My Thoughts on "The Mighty B! 🐝"

Note: 

This was originally written on Thursday April 20, 2023, and I uploaded it to DeviantART on Saturday April 22, 2023. I wrote this because I had rewatched the entirety of The Mighty B! 🐝 and wanted to write my thoughts about this show, and I had a lot to say about it. Most of my review is me kind of defending the show because over the years since it originally aired, it has garnered a lot of hate from cartoon fans. Most notably Mr. Enter, who has done the most negative reviews of this show out of any cartoon reviewing YouTuber I know of, besides Alpha Jay. 

Alpha Jay gave a bad review to the episode where Bessie gets knocked on the head, and starts acting like a cat 🐈‍⬛. His whole point about the episode is that it was offensive towards people with concussions or people with mental health issues, or something along those lines. I defended that episode that while it isn't a particular sensitive depiction of someone with a concussion or someone with amnesia or whatever, it is still a fun episode. It's a Halloween episode 🎃, it's meant to be a little spooky, and I thought that episode succeeded it for the most part. I just didn't like the ending as I explain in the review itself. 

I think Alpha Jay and a lot of other cartoon reviewers tend to take that episode and the series a whole way too seriously, and tend to miss the point that this is a cartoon show that's meant to be funny, and doesn't take itself seriously and doesn't try to be realistic. When you go into a show like The Mighty B! 🐝 and expect realism, you kind of missed the point. You've already lost the battle, and you've demonstrated the lack of understanding that you have. 

I mean, this is a show where people can communicate with animals and full on conversations with them, even though the animals can't actually speak any human languages, and yet can understand everything humans say, where imaginary friends are real, and can interact with real people, where a 9¾ year old girl ♀︎ can not only built robots, but also a miniature atom smasher ⚛️ and a miniature nuclear reactor ☢️, where said 9¾ year old girl ♀︎ has a middle name that's literally cursed and can cause the end of the world. 

Rats 🐀 can be convincingly disguised as dogs 🐕, dogs 🐕 are secret assassins, Chuck E. Cheese-style or Five Nights at Freddy's-style animatronics are alive. Magic taquitos that can make people switch bodies exist, time machines exist and can teleport people to prehistoric times and bring dinosaurs back to the modern day. Even though dinosaurs already just straight up exist in the modern day any way. There is absolutely nothing realistic about the Mighty B! 🐝 universe. It's about as batshit insane as the Regular Show universe, or even the Ren & Stimpy universe since this show was heavily inspired by Ren & Stimpy, and several of the people who worked on it worked on this show as well.

This isn't even just an issue with reviews of The Mighty B! 🐝, it's an issue with most reviews of cartoon shows where the reviewer takes the show too seriously, tries to find meaning where there probably isn't any, and they get mad when the show doesn't have the same level of meaning, or realism, maturity that they want it to have. Completely forgetting the fact that these are cartoons intended for children. These reviewers are grown ass adults, these shows aren't made for them. You can't expect a show to cater to you and your tastes perfectly when it wasn't even made for you in the first place. You just have to either accept it, or stop watching. 

That's why I stopped watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Yes, I know, guilty as charged, I used to be a Brony. When I got into My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, I kept trying to change the show, I kept demanding that the show cater to my own tastes and sensibilities. I wanted the show to be darker, gritter, more violent, and more mature. I wanted it to be more of an action show, rather than it actually was: a comedy series meant for girls ♀︎ with some life lessons thrown in. I eventually just had to accept the fact that MLP: FIM was never going to be everything I wanted it to be, and by insisting it change to my whims, I'd be taking away something from the show's actual target demographic: 8-10 year old girls ♀︎.  

That's the issue with pretty much most Bronies, and most adult fans of that show, especially the ones who wrote fan fiction for it like I did. We tried to make My Little Pony more palatable to us as adults, and more specifically, we tried to make the show more masculine, and tough for us men ♂︎. And some point, I realized that was wrong, and that I just looked silly for trying to make My Little Pony more edgy and more suitable for a male audience ♂︎ when it's always been predominately for a female one ♀︎. I mean, a lot of men ♂︎ online complain that women and girls ♀︎ are encroaching on franchises that were mainly meant for men and boys ♂︎, and trying to change them to suit them more. So, why is it suddenly okay when we men ♂︎ try to do the same to female franchises ♀︎? 

That's why I'm not a Brony anymore. I stopped watching the show, I stopped writing fan fiction for it, I left the fandom, and I just moved on with my life. I never looked back. I feel now that I approach talking about kid's cartoons, and engaging with them in "fandom sense" in much more productive and sensible way. Like, I still enjoy these shows (except My Little Pony of course), but I recognize they are intended for children, and I shouldn't try to impose my own sensibilities to it. 

Like, I'm not trying to force these shows to be something that they aren't, and I instead just want to them do what they do as good as they can, and be the best versions of themselves. I think that's the mindset that every cartoon fan should take with shows like this, especially in their 20s, 30s, or even 40s. Yes, there are plenty of 40 year old Millennials who still watch cartoon shows intended for children that they used to watch as kids in the 1990s and 2000s. Recognize that they aren't the target demographic for these shows, and they never will be, and just enjoy them for what they are, instead of insisting that they change to suit them and their tastes and sensibilities. 

If you really want more cartoons that for adults, and aren't strictly animated sitcoms, sketch comedies, or dramedies like The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, King of the Hill, Robot Chicken, Bojack Horsemen 🐴, Rick and Morty, American Dad 🇺🇸, Futurama, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Squidbillies, The Oblongs, Drawn Together, Archer, The Venture Bros., Bob's Burgers 🍔, F is for Family, Bless the Harts and more, then maybe you should try and make the kind of adult cartoons that you want to see, or at the very least, support the ones that are out there currently, if they're good. We don't want a bunch of bad adult cartoons do we? 

With that said, I'm still proud of how this review turned out. I still think it's one of the best things I've ever written, and I'm glad that it got the level of support that it did on DeviantART. It's probably one of my most viewed and most successful journals on DeviantART. And I managed to write it without making a single Bee Movie 🐝 joke. That's an accomplishment in and of itself. Not even Jordan Fringe was able to do that. He started his Mighty B! 🐝 review with a Bee Movie 🐝 joke. It's the very first thing you see in that video. Bee Movie 🐝's kind of a dead meme at this point. Can people just stop making Bee Movie 🐝 jokes every time someone talks about something involving bees 🐝? 

The only one that's more successful than this one is the one that I wrote about Lauren Faust's original ideas for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic that were rejected by Hasbro, and possibly contributed to her departure from the show. I wrote that just when I stopped watching the show, and when I left the Brony fandom, and it was kind of my swan song to that franchise and to that fandom. 

It still kind of pains me that journal is still getting all kinds of favorites from Bronies and other My Little Pony fans on DeviantART, even though I no longer watch that show, and I'm no longer apart of that fandom. It gives people the wrong impression of me. But, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has ended. It ended like a couple of years ago, and now, the My Little Pony franchise is now on its fifth generation, G5, or Gen 5. So, that whole phase of pop culture is effectively over. It's in the past, it's water under the bridge 💦. But, a lot of people still cling on it, they still cling onto G4 or Gen 4, which is what Friendship is Magic was apart of.

Anyway, enough about My Little Pony, I've already talked enough about that franchise, and I really don't want to talk about it anymore than I have to. Back to The Mighty B! 🐝. I am glad this show is finally getting the appreciation it truly deserves. After years of hate and dismissal, this show is having a resurgence of sorts. People are reevaluating it, and recognizing the positives of this show. Whether it's Jordan Fringe or Nicktendo. There's been a huge reversal in opinion towards this show. Likely because the people who actually grew up with it like me, are now old enough to express our own opinions, and articulate them, so that the older guys, the ones who were already teens or adults when the show came out, can't control the narrative anymore. 

The same thing has happened to other shows that were hated for years and years, but now being reevaluated and getting more appreciation like My Gym Partner's a Monkey 🐒, All Grown Up!, Camp Lazlo, Back at the Barnyard, Wayside, Johnny Test, Teen Titans Go, The Looney Tunes Show, and even Fanboy & Chum Chum to a certain degree. Even the post-movie seasons of SpongeBob 🧽 (Seasons 4-8) are getting reevaluated, as more and more people are finding the gems in these seasons, the diamonds in the rough 💎, or rethinking some of the episodes and moments within that people found detestable, and realizing that, in a lot of cases, they weren't actually that bad. 

I found Nicktendo's review of The Mighty B! 🐝 to be the most delightful. He's the only other guy that I've seen talk about this show call out the Atlas Shrugged moment in the "Body Rockers" episode. I mean, it does make sense in some messed up way that Bessie would be the kind of person who would read Atlas Shrugged, since she does kind of have an objectivist mindset. The way she approaches life, and the way she tries to pursue her goals or get what she wants is very much the way an objectivist would, the way Ayn Rand would've wanted. Now of course, I'm not saying that Bessie is a full-on objectivist or anything, but she definitely leans that way I would say. I mean, she was pretty anti-feminist ♀︎ in the "Little Womyn ♀︎" episode, and most objectivists are anti-feminist ♀︎ since objectivism is a right-wing ideology. 

It's basically an even more insane and cruel version of libertarianism. I mean not as insane, self-destructive, or cruel as anarchocapitalism, but still pretty insane, self-destructive, and cruel. I used to identify as a libertarian a while ago, back when I was still under the influence of right-wing YouTubers and was a culture warrior, it was one of the many labels I put on myself, but I'm not anymore. Libertarianism, and all of its variants, objectivism and anarchocapitalism, is an idea that sounds good on paper, but is absolutely terrible in practice. It destroys economies, it causes inflation, it causes food shortages, and it makes wealth disparity even worse. 

If you want recessions every few years, or a depression every few decades, and if you want corporations to run everything, and if you want greedy, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing billionaires 🤑 to be able to act with impunity, then you can adopt libertarianism or objectivism or anarchocapitialism, and bring it to its natural conclusion. That's why I fear for Argentina 🇦🇷's future now that they've elected a self-described anarchocapitalist as their new president. I doubt adopting anarchocapitalism will in any way remedy any of Argentina 🇦🇷's economic woes. It'll just make them worse. 

But anyway, back to Nicktendo's review of The Mighty B! 🐝. Despite me disagreeing with some of what he said in his review of the show, I did generally agree with what he said. I do agree that Season 2 is superior to Season 1. The animation is better, the character designs are more refined, the colors are sharper and pop a lot more, the show had firmer grasp of what it was and had more of its own identity. The show kind of had an identity crisis in its first season, it didn't really know what it wanted to be, I will agree with that. 

But, Season 2 is where they really refined the show and started settling on what they wanted it to be. The comedy got funnier, and the plots got weirder and more experimental. They often put new spins on plots that we've seen before a million times in other cartoons before and after. As Nicktendo put it in his video, a lot of people missed out on some of the strangest comedy ever put to animation and put on television. My only issue with Season 2 is that focuses too much on Happy, and Bessie's relationship with Happy, and doesn't focus enough on the Honeybees 🐝 and the badges. I mean, I understand Bessie loves her dog 🐕, and that it's an important part of this series, but it's not the only part. I mean, if they really wanted this show to be more about a girl ♀︎ and her dog 🐕, then why have the Girl Scout aspect at all? Why not just have it be about a girl ♀︎ in school or a girl ♀︎ on summer vacation? 

By focusing so many on the Bessie and Happy's relationship, they took away from the one thing that made this show unique from other cartoon shows in the first place, the core foundational premise of it being about Girl Scouts essentially, and being about collecting as many badges as possible to become a superhero, or superheroine if you prefer. It'd be like if SpongeBob 🧽 only ever focused on SpongeBob 🧽 and Gary 🐌's relationship, and not at all on him being a fry cook, or on his relationships with other characters like Patrick, Squidward 🐙, Sandy 🐿️, and Mr. Krabs 🦀. 

I mean, a lot of people complained about the iCarly reboot not focusing enough on the web show, and focusing more on the relationships ❤️ in its first couple of seasons. It's pretty much the same issue. BTW, the iCarly reboot was canceled, it's not airing anymore. It got canceled just as it was starting to get good, and people were actually starting to like it more. You could say the same for The Mighty B! 🐝 as well since it was canceled just as it finally started to improve and gain its footing. Another thing that I learned from watching Nicktendo's video is that Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter himself, is actually a fan of this show. Or at least, he said he was when it first started airing. Which is pretty cool. That's probably the most Daniel Radcliffe thing ever. 

I don't think I really said in this review itself, but I really would like to have a reboot of this show or a continuation of it that builds upon what Season 2, and elevates the show even further. Amy Poehler just has to be on board I think because this show kind of was her baby. So, how about it, Amy? Would you like to make more Mighty B! 🐝? because I'd be down for it. But anyway, I'll stop writing, and let you read the review itself. I don't want this note, or foreword to be any longer than it has to be. 

— 

(This is a poster for The Mighty B! 🐝.)

 

I just finished rewatching the 2008-2011 Nickelodeon cartoon series (or Nicktoon if you prefer) called The Mighty B! 🐝 Created by Amy Poehler, Cynthia True, and Erik Wiese. Since I'm sure that there's a lot of a lot of you reading this who haven't even heard of this show, let alone watched it, I'll give a brief explanation of what it's about. The show is centered around this 9 ¾ year old girl ♀︎ named Bessie Higgenbottom, who lives in San Francisco and is a member of a Girl Scout-type organization called the Honeybees 🐝, and is determined to collect every single badge available for the Honeybees 🐝, under the belief that she will become a superhero called the Mighty B once she does.

She is not alone, as she joined by her friends and family such as her younger brother, Ben, who is determined to be her sidekick, her best friend, Penny who is also friends with Bessie's two main bullies, her mother, Hilary, her imaginary friend, Finger, who's literally a face that she drew on her index finger ☝️, and that's Finger. But, Finger is actually somewhat alive and sentient, as is Ben's teddy bear 🧸, Mr. Pants. And of course, Bessie's pet dog 🐕, Happy, who is a stray dog 🐕 that she took in just so that she could compete in a dog show 🐕, but ends up growing to love as a friend and as a member of the family, and Rocky, a skater kid 🛹 who is older than her but is extremely cool and friendly with her.

Opposing Bessie are Portia and Gwen, two stuck up Honeybees 🐝, who are more preppy and snobby. They constantly bully Bessie, trying to undermine her and embarrass her at every turn, mostly for their own amusement, but good ol' Bessie is too friendly and oblivious to really notice. They are also bafflingly friends with Penny, despite being friends with Bessie, and being dim-witted and some sharing traits with Bessie, and the other "uncool" members of the Honeybee troop 🐝.

A lot of the episodes of this show have to deal with Bessie trying to collect a badge, or trying to do some Honeybee 🐝-related activity, though the plots are not restricted to just being about her Honeybee 🐝 stuff, as she goes on many other misadventures, usually caused by her misunderstanding or misinterpreting someone or a particular situation, or just misunderstanding or misinterpreting the world around her. If not that, then she's tricked or coaxed into doing something embarrassing or even dangerous, usually by Portia and Gwen, or even by Happy, who is often at odds with Bessie's more strait laced personality and conformity to the rules. Some of the plots even involve some sci-fi or fantasy scenarios, which I'll get to.

The Mighty B! 🐝 was originally conceived by former SNL star ⭐️, Amy Poehler as she wanted to do a cartoon series that focused on a female protagonist ♀︎, as oppose to the usual male protagonist ♂︎ as was mostly the case with most cartoon shows at that time. Nickelodeon at that time, didn't really have a ton of female-focused cartoons (or Nicktoons) ♀︎. The only one they really had was My Life As A Teenage Robot. Sure, they also had The Wild Thornberrys and As Told by Ginger years prior, but those shows had already ended by the time The Mighty B! 🐝 was pitched to Nickelodeon, and was put into production. So, the only female-led or female-focused Nicktoon ♀︎ they had that was still airing was My Life As A Teenage Robot. The people at Nickelodeon were open to the idea of doing another female focused Nicktoon ♀︎, so they let Amy Poehler move forward with her show idea.

She drew inspiration from a character she played during her time in improvisational comedy troupes like Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade, and basically decided to make the show about Girl Scouts. Though, it wouldn't be about the actual Girl Scouts, but a fictional organization very similar to the Girl Scouts. She wanted to make the main character, 9 years old or 9 ¾ years old to be precise, as she felt that was the perfect age when girls ♀︎ are not "boy crazy ♂︎," or rude to other girls ♀︎. Even though the final show does have two girl characters ♀︎ who are rude to the main character, who is a girl ♀︎. She teamed up with Fairly OddParents alum, Cynthia True, and SpongeBob 🧽 alum, Erik Wiese to help bring her vision to life.

The Mighty B! 🐝 is not a show that's really all that well remembered amongst animation fans, or even Nickelodeon fans specifically. And it isn't particularly well regarded or well respected amongst those who do remember it either. Usually, it's unfairly written off as yet another SpongeBob 🧽 clone, a show that Nickelodeon greenlit so that they could recapture the success of SpongeBob 🧽, the most successful show and the longest-running show in the network's history. But, after rewatching it, I do think this show has enough going for it that sets it apart from SpongeBob 🧽. For one thing, the unique premise. Having the show focus on a Girl Scout-esque troop, and be about a member of this troop trying to collect all the badges to become a superhero who may or may not exist was a really unique and original idea.

There really weren't any other shows that had that concept or focused on that subject matter. Most cartoons, especially back then, were either focused on talking animals or on kids in school, usually elementary or middle school. But, in this show, the characters are all humans, and the ones that aren't don't talk, or at least, not in the way that we might expect. They also never go to school, and school is never mentioned. It's sort of as if the characters are living in an endless summer, or they're living in a world where school doesn't exist. The San Francisco setting is also unique. Not very many cartoons, especially back then, were set in real cities. Usually, they'd take place in fictional cities. So, it is refreshing to have a cartoon that not only takes place in a real city, but embraces the culture and the unique eccentricities of that city, which this show does. This is show is as San Franciscan, City by the Bay, as it gets.

Speaking of which, the time period in which this show takes place is sort of ambiguous. Sure, it takes place in the "present day," but we don't really see the characters use the latest and most modern technology, like we don't see any characters use any smartphones or tablets, which were both out by this time since the first iPhone 📱 came out in 2007, and was already in circulation by the time this show came out. Okay, the iPad wasn't, that one came out in 2010, and the show was still airing in 2010, so we should've should've seen some characters using iPads.

They could've at least shown someone using an iPod, or some sort of MP3 player which were around by that time, and were in fairly wide usage. The Zune already existed and was in wide circulation by that time for Christ's sake; it came out in 2006 in case you're wondering. We also see characters use old fashion technology like typewriters, pagers 📟, and pay phone, we see them playing old school style video games like 64-bit consoles, and we see old fashion looking cars.

Sometimes, this show looks like it takes place in the 1950s, 1960s, or the 1970s, as opposed to looking it takes place in the 2000s when it was made. But, they don't outright say which year or which decade it takes place. It could easily take place in the 2000s, but in a universe where time is frozen, and technology stayed the same and didn't really progress at a certain point. Although, they do somehow have time machines, or at least, these couple of scientists managed to build one, although it's a more retro-future take on what something like that would be like. 

 

(This is a picture of Bessie Higgenbottom.)

 

Anyway, with that tangent aside, there's another way this show sets itself apart from SpongeBob 🧽. While there are plenty of characters in this show who could be seen as analogs for characters in SpongeBob 🧽, such Bessie being the SpongeBob 🧽 of this show, Happy being the Gary 🐌 of this show, Penny being the Patrick of this show, and Portia being the Squidward of this show, there are characters who don't fit into the mold of any SpongeBob 🧽 character. Ben, Gwen, Hilary, Rocky, and Mary are the main ones who fit into that category, though they are by no means the only ones. And even the characters who are similar to SpongeBob 🧽 characters still have plenty of their own unique traits and attributes that set them apart from their sea creature counterparts.

Bessie for example, is not an idiot like SpongeBob 🧽 is often written to be, especially in the later seasons post-first movie, she's actually really intelligent. She's literally able to build an atom smasher ⚛️ (which is another word for particle accelerator BTW), a robot 🤖 (multiple robots actually), a nuclear reactor ☢️, and even a spaceship which she uses as an escape pod in her hideout/hangout area, the Hive. That's not something that an idiot would do. To me, the best way to describe Bessie is that she's basically like if you took Sandy Cheeks 🐿️, and you gave her the personality and mannerisms of SpongeBob 🧽. That's kind of Bessie's character in a nutshell.

She's very skilled and competent at many other things, such as doing origami, cooking, knitting 🧶 (or macramé as she refers to it as), painting 🖼️, roller skating (except for that one episode in Season 2, where they just forgot she had that skill), playing ping pong 🏓, fighting lions 🦁, rock climbing, playing video games, building highways, building amusement park rides, etc..

She also has quite the business acumen, being the top taffy seller of her entire Honeybee 🐝 troop, and she has quite some negotiating skills, on most occasions. As far as her personality goes, while she is pretty nerdy, and her design is very much like a stereotypical nerd-type character, even complete with a lisp, she isn't just a nerd, like she's not solely defined by her nerdy-ness or her geekiness. And she isn't socially awkward or introverted either, she's very sociable and outgoing, being friendly to everyone, talking to everyone, and believing that everyone likes her, even if they clearly don't, such as is the case with Portia and Gwen.

She is very obsessive and persistent, almost irritatingly so. Once she has her mind set on something, she never stops, even if it gets her into a lot of trouble, or makes enemies. She often lets her ambitions get the better of her, and she can often to be inconsiderate of other people's feelings, and she can be a bit mean and aggressive sometimes. Like, there are instances in the show where she just straight up invades other people's privacy, or stalks people if she suspects that that they're doing something wrong or they're turning against her.

She takes things way too seriously like not being able to see a cute puppy video 🐶 on the Internet, or looking at a painting 🖼️ and trying to see what everyone else sees in it, or trying to find her superhero weakness, her Kryptonite, after her little brother, Ben told her that all superheroes have weaknesses, or farting in the middle of a Honeybee meeting 🐝. And she will go to extreme lengths to try to get what she wants, or try to resolve a problem that she thinks is there. Like, when she believed that zucchini was her weakness and tried to get it banned, or when she found a badge in the Honeybee handbook 🐝 that would make her embarrassing public flatulence okay. She can be quite paranoid, she asks way too many questions, and is constantly overthinking and overanalyzing things.

She's also quite gullible, as she easily believes anything she's told, even if it's completely untrue. And even when she's told that what she believes is untrue or is a lie, she still believe it, and rationalize ways that it can be true. And of course, she's a huge stickler for the rules, and always likes to make sure she's following them, and other people are following them, even if her strict and unwavering rule following does hurt her sometimes. She is a pretty flawed character, despite extremely competent and skilled at many things, and she can admittedly be annoying at times.

When it comes to Happy, although his role in this show is very similar to Gary 🐌's role in SpongeBob 🧽, his personality and his backstory are quite different. Happy is of course, a stray dog 🐕, and he has quite a criminal and thuggish history. Because of that, he has a very skewed morality, he doesn't have much respect for the law or the rules, and is more than willing to use dirty or underhanded tricks to get what he wants. He's into gambling 🎰, which is one of the many vices that he has.

And he's kind of an asshole, as he's constantly misbehaving, and he often treats Bessie pretty badly such as tricking her into doing something dangerous or embarrassing to get out doing dog stuff 🐕 like taking baths 🛁 or getting flea treatment, or just to rebel against her. The worst thing he did to her was when he pawned off her glasses 👓, just so that he can have money 💵 to buy a toy bone 🦴  that he wanted, but Bessie didn't let him buy. This leaves Bessie with some very poor vision, and leads to her going on Mr. Magoo type misadventures. And her life almost gets put in jeopardy quite a few times, including by Portia and Gwen who trick her into going to a aquarium or pet store full of piranhas, so that she would get eaten by the piranhas; those girls ♀︎ literally tried to kill Bessie, and face no consequences for their evil actions at all. All that makes Happy a much more harder edged character than Gary 🐌, and also makes it hard to like him at certain points.

Of course, in Season 2, it's revealed that Happy was actually a secret agent in a secret, clandestine spy organization of attack dogs 🐕 led by an evil Russian lady 🇷🇺♀︎ named K.G. Bianca (get it?), who actually becomes a recurring villain appearing a second time later on in Season 2, prior to him being adopted by Bessie. And Bessie was actually a target who he was sent to attack until he developed a moral conscience, and decided to spare her, which explains why he likes her, and is so loyal to her, and he's skilled at a lot of things. It might also explain how he's able to communicate with humans, despite only barking, but not really since all the animals in this show are capable of communicating with humans, despite not actually being able to speak any human language.

Lastly, even though Portia does have some similarities to Squidward, she's a completely different character from him. She's much more of a rich, snobby brat, who's into fashion, makeup, and popularity, among other things, which fits along with her stereotypical valley girl ♀︎ accent. She actually has more in common with Squidward's arch-rival, Squilliam Fancyson, rather than Squidward himself. Portia and her friend, Gwen do fit into that snobby and bitchy popular girl ♀︎ archetype role. Every show like this has to have at least one character like that, someone to bully the protagonist and be a constant foil to them.

But, even though Portia is often hostile, dismissive, and antagonistic towards Bessie, there are a few occasions where she allies or teams up with Bessie, such as in the Bat Mitzvah episode where she helps Bessie and Penny escape from her even bitchier older cousin, Chelsea, who bullies her just as she bullies Bessie. Her relationship with Chelsea reminded me a lot of Eddy from Ed, Edd, n' Eddy, and his rather abusive relationship with his older brother, as was shown in the TV movie, Ed, Edd n' Eddy's Big Picture Show.

Gwen is an interesting character, because even though is a close friend of Portia, and does fit into the same popular girl archetype ♀︎ that she does, she isn't really all that bratty or snobby. She's into hip-hop and urban culture, and does kind of have a "hip-hop sounding" voice for lack of a better term, and while she does mostly follow what Portia says and does, she doesn't hate Bessie or treat her as badly as Portia does whenever she's not around. She even willing teams up with her in the Season 2 episode, "Children of the Unicorn 🦄," where she and Bessie team up to prove the existence of unicorns 🦄, to comedic effect. The description of the show says that she has a business-centric mind, and is very clever. She's actually one of my favorite characters in this show, like she really grew on me after that "Children of the Unicorn 🦄" episode, and I wish the show did more with her than just being Portia's lackey.

Another interesting thing about Portia and Gwen is that willingly let Penny hang out with them, and seem to have a great level of respect for her, despite her also being friends with Bessie, and having traits in common with her, and the other "undesirable" Honeybees 🐝. I don't what it is about Penny that makes them respect her more than Bessie, what do they see in her that they don't see in Bessie? That isn't really explored at all in this show, but it is admittedly refreshing to see a show where the "popular girls ♀︎" actually like and respect the dim-witted and fat character, rather than bully them along with the main protagonist.

Penny herself is actually pretty interesting as despite being the Patrick Star of this show, she isn't a complete moron like him. She has sort of her own street smarts, and she's very tough and intimidating, and is able to protect Bessie or save her in a tough and sticky situation, such as the episode where Bessie time travels to the distant past to prehistoric times, and accidentally brings back some dinosaurs to the present day. Or the episode where Penny gets kidnapped by these mafioso fish 🐟, and they intimidate Bessie into getting the other Honeybees 🐝 to stop fishing 🎣. Although she was mostly the damsel-in-distress in that episode, she's the one who ultimately defeats the main bad guy fish 🐟, and intimidates him into leaving her and other girls ♀︎ alone. She's a pretty competent character, which is unlike Patrick, who is pretty incompetent and inept at everything he does.

I also like Bessie's mom, Hilary, I think she's one of the better mom characters I've seen in a cartoon show like this. I like the contrast of her being a more laidback hippy, while her daughter is this super strait laced nerdy type girl ♀︎ with an extreme work ethic, strong adherence to the rules, and lots of ambition. But, despite being a hippy, she's actually a pretty successful small business owner. She runs a cafe out of their home, which Bessie and Ben often help out with. She was a biker 🏍️ in her youth, which was revealed to us in the Boston episode, though we never really see her use motorcycle skills 🏍️ at any point in the show's two seasons, except for in the Boston episode where it's first mentioned.

She's also a single mom, which was not something you saw a lot in cartoon shows at the time, and still don't really, even now. But, it is reflective of the time that we're still living in an age where most kids have single or divorced parents, usually single moms, but also some single dads too. That's certainly how I grew up, I grew up with a single mom for a good portion of my childhood, so this was a bit relatable to me at the time.

Millie's another character that I really like in this show. She's the very slow-talking, awkward Honeybee 🐝 with braces, who is friendly with Bessie, but doesn't always hang out with her, and is not really considered a part of the main group. She's a fun and cute character, and I wish there was more of her in this show.

Rocky's pretty cool, I like seeing his interactions with Bessie, those two have a really great dynamic. And it's funny to see Portia have a crush on him, despite the feelings not being mutual, and her crush being completely one-sided, as Rocky doesn't particularly like her; which is completely understandable. The character almost completely disappears in Season 2, relegated to background roles or tiny tertiary roles, never really headlining an episode with Bessie again. I don't know why, he was such a cool character, and a much needed recurring male voice ♂︎ that isn't Ben or Happy. I wish he was in the show more than he actually was, he was very underutilized. He's also voiced by Kenan Thompson from Kenan & Kel and All That BTW, for those of you who are into Kenan & Kel, All That, and Nickelodeon's other old school live action shows.

I don't care much for the Hippy guy who runs the Pawn Shop, and who Bessie and Happy often associate with. He can be funny sometimes, but for the most part, he's just kind of annoying. I also really hate that doctor character, he is so annoying, and he's pretty incompetent. It makes you wonder why they still let this guy work, I would've fired him as soon as he got distracted by a TV 📺 while filling a patient's tooth 🦷 with tooth filling that can catch radio signals and make her repeat what's on the TV 📺 or radio 📻 somehow 🤷‍♂️, or thinking that a girl ♀︎ dressed in cat suit is a real cat 🐈‍⬛ 🤦‍♂️. The doctor's easily one of the worst characters in this show, even worse than Portia. I don't really have much to say about the other side characters, so moving on.

I completely forgot how good the writing of this show was, like there's some pretty clever writing here. The characters are, for the most part, well written, the episodes, for the most part, are well written, and the jokes, for the part, are well written, even if some of them were probably adlibbed; this show was made by people from SNL after all. There some hiccups here and there, some episodes I prefer over others, characters that I like more than others, and jokes that fall flat, but for the most part, it's all pretty good. Amy Poehler said she strived to make this show as appealing to adults as it is to kids, and as an adult rewatching it 13 years later, I'd say, for the most part, she succeeded.

 

 

(These are posters for Season 1 and Season 2 of The Mighty B! 🐝)

 

Some of my favorite episodes include the "Body Rockers" episode where the Honeybees 🐝 go to this museum for a field trip, and Bessie escorts Penny to the bathroom, and the both of them end up inside of this giant animatronic replica of the human body, which they are totally convinced is a real human body, and they've shrunken down to the size of vitamins, just like the retro future educational film 🎞️ has said; though they are totally mistaken of course.

I like the Bat Mitzvah episode where Bessie and Penny become party crashers 🥳, crashing a bunch of people's bat mitzvahs, just so they can party 🥳 and get goodies. Good thing they didn't also decide to crash any quinceañeras. That's the same episode I mentioned earlier where Portia teams up with Bessie and Penny to help them escape her even worse cousin, Chelsea, who's bat mitzvah they decide to crash toward the end of the episode. The fact that Chelsea is Portia's cousin, and she's having a bat mitzvah, and she's forcing her to organize her bat mitzvah for her, pretty much confirms that Portia's family is Jewish ✡️, or at least, Chelsea's Jewish ✡️.

I like the "Name Shame" episode where Portia and Gwen try to find out what Bessie's middle name is, and it turns out that it's cursed and bad things happen to anyone who says it out loud. Except Bessie's mom, Hilary, which I suppose makes sense since she's the one who gave her daughter that name, and thus is the one who put the curse on her. Though she doesn't know that the name, Kajolica is cursed, she just thinks it's a nice name she heard from a medicine man in Santa Fe; figures, a woman ♀︎ like Hilary would go to Santa Fe, and meet with a medicine man.

I like the video game episode, where Bessie, Penny, Portia, and Gwen buy this video game, and they all become so obsessed with it that they even end up staying up all night, and end up losing the "Bee-Athlon 🐝" to the rival Beavers 🦫 because they were so tired 😴 from staying up all night playing the game and not getting enough sleep 🛌. Which prompts the girls ♀︎ to challenge the boys ♂︎ to a round of their video game (which is multiplayer obviously), which the girls ♀︎ win, mostly because of Bessie being a master at the game. Like, if it weren't for Bessie, the girls ♀︎ would've lost.

I like the "Dragonflies" episode where the Honeybees 🐝 are confronted by another rival troop, the Dragonflies, who attempt to steal their headquarters, and they end up having battle and race them for it in a sort of The Warriors type struggle, with Portia's cousin, Chelsea acting as the ultimate judge. That episode was a two-parter BTW, in fact, it was the show's first ever two-parter, and they definitely started out with a good one. Oh, and we learn in this episode that Chelsea used to be a Dragonfly herself, which is why she decides to judge the competition between the Honeybees 🐝 and her old troop, the Dragonflies. Of course, she's against the newer and younger Dragonflies' more aggressive and dirty tactics which they attempted to use to cheat. So, instead of being an antagonist like she was in the "Bat Mitzvah Crashers" episode, she's more of antihero, or a neutral character in this episode.

I like the Boston episode where Bessie meets a fellow Honeybee 🐝 from Boston, named Sissy Sullivan, who is pretty much exactly like her. In fact, she straight up looks and sounds identical to her except that she has a Boston accent, red curly hair, freckles, a blue uniform instead of a yellow one, and square framed glasses instead of circle framed. She and her mother come to San Francisco, and they spend the night at Bessie's family's place. And Bessie gets jealous of her after initially hitting it off with her because she's better at everything than even she is, and she gets along with the other Honeybees 🐝, including Portia and Gwen, better than she does. I guess it's true that you would hate being with someone who's exactly like you in every way, or someone who's exactly like you, but better in every way.

But, Bessie grows to like Sissy again, and the two start working together as friends once Bessie realizes that she can use her to boost taffy sales. Everyone in the city likes Sissy's Boston accent because it sounds cute, but it's also foreign and new them since this is San Francisco, and they don't get many Bostonians; apparently. So, they prefer buying taffy from her instead of Bessie, who is a native San Franciscan, and doesn't have a fun, novel accent. She just has a lisp, which I suppose is a bit cute in its own right.

I really liked the episode, "Bess-E," where Portia and Gwen manage to convince Bessie that she's a robot, as a way of messing with her, and she starts readjusting her life in accordance to that belief. And then in a shocking twist, it turns out that she actually is a robot, and the real Bessie built her in order to fill in for her back at home while she was away on a trip to Canada 🇨🇦. And in true robot fashion, the Bessie robot goes rogue, and starts attacking the real Bessie, Ben, and Happy, and they have to destroy her.

I really like that episode because the plot twist was genuinely surprising, I did not see it coming at all. It actually managed to have a genuinely good plot twist, which is rare in these sort of comedy based cartoons that are all about gags, and being as weird and zanny as possible. This episode could've easily been the standard gullible episode where the main character is convinced that they're something that they're clearly not, but that awesome plot twist really elevated it into something really cool. 

I liked the highway episode where Bessie and Portia both "adopt" highways, and start competing with each other to see which one has the best highway. I didn't know that you could do this, that you could just buy, or "adopt" a highway. Is this even a real thing that you can do, or is it something the writers just made up? Either way, the episode starts off with Bessie just deciding to adopt a highway when she stumbles across a sign and a run down highway covered in weeds in the middle of San Francisco. Then, she starts renovating it, redoing the roads, planting grass and trees on the side of the highway, and just turning it into a tourist attraction.

Portia gets jealous of all the attention that Bessie is receiving because of her highway, and decides to adopt a highway of her own to outdo Bessie in every way. So, it's Portia that ultimately starts the rivalry, not Bessie. Bessie just wanted to maintain to her highway, and tend to her garden 🪴⛲️ in peace, until Portia had to come in and disturb the peace by starting an unnecessary rivalry.

She starts building amusement parks on the side of her highway, which makes Bessie decide to build an amusement park too, with some rides that are better than Portia's rides. Then, Portia builds a dance club, then Bessie builds a drive-in theater. Then, Portia opens a concert for the show's token fictional boy band, the Sugar Boys in response. The whole thing devolves into this petty competition where the two girls ♀︎ are trying to one-up each other, and make their highway attractions more flashy and bombastic than each other's.

But, then it all comes crashing down because both of them were neglecting the plants on the sides of their highways, while they trying to build all these attractions to outdo each other.  The weeds that grew on their grass mutate into these giant plant monsters sort of like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors, or Biollante from Godzilla vs. Biollante, or Mad King Gorge from Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island 🌋, or the mutated crabgrass monsters from the "Feud" episode of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron.

The plant monsters attack the girls ♀︎, but luckily, Happy comes to rescue with a chainsaw, and helps Bessie kill all of the plant monsters. Then, Happy informs the two that they can no longer own their highways since City Hall revoked both of their adoptions due to their highways causing severe traffic jams throughout the city. So, Bessie and Portia both willingly give up their highways as they both kind got of tired of the whole thing, and would rather do something else.

I really like this episode because the premise is so goddamn ridiculous. I mean, who would've thought of a plot in-which the characters literally adopt highways and then start feuding with each other over them, trying to one-up each other in a sort of dick measure contest, even though of course, they're both girls ♀︎ and thus don't have dicks. But, you know what I'm saying.

They're trying to outdo each other, and show their highway is better. It's a really unique concept, and I have no idea how the writers even came up with it. I probably wouldn't have thought to come up with this, unless I was sort of spitballing ideas off of other people, and then we were selecting ideas for an episode on a dart board or something 🎯. And then it ends with them fighting giant plant monsters with chainsaws. It doesn't get any better than that 😁.

As mentioned, I really liked the unicorn episode 🦄, where Bessie and Gwen team up to try to prove the existence of unicorns 🦄, and end up getting trapped in the wildlife sanctuary by these two evil monkeys 🐒. I also liked the "O Brother, What Art Thou" and "Stuffed Happens" episode, I thought it was pretty good finale to Season 2, even if it wasn't originally aired as the finale; all of the episodes of the show were aired out of order, as per Nickelodeon tradition. It's kind of separated into three or four parts, and it uses up the full 30 minutes, which separates it from the other two-part specials of this show. It's not a two-parter, it's a four-parter.

The story arc involving Happy and that secret organization of attack dogs 🐕 that I mentioned earlier is pretty well done. It plays out over the course of two episodes: "The Bone Identity 🦴" (get it? This show sure loves having episode titles that are puns) and "C'mon Get Happy!" Both of which were spread out throughout the season. I guess, the people behind this show didn't want two Happy secret agent episodes back-to-back, and have the viewers get bored of it. The fact that Happy is a former secret agent, or attack dog 🐕, prior to being Bessie's pet adds a bit of dimension to his character, and makes him more interesting. He's not just a former street thug as we assumed him to be in Season 1, but he's pretty much the dog equivalent of an assassin 🐕.  That alone lets him apart from Gary 🐌 from SpongeBob 🧽.

I mean sure, Gary 🐌's super intelligent, if we're to go by that Season 1 episode of SpongeBob 🧽, "Sleepy Time 💤," but was he once apart of a secret clandestine organization of assassins that is now trying to kill him and his owner, SpongeBob 🧽? I think not. The Russian baddie 🇷🇺 I mentioned earlier, K.G. Bianca is pretty great too. First of all, can I just say that K.G. Bianca is about the most stereotypical Russian name 🇷🇺 I can think of? I mean, that's like having an Italian bad guy 🇮🇹 be named something like Luigi Mafia. She's incredibly silly and over-the-top, her name is literally KGB after all, but she's played completely straight, and it works perfectly. If she didn't work, this whole story arc with Happy wouldn't have worked all that well.

As I said, she's one of the few recurring villains or antagonists that this show ever had, even if you count Portia and Gwen, which I don't really. And although, the story arc is pretty much wrapped up by the end of "C'mon Get Happy," I feel she would've returned at some point later on down the line had the show continued after Season 2. BTW, why wasn't this story arc a two-parter? This seems like big enough of deal for it to have a full 30 minute episode dedicated to it. It makes way more sense for this to be a two-parter, than the Gorillas 🦍 episode, speaking of which:

The Gorillas 🦍 episode was good too, but I didn't think that it needed to be a two-parter. They could've easily told that story in one 11 minute segment, rather than the full 30 minutes. The episode was sort of like a parody of Mulan where a girl ♀︎ pretends to a boy ♂︎ to join a male dominated profession ♂︎ where women ♀︎ are not allowed to join. Only in this case, Bessie's pretending to a boy ♂︎ so that she can join this über macho, hypermasculine, and very misogynist all boys scout group ♂︎ called the Gorillas 🦍.

Why does she want to join them so bad? Because she thinks they're cool, that's really about it. But, she can't join them because she's a girl ♀︎ and she's already apart of the Honeybees 🐝, so she has no other choice than to pose as a boy ♂︎. And she isn't just pretending to be any boy ♂︎, she's pretending to be her younger brother, Ben, while he's pretending to be her in the Honeybees 🐝, so that she isn't absent and no one suspects anything. She originally tried to convince Ben to join the Gorillas 🦍 on her behalf, so that she can say that her brother's in the Gorillas 🦍, while she's in the Honeybees 🐝, so that both siblings are in scout groups, and so that she can live out her fantasy of being apart of the Gorillas 🦍 vicariously through him.

But, Ben says "no" because he has no interest in joining the Gorillas 🦍, and he recognizes that it's Bessie's dream to join the Gorillas 🦍, not his, and he doesn't want to be forced to do something he doesn't want to do just because his big sister wants it. So, Bessie decides to pose as Ben, and join the Gorillas 🦍 as him, while she forces him to pose as her in the Honeybees 🐝 while she's in boot camp for the Gorillas' 🦍 recruitment process; which she excels at unsurprisingly. And Ben pretending to Bessie ends up becoming more popular, and more well liked amongst the Honeybee troop 🐝 than the real Bessie.

In addition, Portia even inadvertently forms a crush on Bessie 😍 when she's pretending to be Ben in the Gorillas 🦍, and then she's totally shocked and disgusted when she learns that it was Bessie the whole time. But, not because she's a girl ♀︎, but because she's a nerd. That's how Bessie and Ben get her to agree not to spill the secret about them pretending to be each other, so that Bessie doesn't get removed from the Honeybees 🐝, by agreeing to not tell everyone that she had a crush on Bessie, a nerd; they blackmail her essentially, not that Portia hasn't blackmailed them before plenty of times in the past.

But, that's the main point of contention for Portia, that Bessie's a nerd, not that she's a girl ♀︎. I guess, Portia's tolerant of lesbians ⚢, or perhaps she likes girls ♀︎ too as well as liking boys ♂︎, but she doesn't like nerds, whether they're male or female ♂︎♀︎. Either way, a lot of people have interpreted this scene as Portia being a lesbian ⚢ or being bisexual ⚤ (I know that's the straight symbol, but it's officially referred to as the bisexual sign, and can be used as such, and I'm using it as such). All I can say is that it's up to you how you choose to interpret this scene.

Like I said, I feel like the story of this episode could've easily been told in an 11 minute segment, not the full 30 minutes. There's nothing about this story that warrants it being a two-parter, and it just feels like they stretched it out for no reason when the story is so basic and sort of thin. It's a special episode that doesn't feel very special. Even the infamous cat episode 🐈‍⬛ feels a lot more like a special episode than this does.

Speaking of which, I didn't think that the cat episode 🐈‍⬛ where Bessie gets knocked on the head with a plunger 🪠, and starts acting like cat 🐈‍⬛ because she was wearing a cat suit 🐈‍⬛ when she got hit because it was Halloween 🎃, was as bad as everyone said. Sure, it's not a very sensitive or enlightened depiction of concussions or the mentally challenged, but it is still an entertaining horror themed episode without being super scary. In fact, it really isn't scary at all unless you find the idea of someone wearing a cat suit and acting like a cat 🐈‍⬛ terrifying, then yes, it might be terrifying for you. I would say that the episode is more of a psychological thriller than straight up horror. Though, I will say I really didn't like the ending where Hilary also gets knocked on the head, and starts acting like a witch 🧙‍♀️ because she was wearing a witch costume 🧙‍♀️. I mean, she got hit in the head earlier in the episode, but she still remains a witch 🧙‍♀️ by the end, and that subplot is never really resolved. She's just kind of stuck that way. I don't much careful for Fuck You endings like that in cartoons.

And then there's the "feminist ♀︎" episode that gained a bit of controversy online, especially for the title, "Little Womyn ♀︎," spelt with a y, which is how some feminists prefer to spell women ♀︎ since men ♂︎ is still part of the word, and they want to remove any reference to men ♂︎ when referring to women ♀︎. So they spell it, womyn ♀︎ instead. I've never understood it, and I just think it's bad grammar, but that's what some feminists ♀︎ like to do separate to separate female humans ♀︎ from male humans ♂︎.

The word, female ♀︎ still have the word male ♂︎ in it, are they sure they don't want to change that too? It should be noted that not all feminists ♀︎ spell women ♀︎ in that funky way. It's just a small, vocal minority that does it, while the majority of feminists ♀︎ are fine with spelling women ♀︎ the traditional way: with an e. But anyway, the episode really isn't all that political despite tackling some feminist themes ♀︎, like it doesn't beat you over the head with anything or become preachy in any way. It mostly just uses the feminist stuff ♀︎ for jokes, and to highlight the rivalry between Bessie and her mother.

To me, I think the best episodes of this show are the ones that focus on the Honeybee 🐝 troop, and the Honeybee activities and politics 🐝, as well as the rival scouts, or at least, the ones that feature Penny, Portia, Gwen, and/or Millie and them interacting with Bessie. When the show doesn't focus on any of that, or doesn't feature any of those characters, and instead, focuses entirely on Bessie's relationship with Happy, that's when the show's at its weakest.

There were far too many Happy-centric episodes in Season 2, especially towards the beginning. It got really tiring after a while, and I wanted to see the other characters again. It's kind of like the Gary-centric 🐌 episodes of SpongeBob 🧽, they're the least interesting episodes of the show, especially if you're someone like me who doesn't own a pet, nor have desire to own one. So, for me, Season 2 was definitely the weaker of the two seasons, even if it did have some really good episodes.

This show didn't last for very long, as it only last three years, and only had two seasons before it was canceled. Nickelodeon had actually moved the show from the main channel to the sister channel, Nicktoons Network (now known as just Nicktoons), which many cartoon fans have come to see a dumping ground for shows that Nickelodeon no longer has any faith in, and has every intention of canceling. Indeed, after moving to Nicktoons Network, the show was canceled soon after.

The reason for its cancellation are mostly due to Amy Poehler being too focused on other projects, and not wanting to give those up, and deciding to sacrifice this one to focus on those other projects. The show was actually fairly successful and well received, like it had pretty good ratings, and even won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Animation. So, its cancellation really had nothing to do with low ratings or poor critical reception, as some had assumed.

They did clearly intend to make a third season prior to Amy Poehler's departure. The "O Brother, What Art Thou" and "Stuffed Happens" episode ends with a cliffhanger, which of course was never followed up on. I don't know at what point they would've ended this show had it not been prematurely canceled, and how they would've ended it. Would it have ended with Bessie getting all the badges, and becoming the Mighty B 🐝 for real, or would it have turned out that the Mighty B 🐝 isn't real, and was just a frivolous title or rank given to the person who earned all the badges. Considering the crazy, out there stuff that happens in this show, I would not be all surprised if the Mighty B 🐝 was real, and it was something that you could actually become if you earned all the badges.

This is a show where the main character uses a time machine to go to the Mesozoic era, probably the Late Cretaceous, and brings back dinosaurs to the modern age, the main character has a literal cursed middle name that almost destroys the entire city, the main character is capable of building miniature hand-held particle accelerators ⚛️, nuclear reactors ☢️, escape pods, and robots, including a killer robot double of herself, unicorns 🦄 exist, imaginary finger friends are real and sentient, animals that can communicate with humans and understand them, and also where teddy bears 🧸 and other stuffed animals are not only alive and sentient, but also become evil thanks to some pants with flames on them 🔥. So, why can't the Mighty B 🐝 be an actual superhero with real superpowers?

So far, there's been no real efforts to bring this show back in any form. I don't know if Amy Poehler has even discussed it, or if she's even open to coming back and doing more Mighty B 🐝, since it really is up to her. This show was her baby, and there literally would not be a Mighty B 🐝 at all if it weren't for her. So, she has to be on board for this to actually happen, for this show to be resurrected, and get more seasons or get a reboot of some kind. I mean, she really isn't doing that much or really anything of note these days, so maybe she might be open to doing it.

There is a possibility that they could do a movie or a video game to reintroduce the Bessie character, and the Mighty B 🐝 universe, and then jump into more seasons or jump into a full on reboot, but I'm not sure. I'd even be on board with either of those BTW. I wouldn't even mind if they brought it back in comic book form, there's a lot of cool places they could go with that. To my knowledge, Bessie did not appear in any of the recent Nicktoons crossover games like the Mario Kart inspired Nickelodeon Kart Racing, and its two sequels, Nickelodeon Kart Racing 2: Grand Prix and Nickelodeon Kart Racing 3: Slime Speedway, or the Super Smash Bros. inspired Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl and its sequel, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2, nor did any of the other characters from this show appear in any of those games. If they did, please let me know in the comments.

 

 

 (This is the cover for the "We Got the Bee" DVD release 📀 of The Mighty B! 🐝)

The show is not available on DVD or Blu-Ray 📀💿, like the complete series is not available on either of those formats. The closest thing was this DVD release 📀 called "We Got the Bee 🐝," which was a compilation of different episodes, all of which were from Season 1, since Season 2 hadn't aired yet. But, it wasn't the full season, it was just a few episodes. I'm still a supporter of physical media, I still prefer physical media over streaming, and I hope that one day we get a proper Blu-Ray or even 4K release of the complete series of The Mighty B! 🐝  But, considering that this is the same company that released the complete series of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius on DVD 📀, and not Blu-Ray 💿, I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

So, for now, your best bet for watching this show is Paramount+, they have all the episodes from both seasons available to watch. Watching it on Paramount+ really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, it was a relatively enjoyable experience. It did help that I was watching a good show from my childhood, but still, Paramount+ isn't a bad place to watch it.

I hate that you can't skip the ads on Paramount+, especially because they just kept playing the same ads over and over again. I got really tired of seeing that same stupid Blue's Big City Adventure 🐾 commercial (I got really tired of hearing Blue's barks over and over), or the same stupid Big Nate commercial, or that same stupid Kamp Koral 🪸 commercial (worst idea for a SpongeBob 🧽 spin-off ever BTW), or that same stupid Baby Shark's Big Show 🦈 commercial over and over again. And that's not even mentioning the commercials for McDonald's, Universal Studios Florida, and Nickelodeon Universe that they repeat verbatim.

I still can't believe they made a cartoon series out of Baby Shark 🦈 🤦‍♂️. I suppose it was a slightly more inspired idea than turning Emojis 😃🙂😂😉💩 into a movie, or making a movie about Pepes, remember when that was rumored? That was probably canceled after the failure and poor reception to The Emoji Movie 😧. If you're going to make us watch ads, and deprive us of the ability to skip them or fast forward through them, the least you can do is show new ads every time, instead of showing the same exact ones each time there's a commercial break 😤! If you don't choose to watch this show on Paramount+, there's always buying it on YouTube.