Sunday Screen Time: We Bare Bears

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May 7, 2017 by readingoutside

Welcome to my new feature, Sunday Screen Time, where I document some of my favourite movies, TV shows or Internet things!  This week I am featuring my favourite new TV show, We Bare Bears!  The show was created by Daniel Chong, an artist and animator who has worked for Disney and Pixar.  We Bare Bears started as a webcomic and launched as its own show on the Cartoon Network in 2015.  The show’s main characters are Grizz, Panda (aka Pan Pan), and Ice Bear, as well as their human friends.  Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, the bears have to navigate the human world while dealing with being, well, bears.

The show is meant for kids, but there are plenty of adult references and jokes.  While there is some light touching on discrimination (most people don’t seem to notice they’re bears except to be mildly annoyed by them), nothing really terrible ever happens in the show.  Most of the humour seems to come from the bears’ attempts to deal with pop culture things like social media, viral videos, food trucks, food cleanses, etc.  The bears are completely adorable and have their own distinctive personalities.  Grizz is the oldest, and is gregarious, fun-loving, and often the instigator of their adventures.  Panda, the middle brother, is shy, obsessed with being liked on social media, prone to falling love with human women, and frequently neurotic.  Ice Bear is stoic, mostly silent and loves to cook and knit.  He has many hidden talents including dance and martial arts, and once remarked, “the world isn’t ready for what Ice Bear can do.”

The bears are known for their unique way of transportation, the bear stack, which is featured in the picture above, and also in the opening credits.  (Just try and get that catchy theme song out of your head!)

The show is sweet, gentle, feel-good, and laugh-out-loud funny.  It’s the perfect pick-me-up when you’re having a bad day.