Dan Vs., the most underrated show of the 2010 decade · 3:36pm Mar 9th, 2018

To conmemorate the fifth anniversary of its cancellation, it's time to talk about a show that's only recognizable for bronies, but from my perspective, should be known more. And in a time where Adventure Time has defined animation, it's certainly a great breath of freshness.

Underrated is a term used to describe, from a personal point of view, the little appreciation, value or attention that a work receives, whether is a book, movie, series, video game, etc., when it should receive more recognition or attention than receives. Some of these works arose at a time when something popular stole attention, others were judged without being seen and some more came from little-known studies or authors. And this is the case of the series we'll talk about today.

Dan Vs is a television series created by Dan Mandel and Chris Pearson, produced by The Hatchery, distributed by Starz Media and broadcast by The Hub. It's about a man named Dan, who lives in paranoia that everyone conspire against him, so any offense tends to be very personal (and being constantly a victim of karma, fate, cosmos or bad luck doesn't help), causing him to suffer uncontrolled anger and seek revenge, at any cost and in whatever form, for whatever caused it (literally anything: a city, a sport, a person, an institution, a mythological creature, etc.) and next to him is always his best and only friend Chris, who will always join him despite the fact that sometimes the worst parts of the adventure occur to him.

I can think of several reasons to recommend Dan Vs, the first is the most basic: the concept. It's very attractive, since it's something that we can all identify with, unless you are a saint or have the patience of one, all of us at some point in our life we wanted to taste the sweet, sweet taste of revenge every time we're bothered by things that we can't control, such as being stuck in traffic, events canceled by the weather, the weather itself or more personal situations, such as closing a street for a manifestation, going to a family meeting or being besieged every night by the worst musical genre in the history of humanity for an inconsiderate rat that doesn't let you sleep. Of course, common sense is what's always going to come between you, your target and 25 years to life imprisonment. But when it's a cartoon that mocks what you'll never do, adorned with one or another social criticism, it turns out to be very entertaining.

Another positive aspect of the show is that it has human characters in a realistic environment. I have nothing against using animals or inanimate objects, but we are so used to this that a change is appreciated. In addition, in this decade, which has been defined by fantasy and surrealism, having a realistic place like the city of Los Angeles and having human characters gives it certain airs of freshness (the only other series that have been in this decade with these characteristics are The Loud House and The Looney Tunes Show, but before we had others like Hey, Arnold!, Daria and The Critic). Any other series will put a fantasy or magical element to deviate the characters from reality, but here they put you in a real city with real characters and real problems such as traffic, customer service or identity theft (occasionally uses paranormal elements for comedy, but is not something common that happens). Basically they say "tell me what's the worst thing that happened to you in the week and I'll make fun of it in a cartoon." As if that wasn't enough, the series has adult characters. According to all cartoons, life ends at 18 years, the protagonist must be a child or a teenager and a common environment must be the school. I get it, children need a young character to identify with him, but there's more life after high school. You don't want to scare children with what awaits them when they grow up? Well, let's make fun of it!

We have a good concept, but what about the characters? Let's talk a little more about them.

Dan: The protagonist, is a misanthropic, selfish man, with serious problems of anger control that only thinks about him and nobody but him. He's an unemployed person who lives in his own filth and only moves the little humanity that he has left to go to events of his liking or to take revenge on someone. Tends to exaggerate and overreact to almost any inconvenience and usually twists the logic to justify his actions and although he's intolerant of any human being, shows mercy to animals. Before blowing up an animal shelter he freed a group of them and in the process adopted Mr. Mumbles, a cat that seems to be the only living entity on the face of the Earth that Dan is willing to listen to, although for obvious reasons she doesn't speak (yeah, it's a female despite having "Mr." in the name). He's a fan of Shakespeare, immune to tear gas, and lactose intolerant.

Chris: He's the best and only friend of Dan. Unlike him, he has a normal and healthy life: he has a stable job, a wife he loves and in-laws whom he tries to please. Unfortunately, being so passive makes him controllable and easily influenced and although he tries to give Dan some conscience, his efforts are useless, because Dan's stubbornness and the ease of getting mad makes him always get involved in his adventures. He has a serious problem of eating disorder, which sometimes gets him into trouble, and although Dan, at first glance, doesn't value him, his friendship from school makes him always there to support him (at times, this connection reminds the friendship between House and Wilson, from House M.D.). And while he wanted Dan to change "a little," his wife will always be the only piece of consciousness that Dan can't touch.

Elise: She's Chris's wife, a good-hearted sensible woman who has a calm, understandable, almost motherly attitude towards Chris and Dan, but that doesn't make her a fragile woman. She has a lot of guts and is quite determined, unless she's in the presence of her parents. She's very protective with Chris and his interests, and although she tends to get along with Dan, she would like her husband to connect with someone who doesn't have many revenge missions or at least isn't a continuous annoyance. If you provoke her, she can become very dangerous, literally speaking, because she has a second life behind Chris that Dan will discover little by little. She's the most versatile character in the series, as she will always appear as a tertiary, secondary, support role or even stealing the main role and, depending on the episode, can be a third character towards revenge, can give Dan a less violent alternative towards his revenge, can be an obstacle between Dan and his revenge or can put Chris in a situation that takes him out of his sidekick role.

The only bad things that I can say about this series is that its animation is very limited at times, that some support characters don't have the development they could reach and that sometimes the alternate stories tend to come out too much from the context of the series, but aside of that I have nothing to criticize, and that's impressive considering is firstling in many things.

What you have to recognize Dan Vs is that its creators are new, one of the production houses is relatively new, it was broadcast on a channel that grew for 4 years and that had already paid attention to something else (My Little Pony). That means, it has fewer opportunities than a lot of mediocrities have in abundance, so as far as I'm concerned it's one of the best animated exponents of this decade. Unfortunately, Curtis Armstrong (voice of Dan) has confirmed that the series was canceled, but to date there has been no official news or reasons why (although I theorize that it was the purchase of The Hub by Discovery). For me, this series should not go away without anyone remembering it. I'll be posting my Top 10 episodes eventually, but for now I'll leave you the episodes in the link below.

https://www.watchcartoononline.com/anime/dan-vs