How to Adapt Housepets!

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Harry Johnathan
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Joined: Thu Nov 12, 2020 12:10 pm

How to Adapt Housepets!

Post by Harry Johnathan »

For an adaptation of 'Housepets!' in any medium to work in any reasonable capcity, one needs to STRETCH and CONDENSE.

Here's what I mean.

Many of the earlier Housepets arcs were only around a couple strips long. In fact, a rough estimate of the time taken to present an arc in it's entirety would be around only 3 minutes. The radioplay adaptation of the first 'Imaginate!' arc was aprox. 8 minutes, but it also had plenty of material NOT present in the comic-strip, and one must discount the opening of the program. (Side-note, Brent's voice for Peanut was perfect and I will never unhear it.)

So, therefore, we STRETCH. (I'm going to assume the medium of a Television show for this next part;)

For example, I could quite easily adapt 'Imaginate!' and 'Cat Tail' together into one episode. (The Game is far too long and complex to fit so I'm leaving it out for the second episode) For the sake of setting up character dynamics, we could see Peanut and Grape being adopted; flash-forward to them moving to Babylon Gardens. They could meet most of the major characters in one go, and set up their relationships. Then, show the Imaginate, but shorten it. Then have the duo be grounded for a day as a consequence of flooding the house; Peanut draws the infamous cat-tail dog comic to kill time and the plot of Cat Tail begins. Thus we can set up Peanut's crush on Grape earlier and also save time for future episodes.

However, present-day arcs (2012 onwards) are comprised of FAR, far more than just 3 or 4 strips. They now can contain as many as 50 (Call O' The Wild) and feature complex plotlines that aren't exactly easy to translate to a TV show meant to engage young audicances. To compensate, one must CONDENSE.

For example, take 'Call O' The Wild'. That arc could easily make a two-part episode. But, to keep things from going haywire, we must cut out some things. Now, not trying to be harsh, but honestly... King and Bailey's presence in the arc was completely unnecessary. Lucretia, or heck, even Lana could have easily filled King's role in inspiring Miles to do the hike. (For Bailey's later resentment of Gale, well... we'll come up with a newreason.) Remember, the primary purpose of the changes made here are to SAVE TIME, i.e condesne. We're also going to change the reason for the hike, so that it makes sense without having to watch the other episodes (little kids, our intended primary demographic, probably will not understand a lick of the ECP subplot or know anything about the civil rights movement or it's associated attacks on beaucracy and the rather adult humor that entails); say, The Milton Industries is being criticized for using 'cheap-labor' in the form of the wolves. They promptly fire them in a rash judgement, and to cope with the unexpected loss of their income they take the hike as an escape from reality.

The end of the episode shows Gale kidnapping the wolves and Poncho trapping Gale; cue, cliffhanger. The next episode features the second half of the arc relativity unchanged, but condenses quite a bit of the backstory between Miles and Gale and shortens the ending, which will probably be rather easy considering the ending to the original story-arc was short already.

What do you think? Do you have any ideas on how to adapt 'Housepets!' What are your thoughts on my ideas? Please comment! And feel free to criticize and to share your ideas!
Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.” But [The LORD] said, “Yes, you did laugh.” - Genesis 18:15 (NIV).
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Amazee Dayzee
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Joined: Tue Aug 12, 2014 6:24 pm

Re: How to Adapt Housepets!

Post by Amazee Dayzee »

I think that could work out really well honestly. You have some really great ideas!
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