"Teacher's Pet" (2000) TV series 2000-2002

Creators:

Gary Baseman
Bill Steinkellner
Cherie Steinkellner

Seasons:

1 | 2

Release Date:

1 September 2000 (USA)

Genre:

Animation | Comedy | Family

Plot:

Envying the life of his 8-year old master, a talking dog disguises himself as a human boy in order to go to school with him, and he becomes the big mutt on campus.

Plot Keywords:

School | Teacher's Pet | Talking Dog | Dog | Teacher

Awards:

6 wins & 4 nominations

Cast

Tino Insana		(1 episode, 2000)
Don Lake	...	Mr. Naven (1 episode, 2000)
John Mahoney	...	Tim Tim Tim (1 episode, 2000)
Bernadette Peters	...	Fifi (1 episode, 2000)
Patrick Warburton	...	Security Guard (1 episode, 2000)
Tim Curry	...	Spooky (1 episode, 2001)

Also Known As:

Disney's Teacher's Pet (USA) (complete title)

Runtime:

USA:30 min (47 episodes)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

USA:TV-Y

Company:

Walt Disney Television Animation

Movie Connections:

Followed by Teacher's Pet (2004)

It's a shame Disney unceremoniously took the show off the air

When I was in vacation somewhere last year, my dad showed me this good ABC cartoon called Teacher's Pet. It's about a dog, Spot, longing to live in the human world, disguising as a human student, Scott Leadready II (Spot thought up the "Leadready II" part after seeing a pencil with "Lead Ready #2" on it) and attending school. The owner, Mrs. Helperman is the teacher while her son and Spot's/Scott's human companion, Leonard Helperman, is a student in Mrs. Helperman's fourth grade class with Spot/Scott (well, DUH?!). Spot/Scott is very smart and full of wisdom at the school. The school is called Fala D. Roosevelt Elementary School (named after President Franklin D. Roosevelt's dog). Other character's are Leslie (Leonard's love interest), Ian Wazzol...err..Woszel... oh what the hell...Waszelewski (another student, who is gross), The 5th Graders (bullies), Principal Strickler (who loves cats and has a very strong grudge against dogs, and also has a menacing cat named Tallulah), The Helperman's pet cat Mr. Jolly (for someone named Jolly, he is paranoid and reclusive [afraid of the outside world and spending his life in his house]), and the Helperman's pet bird Pretty Boy (who is a wiseguy who is friends with Mr. Jolly). The show is fresh and original. I loved the writing, the animation, the classical/opera music playing in the background, and the casting (Nathan Lane is a pretty good voice for Spot/Scott). However, Disney was mistreating the show, like having new episodes on Toon Disney, which is a digital/satellite channel (even though I have a sattelite dish, I think half of the population has digital/sattelite while the other half has basic 99-channel cable). The show was on a supposed long 5-month hiatus with the last episode airing in March 2002. However, in the beginning of the 2002-2003 season, Disney ended up taking TP off the ABC schedule and hauling reruns to Toon Disney, when they decided to retire the One Saturday Morning concept in favor of ABC Kids. Of the whole new ABC Kids (which turned out to be a couple of show out of the Disney Channel [like Kim Possible and Lizzie McGuire], Recess [though already cancelled], Fillmore [the new show on the block], an NBA show, and another cheap-ass [sorry] Power Rangers show [which was already overexposed enough]), Teacher's Pet wasn't one of the shows on the block. However, all hope is not lost. Fillmore, the show that's taking TP's 9:30 AM timeslot, is so good it makes up for Disney for canceling TP. There's talk of a TP movie coming out in 2004 and a new season (both are not very likely, since the show is already taken off the ABC schedule and reruns hauled into Toon Disney, and it's ridiculous to first dump a show off the schedule of a channel and bring it back on out of regret [in Rugrat's case, after 1995, Nick did not dump Rugrats off the schedule the way TP was by Disney]), the haven of Disney's other cartoons, which were canceled by Disney due to either Disney not caring, or that damned (sorry, again) 65-episode limit. I give this a 10 out of 10.