The Sneak Preview of “Wylde Pak” is…Wild

 

(This is the logo for Wylde Pak.)

 

Looks like Nickelodeon has a new animated show coming out, a Nicktoon if you will, and it looks pretty wild 🤣. Okay, I know that’s a pretty bad pun, but come on, someone was going to make it eventually when talking about this show. It’s called Wylde Pak if you hadn’t noticed by now, if the title, the logo, or my little pun at the beginning wasn’t any indication. I was originally just going to talk about this show in the foreword of one of my upcoming reposts, either my review of Inuyasha: The Final Act, my review of Godzilla vs. Kong, or my double review of both The French Dispatch 🇫🇷 and Moonfall 🌕 (I reviewed both movies in the same journal on DeviantART). 

 

But, the more I thought about it, I decided that it would be best to dedicate an entire post to it, rather just relegating it to the foreword of a repost. It wouldn’t be fair. Especially if I ever review this show in the future. I want to have at least one dedicated post to it before I do, and after watching this short preview, I think I will. And since this show is somewhat related to South Korea 🇰🇷—it’s about a Korean-American family 🇺🇸🇰🇷—, I figure I should cover it in a dedicated post so that I can have at least one more post tagged with “South Korea 🇰🇷”  that isn’t political. All of the posts that I’ve tagged with the South Korea 🇰🇷 tag have been political. The only one that I remember not being political is my review of Dragon Wars: D-War 🐉, that fantasy action monster film by director Shim Hyung-rae (usually written as Hyung-rae Shim), the director of the monster film Yonggary AKA Reptilian. 

 

But, I am planning on reviewing The Host (2006) the monster film directed by Bong Joon-ho, the director of the much more popular and well-known Parasite (2019) as well as Snowpiercer ❄️ (a lot of people forget or don’t even know that he directed Snowpiercer ❄️), to circumvent this. Which is fitting considering that he recently had a new movie come out called Mickey 17, which is his second English-language film with predominantly American actors 🇺🇸 since Snowpiercer ❄️ back in 2014. It’s his first movie since the wildly successful Parasite (2019) see what I did there 😉? 

 

I may have missed the deadline of the release of Mickey 17, but if I could still commemorate its release by reviewing The Host (2006) and also maybe Snowpiercer ❄️. It’s still gotta come out on Blu-Ray 💿, digital, and streaming, so I can review those movies in preparation for that. Yes, I do distinguish digital and streaming, they are different things. Digital like those VOD platforms like Fandango at Home and streaming is pretty much Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Paramount+, Max, and Peacock 🦚. 

 

I don’t plan on watching Parasite (2019) despite all the hype, praise, and accolades it’s gotten because I have no interest in watching it, and I don’t like it would ever live up the monumental hype. It might feel overrated to me. I might review Train to Busan 🚊, its animated prequel Seoul Station 🚉 , and its live action sequel Peninsula. I may even review them in chronological order starting with Seoul Station 🚉, then Train to Busan 🚊, and then Peninsula. Then, I might review a Korean War 🇰🇵🇰🇷 movie made by actual South Koreans 🇰🇷 (as opposed to by Americans 🇺🇸 like 2022’s Devotion, which I wrote a review to as well) like Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War, but that still kind of fits in the political category because it’s a war movie and war is inherently political, I don’t what anyone else says, it is. 

 

I might review other Korean War 🇰🇵🇰🇷 films made by South Koreans 🇰🇷 like Battle for Incheon: Operation Chromite and its sequel, The Battle of Jangsari, both of which feature American actors 🇺🇸 amongst the Korean majority casts 🇰🇷. I’ve already seen Battle of Jangsari, it was alright, not the best war movie I’ve ever seen, but still pretty decent. I don’t know if I’ve written a review of it or not. If I did, then I’ll repost it on here, if I didn’t, then I’ll rewatch it and write a completely new review of it, but only if I watch Operation Chromite first since those movies are connected. 

 

I might also consider watching and review My Way, a World War II movie by the same director as Taegukgi, Kang Je-gyu, about a Korean soldier 🇰🇷 (who did actually exist, this is a “based on a true story” type of movie) who inadvertently ends up fighting for three different armies, the Japanese 🇯🇵 (the Imperial Japanese Army 🇯🇵), the Soviets ☭ (the Red Army ☭), and the Nazis (the Wehrmacht) before being captured by the Americans 🇺🇸 (the US Army 🇺🇸) during Operation Overlord, the Allied operation that liberated France 🇫🇷 and the rest of Western Europe from the Nazis. It was the operation that D-Day was apart of, and the operation that JJ Abrams World War II zombie movie 🧟‍♂️ with barely any zombies 🧟‍♂️  was named after. 

 

Then, maybe I’ll also review that live action Korean Parasyte series 🇰🇷 on Netflix, titled Parasyte: The Grey, but only after I watch the original Parasyte anime series and the two-part live action Parasyte movie, simply titled Parasyte: Part 1 and Parasyte: Part 2. Korean cinema 🇰🇷 and Korean television 🇰🇷 is untapped well that I haven’t touched because I wasn’t interested in watching Squid Game 🦑. I’m still not, even if the second season does have the actor who played Storm Shadow in the first two live action G.I. Joe movies (which I plan on reviewing along with Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins), and was also in Red 2, a movie that I also plan on reviewing along with Red (2010). It’s funny because ever since Lee Byung-hun was in Season 2 of Squid Game 🦑, all of the clips of Red 2 on YouTube that feature him have comments sections that are filled with nothing but Squid Game 🦑 jokes, referring to him as Front Man ♂︎ (the name of his character from that show) and all that. 

Oh, and I also saw the trailers for Lilo & Stitch (2025), the live action remake of the 2002 post-Disney renaissance animated classic, Lilo & Stitch (2002), and the trailer for Freakier Friday, the legacy sequel to the hit 2003 supernatural coming-of-age teen comedy movie, Freaky Friday (2003), which was in and of itself a remake of a 1976 movie also called Freaky Friday. I plan writing about them in a future post after this. Stay tuned for that. 

 

 

 

(This is the current logo for Nickelodeon.) 

 

 

 

I don’t think anyone really knew about this show beforehand, Nickelodeon didn’t really make any announcements beforehand that it was coming out, they just dropped this sneak preview, this 5 minute clip on their Nicktoons channel on YouTube. It was only after that preview was dropped that everyone finally that this show was a thing and started writing about it and making videos about it presumably. I don’t know what the cartoon reviewing community on YouTube’s reaction to this sneak preview was, I didn’t look into it before I started writing this, I want to write this unfiltered and untainted by anything I saw on YouTube. I just wanted to write this based on my own opinions. But, judging by how they usually react to new Nickelodeon shows (as in, animated ones), I’m assuming the reaction to this sneak preview was fairly positive. They’re reaction was probably similar to mine, which is that it looks really good and looks way better than Rock Paper Scissors 🪨📄✂️ (if they’ve even heard of that show beforehand), and I hope it’s good as this preview would suggest.

 

 

 

(This is a screenshot from Wylde Pak, showing the entire Pak family. From left to right, there’s Lily Pak, William Wylde, Min-Ju Pak, Jack Wylde, and Halmoni.) 

 

 

 

 

The show, from what we know from the preview and the publicly released synopsis, is about a Korean-American family 🇺🇸🇰🇷 known as the Pak family. It mainly focuses on Jack Wylde and Lily Pak, two half-siblings, the children of a white man ♂︎ named William Wylde (at least I think he’s a white man ♂︎) and a Korean woman 🇰🇷♀︎ named Min-Ju Pak. That’s why the show’s called Wylde Pak, it’s a combination of their two last names. They live together with their grandmother (Min’s mother), Halmoni, and the whole show seems like it’s going to be about how they navigate through life being a Korean-American family 🇺🇸🇰🇷, it’s going to be about the Korean-American experience 🇺🇸🇰🇷, and it’s going to be about the friendships they make and hijinks they get into along the way. It’s basically a slice-of-life show with some cartoony bits, like the clip they showed in this sneak preview was very cartoony. I don’t know if the whole show is going to be like that, or if it’s going to be a bit more subdued and down-to-earth the rest of the time. It could be one of those things where they’re trying to find their footing, trying to figure out how cartoony and over-the-top they want it to be. You know, growing pains. 

It was inspired by the co-creator, Paul Watling’s experiences growing up as Korean-Americans 🇺🇸🇰🇷. And indeed, this is the aspect of the show that I think Asian-Americans 🇺🇸 will relate to the most, particularly Korean-Americans 🇺🇸🇰🇷. In fact, it kind of feels like this show tailor made to appeal to Korean-Americans 🇺🇸🇰🇷, because there are so many things, just in this sneak preview alone, that are indicative of the Korean-American experience 🇺🇸🇰🇷. So many references and in-jokes that only Korean-Americans 🇺🇸🇰🇷 would truly understand and get a laugh 😆 out of. I only know some of these because I watched Emirichu’s video on her childhood growing up in America 🇺🇸 as a a Korean-American girl 🇺🇸🇰🇷♀︎ and becoming a Korean-American woman 🇺🇸🇰🇷♀︎. As well as other videos by other Korean-American 🇺🇸🇰🇷 creators on YouTube. 

 

The clip that was shown in this sneak preview never makes it clear what state or what city this is supposed to be. That Asian market the Pak family goes into looks like it may be located in a Koreatown, meaning that the whole family might live in a Koreatown, and the only Koreatowns in America 🇺🇸 are in California, Georgia, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, Illinois, Ohio, Texas, Hawaii, Virginia, and New York, this show will probably be indicative of the lived experience of someone who lives in one of those states. 

 

It’s probably California, these kinds of shows almost always take place in California because that’s where most of these animators live and work, it’s where a lot of them were born and grew up. To be fair, my grandma grew up in California for a good portion of her childhood, in Long Beach specifically. Or maybe, it’s not in a Koreatown at all, and they just live in a regular American city 🇺🇸 and not in an ethnic enclave, in which case, it could be anywhere. It could be in Oregon, or Michigan, or Washington State, for all I know. 

 

A cartoon other than Gravity Falls being set in the Pacific Northwest would be a nice change of pace. So would a cartoon other than The Loud House or The Casagrandes (which is its spinoff) taking place in the Midwest. Part of me also kind of wishes that this took place in the 2000s, I don’t know if the creators grew up in the 2000s (they’re probably Millennials rather than Gen Z), but setting it in the 2000s would’ve given it that nostalgic feeling, and probably would’ve made the show that much more relatable to Korean-Americans 🇺🇸🇰🇷, especially those of the Millennial and Zoomer generations. 

 

But, we see the characters using smartphones 📱, so this definitely not the 2000s. This is the present day. The only years in the 2000s that would make sense to see a character using a smartphone 📱 are 2007, 2008, and 2009. Other than that, no. Maybe if the show took place in 2010s, that would be cool and it would still be pretty nostalgic to my generation. I actually have a fan theory that The Loud House still takes place in the 2010s despite it continuing on into the 2020s, like all the events that we see, whether it’s Lincoln going to middle school, Lily becoming 1 or 2 years old and going to preschool, and Lori going to college (before coming back home to live next door in Mr. Grouse’s garage 😒) happen within that 2016 to 2019 timespan. That’s what I think, you can take it or leave it. But no, I’m pretty sure that this show takes place in the 2020s. Most cartoon shows (whether they’re for kids or adults) take in the present time that they were made. Very few of them are actual period pieces. 

 

 

 

(These are the flags of the United States 🇺🇸 and South Korea 🇰🇷.) 

 

 

 

I don’t blame them for doing this, I mean if I were to make a cartoon show, I’d probably make it about Acoma characters, and appeal to Acomas and other Puebloans, exploring the Acoma experience and the Puebloan experience in general. As well as explore the New Mexican experience, because I’m both Acoma and New Mexico. The Acoma Pueblo is located in New Mexico, we apart of New Mexico and New Mexican culture, and both the lived experience of Acoma people and the live experiences of New Mexicans has largely ignored by Hollywood. Most people outside of New Mexico’s only real frame of reference for New Mexico is Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. And the only Native American tribes that are represented in media are the Cherokee, the Lakota, the Comanche, the Navajo, and the Apache. I know that I have a small percentage of Navajo blood 🩸 in me because of my mom, but still. Puebloans haven’t had any representation in media of any kind.

 

No movies or TV shows about the Zuni Pueblo, the Hopi Pueblo, the Acoma Pueblo, the Laguna Pueblo, the Zia Pueblo, the Taos Pueblo, the Sandia Pueblo, or others. There should be more shows and movies about New Mexico (like actual set in New Mexico and not just use New Mexico as filming location and stand-in for somewhere else) and more movies and shows about Puebloans. But since no one else is really making those, I guess I can be the one to do it. You make what you know right? You start out doing what you’re already familiar before branching out and doing things that are outside of your own lived experience. Only with my show, I’d probably pitch it to an adult network like Adult Swim rather than a kid’s network like Nickelodeon because I would want it to be an animated series for adults. But unlike any adult animated sitcom you’ve seen. Not another repeat of The Simpsons, or Family Guy, or South Park, or Rick and Morty. 

 

That all being said, I’d also like to see more movies and TV shows about other Asian groups besides just Chinese 🇨🇳, Japanese 🇯🇵, and Koreans 🇰🇷. Those ethnic groups have done to death, and kind of over represented in media, I’d like to see others as well. Amphibia 🐸 and The Ghost and Molly McGee had the right idea by making the characters Thai-Americans 🇺🇸🇹🇭 as opposed to Chinese-Americans 🇺🇸🇨🇳, Japanese-Americans 🇺🇸🇯🇵, or Korean-Americans 🇺🇸🇰🇷. Maybe some more Taiwanese-American 🇺🇸🇹🇼 characters. 

I mean Taiwanese people 🇹🇼 are ethnically Han Chinese, but they identify as just Taiwanese 🇹🇼, they don’t identify as Chinese 🇨🇳 because of the growing tensions between China 🇨🇳 and Taiwan 🇹🇼, and the length of time that the two countries have been separated. There are Taiwanese people 🇹🇼 who have been born in Taiwan 🇹🇼 and have no memory or recollection of the mainland, any connection they had to the mainland is faint. Granted, it was already kind of like that even before the KMT took over, when it was under Japanese rule 🇯🇵 and previously under Qing Dynasty rule and even before that. 

There are Taiwanese 🇹🇼 who have only lived in Taiwan 🇹🇼, and can trace their lineage back to just Taiwan 🇹🇼, like the majority of their ancestors were born on the island and lived there all their lives. So, there are Taiwanese-Americans 🇺🇸🇹🇼 who immigrated from Taiwan 🇹🇼 or are children of Taiwanese immigrants 🇹🇼 who were born there and have no real connection to mainland China 🇨🇳. They have as much connection to China 🇨🇳 as Jamaicans 🇯🇲 have to Africans, or your average white American 🇺🇸 has to Europeans. All white Americans 🇺🇸 are descendants of Europeans, but many of them were born in the US 🇺🇸, and their connection to Europe is so faint that it might as well not be there at all. 

 

There’s been a few shows (animated and live action) that have had Vietnamese-Americans 🇺🇸🇻🇳, like Hey Arnold! and most recently, The Sympathizer (which is based on a book 📖 from 2015 of the same name), but still not a whole lot. I’d also like to see Cambodian-Americans 🇺🇸🇰🇭, Laotian-Americans 🇺🇸🇱🇦, Myanma-Americans 🇲🇲🇺🇸 (Bamars), Filipino-Americans 🇺🇸🇵🇭, Indonesian-Americans 🇺🇸🇮🇩, Hmong-Americans 🇺🇸, Lahu-Americans 🇺🇸, Karen-Americans 🇺🇸, Shan-Americans 🇺🇸, Mon-Americans 🇺🇸, Chin-Americans 🇺🇸, Kachin-Americans 🇺🇸, and Kayah-Americans 🇺🇸. 

 

The part I think I would probably relate to the most in this show is the whole half-sibling thing. The synopsis I wrote on Wikipedia said that Jack and Lily are half-siblings, but they have different last names, they’re different ages (Jack is older than Lily by 2 years), and they’re parents are different ethnicities. So, at what point did their parents meet and conceive them, and which parent do they share? Because they’re half-siblings, that means they share one parent. I know this because me and my sisters are all half-siblings, we share the same mother but all have different fathers. The way the synopsis on Wikipedia explains it, it makes it sound like Jack and his father William married into the Pak family, and Jack was a child that William had from a previous relationship and he met Lily when she was already an older child (11 years old) and somewhat cognizant, and if that’s the case, then Jack and Lily wouldn’t be half-siblings, they’d be step-siblings. 

 

 

 

(This is a screenshot from Wylde Pak, showing the two main characters, Lily and Jack.) 

 

 

 

 

For them to be half-siblings, Jack would’ve had to have been born first from a previous relationship that William had prior to meeting Min, and after meeting Min, they have Lily, meaning Jack and Lily share the same father but have different mothers. Or, Jack was the kid that William and Min had together (he might have been the thing that truly brought them together and convinced them to get married 💍), and Lily was the one from a different relationship, meaning Jack and Lily would share a mother but have different fathers. I think the first one makes the most sense since Jack is the older of the two kids and his last name is Wylde. Lily has to be the child that William and Min after they got together. 

The sneak preview doesn’t really have any real context behind it. There’s no indication if this from the pilot episode, or the first episode, or the second episode, or even the fifth episode. But for sure, it’s from the first season because the show hasn’t been renewed for a second season. It hasn’t even come out yet. No official release date has been announced, it just says it’ll be out by mid-2025, which could really mean anything. It could mean May, June, or July since there are the months in the middle of the year. Maybe even August since it’s also a middle month. August probably makes the most sense since that’s back-to-school time, so all of the kids who are the show’s target audience will be going back to school, and they’ll have something to watch when they come back from school. But, I think June or July would be better since kids will be on summer break ☀️ and they’ll have more free time to watch cartoons, and won’t have to worry about the responsibilities of school like homework 📄📚. But that’s just me. I don’t decide these things. 

Basically, this clip is just the Pak family going to an Asian market of some kind, during some kind of sale and event that everyone else in the Korean-American community 🇺🇸🇰🇷 where they live going to, and they have to basically fight there way through the store to get the best deals on all the groceries they’re trying to get. I say Asian market because while most of the signs are written in English and Korean, I did spot at least one sign that was written in Japanese.

 

 

 

(This is a screenshot from Wylde Pak. If you’ll look in the corner, you’ll notice one of the signs is written in Japanese.) 

 

 

 

 

So, it’s not just a Korean store 🇰🇷, it’s a general Asian store, we have one like that in Albuquerque, though I haven’t been there in years. To the store, not Albuquerque, I’ve been to Albuquerque plenty of times. It’s all very exaggerated and cartoony like I was saying earlier. Even though all they’re doing is shopping 🛒 at a store during some kind of sale event, it’s presented as if they’re fighting in a war, like when each of the Pak family is “taken out,” it’s presented like they’re wounded soldiers bleeding out 🩸 in battle, telling their comrades to go on without them. 

 

 

 

 

(This is a screenshot from Wylde Pak, showing William Wylde and Min-Ju Pak.) 

 

 

And there was these Korean aunties 🇰🇷 that only speak Korean (and broken English but mostly Korean) that are stalking the store, and they’re portrayed as a three-headed monster, like something out of an alien movie 👽 or something. They kind of look like the alien worm from the 1983 low budget monster movie The Deadly Spawn, which also had three heads and was really gross and scary looking with big razor sharp teeth on all three heads and no eyes either head. It’s like that, but if the worm was a trio of old ladies huddled together in the same sweater, but the rest of their body is very worm-like. Jack and Lily encounter the aunties while they’re trying to get live fish 🐟 in the seafood section of the store, where they have live seafood, including octopus 🐙. 

 

 

 

 

(These are screenshots from Wylde Pak, showing the evil Korean aunties 🇰🇷 and Jack dealing with them.) 

 

 

 

 

Jack ends up being the one to distract them while Lily, dressed like she’s Steve Zissou from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, tries to get the fish 🐟. She fails, but it’s the thought that counts. BTW, I wasn’t kidding when I said she’s dressed like Billy Murray’s character in The Life Aquatic, like she’s wearing a blue sweater (she’s wearing a green shirt underneath) and a red beanie. That’s Steve Zissou, or I guess Jacques Cousteau since that’s who Steve Zissou was inspired by and is a parody of. She gets taken out, and then Jack is all alone by himself to fight his way through the store, which is just a complete mess. 

 

 

 

(These are screenshots from Wylde Pak, showing Lily trying and failing to bob for fish 🐟.)

 

 

 

 

There’s food, drinks, and boxes all over the ground, there’s people lying on the floor, just completely unsanitary conditions. It looks like a war zone but with groceries. There are even robots patrolling the store to make sure no one’s causing trouble and no one’s stepping out of line, like what the hell is happening!? How has the health inspector not shut this place down yet? Maybe those weren’t robots, maybe they were just people in costumes, but they were sure weird. Are they supposed to be a reference to the Pink Guards in Squid Game 🦑? I wonder if this is one of this things where it’s exaggerated and cartoony because it’s from a kid’s perspective. Like, this is how a kid would remember a shop-a-ganza 🛒 like this and how they would recount it, rather than how it actually happened. This is why the train crash 💥 in Super 8 was so exaggerated and over-the-top because it was from a kid’s perspective, a kid would remember and recount a train crash 💥 being that destructive and apocalyptic.

I usually don’t like to talk about art styles or animation whenever I talk about an animated movie or an animated series (cartoons or anime) because while they are the cornerstone of the medium (they are what makes them animation and different from live action), I do feel like people get too caught up in talking about the animation and art style when they talk about an animated work that they don’t talk about the other aspects like the music, or the writing, or the voice acting. To me, the writing is more important than the animation or art style because that’s the story, that’s the characters. A good story with good characters can make or break an animated work, if the writing is good, it will make it, but if the writing is bad, it will break it. 

 

That being said, I do like the animation and the art style of the show so far, based on what I saw in this sneak preview. It has a cute art style, I especially like that one store employee at the beginning of the clip, she looked really cute. And I did notice while watching the clip that the outlines on the characters kind of dance and move around, kind of like Ed, Edd n Eddy, though much more subtle not as in your face as in that show. I’m glad that type of animation style with the dancing outlines is coming back, because I like it, I think it’s pretty charming. 

 

 

 

(This is a screenshot from Wylde Pak, showing the cute scared employee at the beginning of the clip.) 

 

 

 

I really did like this short preview a lot. It looks like it’ll be a pretty good show, or at least a decent show. It reminds me a lot of Primos, except with Korean-Americans 🇺🇸🇰🇷 instead of Mexican-Americans 🇺🇸🇲🇽, and only two kids rather than a dozen or close to a dozen. I don’t know exactly how many kids live in the Ramírez-Humphrey household in Primos, but it’s a lot. It even kind of reminded me a little bit of The Ghost and Molly McGee when it comes to the family dynamic. It’s a husband and wife duo with two kids, one a girl ♀︎ and a boy ♂︎, and the kids are biracial on the count of the parents being two different races (one white and one Asian), and their grandmother comes to live with them. Except, unlike Nin Suksai, who ends up living in a local nursing home in the same town as the rest of the McGee family, Halmoni is living with the Pak family (at their house) full time. She’s helping taking care of the kids, and the parents are taking care of her since she’s an elderly woman ♀︎ now. 

 

Even the dynamic between the two parents in this show is similar to the one in The Ghost and Molly McGee, where the dad is kind of a dorky goofball, kind of a moron, and kind of weak and submissive, while the mom is definitely the stronger and more dominant of the two. She wears the pants 👖 in the relationship. I’m guessing a lot of shows do this to circumvent the portrayal of heterosexual couples ⚤ in the past, where the wife was usually the weak submissive one, while the husband was the strong and dominant one. But, I would for once like to see a show, especially a cartoon show, where the parents (the husband and wife) are portrayed as equals, and are equally as strong as each other, and depend on each other and work as a team, neither one is dominant over the other. 

 

It also reminded me of The Loud House, except again with just two kids rather than 11. Which makes sense since one of the creators of this show, Kyle Mitchell, also worked on The Loud House. He was a storyboard artist, supervising director, supervising producer, and co-executive producer on The Loud House. He’s also Canadian 🇨🇦 in case you didn’t know. A lot of Canadians 🇨🇦 have worked on The Loud House, and it’s even animated by a Canadian studio 🇨🇦, which probably explains why Lincoln goes to Canada 🇨🇦 in the Season 5 premiere. It was meant to honor all the Canadian artists 🇨🇦 they have on the team. It would’ve the same if the show were animated by a Mexican studio 🇲🇽 and had a bunch of Mexican crew members 🇲🇽, and the show were set in New Mexico, and they had the main character(s) go to Mexico 🇲🇽 at one point, it’d be to honor the Mexican crew members 🇲🇽. But, it makes me wonder what they thought of all the tired and old Canadian stereotypes 🇨🇦 they included in that episode. It’s also kind of funny that both show have a main character named Lily. I wonder if that’s why named the character Lily Pak to pay homage to Lily Loud. 

 

It’s one of those situations where someone who works on a show goes on to make their own show, and it ends up coming out looking and feeling like the show they worked on previously. That’s what happened with Benton Connor, a writer, storyboard artist, director, and voice actor on Regular Show, when he made his own pilot, Paranormal Roommates. It came out looking and feeling almost exactly like Regular Show, which probably explains why it wasn’t picked up for a series. But, this show was, despite how similar it looks and feels to The Loud House, and I’m glad. I haven’t been this interested in a new show at Nickelodeon in a long time. 

 

I hope that this show is as good as this preview would suggest, and that it does well. I hope that Nickelodeon does a lot of advertising for it, especially after all the marketing they did for Rock Paper Scissors 🪨📄✂️. That show was everywhere, it always in your face, you couldn’t escape it, especially if you were anywhere on any of Nickelodeon’s YouTube channels. Rock Paper Scissors 🪨📄✂️ occupied the channel banner of the Nicktoons channel, even after it premiered, and they uploaded all kinds of video compilations featuring the characters from that show. All that for a show barely anyone watches or talks about. 

 

So, they better do the same for the marketing for this show, considering way more people are interested in it and looking forward to it and it would appeal to a lot more people than Rock Paper Scissors 🪨📄✂️ ever could. This better not be another one of those shows that Nickelodeon completely screws over once it comes out, and barely gets any advertising or any air time, and then ends up canceling and dumping onto Nicktoons, even though it’s their own actions and decisions that lead to these show getting cancelled. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. They better not Harvey Beaks this one 😤. But, I guess we’ll see. 

I do kind of hope that they do a crossover with The Loud House, given how similar they are and how they have a connection to each other through Kyle Mitchell. This would be the perfect show to cross it over with. Though I really don’t know the Pak family would even come into contact with the Loud family, considering that they probably live in two completely different cities in two completely different states. Another fun idea would be to have The Loud House exist within the Wylde Pak universe as a fictional series, like it’s a show that the characters watch. A show within a show. That would be great way to pay tribute to The Loud House, and make it apart of the show without actually having them crossover. 

 

I do also hope the characters from Wylde Pak appear in the Nickelodeon crossover games like Nickelodeon Kart Racers and Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, that would be really cool. And of course, I hope that the show gets its own tie-in video games in the future if it proves to be as good as this preview suggests and if it’s successful. That’s something that The Loud House hasn’t even gotten (read these posts to learn more about that), so I hope that Wylde Pak gets some. 

 

 

 

(These are some more screenshots from Wylde Pak.) 

 

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 (This is the sneak preview of Wylde Pak that Nickelodeon released on their Nicktoons channel.) 

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Update (Thursday March 10, 2025):

🇺🇸🇰🇷

They released more clips from the show, and they gave a little bit more information about the show and what it’s actually about and what the dynamic of the Pak family actually is. The first clip they showed after the initial sneak peek with the scene in the Asian market was released as a YouTube Short and it revealed that Jack is visiting the Pak family household for the summer ☀️. That’s the whole premise of the show, he comes over to visit after William and Min unknowingly agree to let him come over, and now they have to get along and take care of him. So, I’m guessing based on that information that this is going to be sort of like Gravity Falls or Phineas and Ferb where the whole show takes place over the course of one summer ☀️. Yes, Phineas and Ferb, for as many years and seasons that it lasted, still just took place over one single summer ☀️. They expect us to believe that everything that happened within that 8 year, 4 season, 129 episode long run happened over the course of one summer ☀️ 😧, yeah sure 🤨. 

Or maybe it’s going to be one of those sorts of things where each season represents a different summer ☀️, like every season that the show gets is a new summer ☀️ in-which Jack visits. Assuming of course that this show even lasts more than one season, and Nickelodeon actually gives it the chance to flourish and grow, instead of just canceling it right away after one or two seasons when it isn’t an instant success like SpongeBob 🧽 was. And SpongeBob 🧽 wasn’t even really the instant success that the Nick executives seem to think it was, it took time to grow and develop an audience. 

It wasn’t until after the third season where it became the worldwide phenomenon that it is now, the cultural milestone that is now. Why should every new Nicktoon have to live up to that high expectation when it’s not even based in reality or historical fact? Also, since this show takes place in summer ☀️, releasing it in May, June, or July would be the best months to release it since it’s summer break ☀️. Kids are out of school, and they’ll be able to enjoy this show and they’ll get to feel as they’re on summer break ☀️ with the characters. 

Lily is the one who has the biggest problem adjusting because she’s used being the only child in the household, and she doesn’t want to share the attention with Jack, a boy ♂︎ who she barely knows and who doesn’t have the same mother as her. Plus, him coming over prevented them from going on vacation, meaning they have to cancel and stay home the rest of the summer ☀️ to tend to Jack. So she already kind of hates him and resents him for that. 

And the parents, William and Min, are not at all prepared to take care of a second child, even if it is just for the summer ☀️. They didn’t know he was coming over until he was right at the door 🚪. They were watching TV when Jack’s mom called, and Halmoni answered it and asked them if it was okay to let Jack come over, and not paying attention at all to what they were saying, they said “yes.” Guess that should tell you not to get too glued to the TV and actually pay attention when someone’s talking to you, otherwise you may accidentally invite your stepson over for the summer ☀️. That is the word they used to describe Jack, “stepson.” 

When Halmoni referred to him as Min’s stepson, that kind of threw me off because I was like, “Are Jack and Lily even half-siblings then? Are they actually step-siblings? Why did the plot synopsis on Wikipedia say that they’re half-siblings?” But, the more I thought about it, it made sense. Jack and Lily are still half-siblings because they have the same father, William Wylde (Jack’s last name is even Wylde), and that would make Jack Min’s stepson because she’d married to his father and he isn’t her biological son, and he’s a child from another marriage.  

That’s also probably why Jack doesn’t refer to Min as his mom and just refers to her by her first name. Though I bet it’s going to be one of those things where Jack doesn’t call Min his mom at first, but as the show goes on, the more they get to know each other, the more they get to know each other, and through adversity, Jack starts to see Min as his mom (or at least one of his moms) and starts referring to her as such. He starts using the “m word” more often. Though, I would applaud them for not going to clichéd route and had him refer to her as Min the whole time.

But, would that make my older sisters stepdaughters of my dad when he was married to my mom? That would make me the stepson and my older sisters the stepdaughters to my mom’s third, fourth, fifth, whatever number husband who died a few years ago from cancer or something? I never thought of any of my sisters as “step-siblings” and none of the people in my family (both sides of it) treated any of us like we were stepchildren. They just treated us like we were their children (flesh and blood 🩸) and like we were regular siblings. We are regular siblings, we’re half-siblings (we share the same mother and have different fathers), and my dad treated my sisters like they were his daughters, not like they were his stepdaughters or anything like that. So, to have Jack be referred to as “Min’s stepson” when he is the half-brother to Lily is completely new to me, I’ve never heard that before. 

Also, if Jack doesn’t actually live with William and Min full time and only visits occasionally during the summer ☀️ and other special occasions, how he does know how to speak Korean? We see him speak pretty fluent Korean in the sneak peek where he’s trying to distract those Korean aunties 🇰🇷 while Lily was trying to grab the fish 🐟 in the seafood section of the Asian market. How and when he have the time to learn Korean while he was living with his biological mother? Why would he need to learn Korean that fluently if he doesn’t live with the Paks full time? 

If anything, he should be bad at Korean because he doesn’t practice it or use it often in his daily life because he doesn’t live with the Paks full time, and therefore doesn’t need to know how to speak good Korean. Maybe, he learned it specifically so he could close to his sister and her side of the family, but it is pretty convenient that he knows how to speak Korean so well when he doesn’t even live with the Paks full time and is only here for the summer ☀️. I feel like they needed him to speak Korean good in that one specific scene, and didn’t think about whether or not it would make sense for his character to be that good at speaking Korean when he likely doesn’t live in a Korean 🇰🇷 or Asian community for most of his daily life. 

The second clip was uploaded as a regular YouTube video and it is much longer. It is much more comparable to the initial sneak preview, where it is a full scene than just a clip that’s only a few seconds long like the one where Jack comes to the Pak household. The biggest thing that we learn in this clip is that the Pak family run a business in a trailer outside of their house 🏡, it’s a pet grooming place 🐕🐈🪮 called the Groom & Board, and they’re apparently having drainage problems. One of the pipes is broken, and Min and Jack go to the hardware store to get a replacement, while William stays with Lily to clean the store. They’re all frantically trying to do this to avoid their business from being shut down by the main antagonist of whatever episode this clip is from…the inspector. 

Min and Jack happen to encounter the inspector at the very same hardware store they go to get the replacement for the broken pipe. She is a woman ♀︎, and she’s very mean, bitter, unreasonable, cruel, and takes her job way too seriously. Maybe even abuses her power, like you can tell she’s the kind of person who likes having power over other people and being able to shut down their businesses and make their lives significantly worse just with a click of her pen 🖊️. She shuts down the hardware store simply because they had a screw in the wrong bin. That’s the kind of person that the Pak family is up against and who their business is at the mercy of. She’s fat and but also kind of muscular, she has a huge forehead, she has thin rimmed glasses, she has terrible looking hair, and she has small beady eyes, they designed her to look as ugly, unattractive, evil, and intimidating as possible. She even rides a motorcycle 🏍️ to show that she’s really intense, and is probably the last person who should have a job like this, and yet does for some odd reason. 

 

 

 

(These are screenshots from the second 5 minute clip released for Wylde Pak showing what the infamous inspector looks like.)

 

 

Jack and Min find out that she rides a motorcycle 🏍️ after Jack disables this car, believing that it belongs to her, only for them to find out she actually rides a motorcycle 🏍️ and the car he ruined actually belonged to the store owner. That poor store owner just can’t catch a break. First his store gets shut down, and then his car is ruined. This guy ♂︎’s going to end up living in poverty unless he has some kids or grandkids who can take care of him, or his wife has a good paying job that the two of them can fall back on, or if he has enough money 💵 from Social Security to live off of for the rest of his life because he is an old guy ♂︎. 

Then, the rest of the scene is just a car chase with Jack and Min trying to get back to the salon before the inspector does. Jack is able to slow her down by calling someone in to start a traffic jam. How much power does this kid have? How does he know all these people, and how does he have all the connections? It reminds me of Darryl McGee from The Ghost and Molly McGee, how he had all these crazy connections and could just call someone in to do him favors. Except, unlike Darryl, Jack is still a good kid and an upstanding individual and not a criminal mastermind who would probably be on the FBI’s most wanted list were he not still a child. 

This is where we really see the dynamic of the family and dynamic between William and Min. It is just as I predicted, Min is the dominant one who takes charge of the situation, who is kind of bossy and aggressive, and is ordering everyone else around, and everyone else is afraid of her and afraid to get her mad. She’s more Nicole Watterson and less Sharon McGee, I’ll say that much. Though, I will say she is a bit like if you combined those two characters together, and made them Korean 🇰🇷 instead of Thai 🇹🇭 or a blue cat. 

She gets mad at William when he accidentally calls her “mom” when she’s barking out orders to everyone, and he got intimidated by her, she yells at him and then calmly tells him to not call her mom because it’s “weird.” Like, geez, for heaven’s sake woman ♀︎, calm down, it was just an accident, a slip of the tongue 👅, you don’t need to yell at him for that. We also see in this 4 minute clip that William is incompetent and kind of stupid. Maybe even a bit of a manchild ♂︎. All he was tasked with was helping Lily clean the salon, and the two of them end breaking everything and the electricity ⚡️ in the salon gets messed up. 

I don’t why this has become a common trope in fiction, particularly kid’s cartoons, “the Incompetent Idiotic Father,” where the father/husband is hopeless without the wife/mother, and they’d be nothing without them. I know a lot of women ♀︎ feel that way about men ♂︎, like men ♂︎ are incapable of taking care of themselves without the women ♀︎ in their life, like they can’t decorate without women ♀︎, they can’t cook without women ♀︎, they can’t clean without women ♀︎, and it’s only with the intervention of a woman ♀︎ they’re able to learn any of these skills. But come on, we’re not that bad most of us. I feel like this is just creating a stereotype about men ♂︎ that we’re completely useless unless we have a woman ♀︎ in our lives to tell us what to do and how to do it. Some men ♂︎ are like that, a lot of men ♂︎ actually (including my dad in a lot of instances), but not all of us.

Plus, people perpetuate this stereotype fail to consider “weaponized incompetence,” men ♂︎ (and women ♀︎ too) who pretend to be incompetent or who actually are incompetent and refuse to learn any new skills or improve themselves in anyway in order to take advantage of their partner and have them care of them as if they were a child. Because they are lazy and they don’t want to actually do anything except lounge around, watch TV, or spent time on the Internet 🛜 on their computer 🖥️💻 or on their phones 📱, and just generally be a waste of space. 

And yes, I did mean it when I said “women ♀︎ too” because women ♀︎ can be lazy and weaponize incompetence too. Though, it is mostly men ♂︎ who engage in this kind of duplicitous behavior. Most of the reported cases of weaponized incompetence online are about men ♂︎ weaponizing incompetence against women ♀︎, usually their wives or their girlfriends but sometimes their mothers, sisters, aunts, and daughters too. That’s why a lot of women ♀︎ have such a negative view of men ♂︎, and why a lot of women ♀︎ expect so little from men ♂︎, like they have low expectations of men ♂︎ and don’t expect men ♂︎ to be good at anything or be good in general. And it’s why it’s often viewed as a men ♂︎ vs. women ♀︎ problem, even though it’s not. It’s a human problem, and I feel like the Internet 🛜 boils it down to that way too often. 

I’m kinda getting tired of seeing this trope so much, and I hope we see something different. A different portrayal of a husband/father character and a different dynamic for a husband and wife duo in a show like this. But, we’ll see what this show does with this trope, if does it do it any different way or how much of an idiot they make William when it comes out because right now it seems they’re not really doing anything new with it and just using it the same way every other cartoon show with this trope does. 

 

(These are the two newly released clips of Wylde Pak that I was talking about in this update.)