonderfully realistic subject matter – needless workplace bureaucracy, presentation usually triumphing over substance, the drudgery of being genuinely talented but also under-appreciated, the gullibility and ignorance of the public, and the absurd and often abusive practices of corporate America – and its caustically witty, sardonic and borderline absurdist approach, which was always restrained by a measure human empathy. On a retrospective viewing, it’s also refreshing to watch an adult animation which actually treated its audience as adults, never shying from smart observation and remarkably never using the ‘cut-away’ joke device that’s become a basic standard if the genre; assuming your audience has an attention span longer than thirty seconds is always a merit. In sum, Dilbert ran out of screen-time before it ran out of steam – or rather paperclips and those little plastic cups next to the water-cooler – especially as its newspaper-issued comic is still going strong.

The series’ introduction was a knowingly sly homage to The Twilight Zone, entitled ‘The Dilbert Zone’, and can be seen below:

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