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Thoughts : Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared (2011 - 2016)

YouTube has been a bastion for unique, off-kilter and high quality creation for quite some time. A shining example of how good creators can be with proper support from fans and the YouTube community is the highly entertaining and incredibly strange Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. Presented in a 6 part episodic nature similar to a children’s show, we join Red Guy (the despondent, teenage-like creature), Yellow Guy (the humanesque, childlike puppet boy) and Duck Guy (the slightly cantankerous talking duck) on June 19 for what will certainly prove to be a memorable day.

Creativity A deceptive baptism of fire. I love how the set the motif for the world we are about to take part in as slightly weird, only to proportionally crank up the strangeness to a mind-shattering level by the conclusion of the first episode. Red Guy is probably the most established of the three characters in this episode, but Sketchbook and her song definitely steal the show. The line ‘Now let’s all agree to never be creative again...’ cracks me up every time. Definitely a great start to the series.

Time After an episode that seemingly went into the depths of the weirdness well, we are yet again given a solemn opening. From the onset, however, the metronomic clock ticking takes control. The humor is amped up, and we get a bit more insight into our main characters. Red Guy’s stubbornness and indifference, Yellow Guy’s child-like innocence, and Duck Guy’s penchant for fixation are all cleanly established. Tony the Talking Clock becomes the first of the hosts to reveal that there may be a more sinister edge to the characters that teach lessons than first perceived.

Love This is the episode where the scope of the world really begins to open up. We’ve been given the June 19 date several times up to this point, but now we are given a bit of information that are main characters have apparently gone missing, which makes it even more ironic when Yellow Guy goes missing from the group. Duck Guy gets to drop the majority of the humor for the group in this episode. This episode is the true first deep dive into the lesson at hand in an outright subversive manner, with Malcolm eventually revealing himself to be the leader of a cult. Hilariously, after his heavy-handed diatribe, Yellow Guy is still unable to comprehend the lesson. The blending of animation and puppetry in this episode is top-notch. The observations or rigid, didactic views of love shared in this episode are some of the most thought-provoking images and elements in the series.

Technology Front to back, this is perhaps my favorite episode. Some of the most vivid images from the show are seared into your mind courtesy of this episode. The misdirect from Gilbert the Globe to Computer is hilariously executed, and also a slight observation on our tendency to lean on technology. Of all of the teachers, Computer is probably the most abrasive one. The jarring transition into the digital world, the computer animation that follows, and the amped up nature of the song and visuals show some of the best pacing and presentation in the entire series. The ending contains possibly the most meta series of moments out of all six episodes.

Healthy Eating Another stellar episode, and hands down the darkest of the bunch visually. Red Guy has been mostly removed from the picture, leaving us with off-kilter Duck Guy and Yellow Guy interactions. Steak and Can (along with the lovable Bread Boy puppet) have the catchiest song of the bunch, with Can’s punctuation of the chorus never ceasing to make me smile. A mysterious phone ring only serves as a marker of escalating oddness and peril for Duck Guy, wrapping up the episode with the most disturbing imagery you will see in the series.

Dreams A pitch-perfect conclusion to the series. Much of what has previously happened is referenced in Yellow Guy’s final, horrific moments. We find ourselves reacquainted with Red Guy, but in a completely different (and much more realistic) setting than those we’ve become accustomed to. As Red Guy goes deeper down the rabbit-hole, we are finally given the closest thing to an answer for all of the questions the series has raised.

Creator Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling truly went above and beyond with this project. Done over a 5 year period with crowdfunding (and clearly tons of love), the series has enough visual stimulus and story depth to have created a lore around it, with a community of people constantly attempting to ‘decode’ the mysteries behind Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. If you’re looking for something completely unique, darkly humorous and completely unforgettable, this may be the series for you.