Western Animation / Katie and Orbie

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Katie and Orbie is a Canadian Slice of Life and (not exactly) animated series for preschoolers, based on a series of books created by famed cartoonist Ben Wicks and his daughter Susan, which were focused on protecting the environment by doing age-appropriate tasks such as saving water and recycling. The series aired on Family Channel and reruns were also seen on the local Playhouse Disney/Disney Junior channel, while also being seen in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Spain and Latin America, among others.

The backstory is about a small, polka-dotted extraterrestrial that has been sent away from his planet because pollution has made it a place where life can no longer be sustained. The little alien lands on the backyard of a friendly five-year-old girl, who immediately befriends him and gets adopted by her family. Together they have adventures and discoveries alongside their other human friends. The characters do not speak, and all the action is described by an off-screen narrator (Leslie Nielsen).

The series had two different runs: one from 1993 to 1996, and another from 2001 to 2003, producing a total of 78 half-hour episodes in six seasons. Reruns still aired in Canada until 2012, while other countries stopped airing it by the Turn of the Millennium (except for Latin America, where it did not even premiere until 2008).

This show provides examples of:

• A Boy and His X: A little girl and her alien adopted sibling/best friend, who have an unbreakable bond and are seldom seen without each other.
• Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Orbie does not wear any clothes unless it's raining or snowing.
• Acquired Situational Narcissism: Orbie goes through this in "Orbie in Snow," when he gets to be the model for a sculpture in a snow-sculpting contest.
• Adaptation Expansion: A series based on a brief and obscure line of environment-themed books.
• All There in the Manual: Both the books on which the series is based, as well as the blurb of a VHS release of the series, reveal that Orbie was sent away from his very polluted home planet and that's how he got to Earth and met Katie.
• Amicably Divorced: Andy's parents. His father and stepfather even greet and chat with each other normally.
• Animation Bump: In this case, a character design and coloring bump. Noticeable as the series progresses. In the first two seasons, the series was cel-painted; in the third, it switched to digital ink and paint, which is even more brighter, clean and noticeable in seasons four to six (the series' second run).
• Babysitting Episode: "Babysitting Megan" has Katie, Orbie and their mom taking care of their neighbors' baby. Several episodes also feature Katie and Orbie being babysat, either by their college-aged neighbor Tom or by their grandparents.
• Ballet Episode: "Katie's First Dance Class".
• Bizarre Taste in Food: Orbie sometimes enjoys odd foods, like grape and tuna sandwiches.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The narrator often does it at the end of each story. A notable example occurs with the last line of the very last story (I Really Love You):
  And, one last thing, Katie and Orbie asked me to tell you that they really love you, too...
• Bumbling Dad: Often, Katie and Orbie's dad acts like this when playing with them.
• Broken Treasure: Used twice. In "I Didn't Break The Lamp," Orbie accidentally breaks one of the glass leaves off of Mom's ornate new lamp and spends the rest of the episode trying to keep his family from finding out, while in "Katie's Music Box," Katie obsessively insists that her friends be careful with her new music box, only to accidentally drop it and break it herself in the end.
• Came from the Sky: As shown in the intro, Orbie came into Katie's life this way.
• Cheerful Child: Most of the kid characters, but especially Katie, who is rarely seen in a mood other than a happy or pleasant one.
• Chickenpox Episode: In "Chicken Pox Party," Katie catches the chicken pox on Halloween.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Several characters seen at the beginning of the series, and others who are introduced later, just vanish after a few appearances (or even just one) and are never mentioned again.
• Disembodied Eyebrows: Orbie's eyebrows float above his head, while Katie's eyebrows are always over her hair.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The original books are themed specifically to environmentalism, rather than a general Slice of Life, and their illustrations are very crude compared to the art style of the series.
  • The early episodes showed that Orbie could change the color of his polka dots or even his whole body depending on his mood, but this was gone after the first season. In the very first episode, Katie's skin color is paler than normal, and the overall coloring is a bit darker than the rest of the series. Also in that episode, there are references to "an Orbie" and "Orbies," as if Orbie's name is also the name of his species; for the rest of the series, it's just his name.
• Expository Theme Tune: Unusual for a Western animated series, the theme song lasts a full two minutes.
• Fear of Thunder: The very first episode, "The Thunderstorm," revolves around this.
• Fire-Breathing Diner: Downplayed in "Katie's First Sleepover", when Katie's face turns ripe red after tasting spicy Indian food.
• Friend to All Children: Tom, the characters' college-aged babysitter, as well as his girlfriend Polly and old lady neighbor Mrs. Parette.
• Garage Sale: The episode "Garage Sale" is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Katie enjoys selling her outgrown toys to other kids who will play with them, but Orbie feels too sad to say goodbye to his own old toys: he ends up buying them back from the customers who bought them and waiting until the next year to sell them.
• Green Aesop: All the original books are about taking care of the environment, and while the TV series drops this overarching theme, it still has a few environmentalism-themed episodes, most notably "Katie and the Sad World" from the first season.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Katie is a kind Cheerful Child with blonde hair.
• Halfway Plot Switch: "The Park Swings" starts out as a Feud Episode, where Katie gets mad at Orbie for being inconsiderate, and won't forgive him even when it becomes clear that he behaved that way because he doesn't feel well. But when she comes into the bedroom and sees just how sick and sad he looks, she does forgive him. Then in the second half, Katie and Orbie run off to the park to play before Mom or Dad can stop them, but when Orbie tries to swing, he only feels sicker than ever, and they learn a lesson about the importance of staying home and resting when you're sick.
• Happily Adopted: Orbie, by Katie's family.
• Happily Married: Katie and Orbie's parents. They take special care to assure the kids of this in "Two Fathers", where they learn about Andy's parents' divorce, as well as in "The Argument", where the kids overhear them having an argument and fear they don't love each other anymore.
• Halloween Episode: "The Chicken Pox Party" combines this with Sick Episode. When Katie catches the chicken pox, it looks like her Halloween party will need to be canceled, but fortunately it turns out that most of her friends have had the chicken pox already, so they can have the party after all.
• Innocent Aliens: Orbie is so innocent that practically no one even cares that he's an alien.
• Interspecies Friendship: Between Katie, a human, and Orbie, an alien.
• Kids Are Cruel: "That's Not My Name" has some bullies at a playground mocking Micah, a boy with Down syndrome. He stands up to them while his mom appoints Katie and Orbie as "guardians against ignorance", and two of the three bullies even become their friends by the end (the other just leaves the playground).
• Last of His Kind: Orbie was the only one that escaped his planet's pollution
• Limited Animation: Technically there is no animation, the scenes fade into each other as if it were a slideshow or electronic storybook. This process was referred to by the series' producers as "picture-mation". Some episodes, however (particularly those from the first season), do have short bits of fluid animation. Each half-hour episode is composed of only about 600 drawings (200 per individual story).
• Limited Wardrobe: Most characters. Katie is almost always seen with a green and white striped T-shirt and blue overalls (or variations of it, such as a blue skirt or short pants) during the day, and a green nightgown at bedtime.
• Literal-Minded: Justified as the title characters are only five years old.
  • In "Right Around the Corner", as his parents tell Orbie that spring is "right around the corner", he runs to the street corner looking for it.
  • In "The Chicken Pox Party", when Katie gets chicken pox, she believes she will turn into a chicken.
  • And in "Everybody Gets the Blues", when Mrs. Parette tells Katie about how everybody gets the blues sometimes, Katie looks at her own hands believing they have turned blue.
  • In "Burnt Toast," Mom asks Orbie to watch the toast in the toaster oven for her. Orbie doesn't get the implication that he should call for Mom when the toast is ready, so he just watches it until it burns and sets off the smoke alarm.
• Meaningful Name: The family cat is named Chance, after she was rescued as a sickly kitten from the side of a highway by the local pet shelter to give her a chance at a new life.
• Moses in the Bullrushes: The original books and the back covers of the series' VHS releases explain that Orbie's home planet was destroyed by pollution, deforestation, and neglect of the environment, so his mother sent him in a flying saucer to Earth to save his life, and of course he landed in the garden of Katie and her family, who took him in. Unlike most examples of this trope, however, Orbie knows where he came from and still remembers his home planet.
• Narrator: None other than Leslie Nielsen. Usually addresses the audience at the end of each episode and even laughs at Katie and Orbie's antics.
• Name and Name: Katie and Orbie.
• New Baby Episode: In "The New Baby", a neighbor couple has a baby girl, and when they bring her home from the hospital, Katie and Orbie get to go to their house to meet her.
• New Year Has Come: "Happy New Year." Katie and Orbie try to stay awake until midnight, but fail.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • Lampshaded in "The New Baby", as Orbie mentions he and Katie have a friend named Megan, which is also the titular baby's name. This is how they learnt that different people can have the same name, and to distinguish the baby from their friend, they decide to call her "Little Megan."
  • "Skates" features a one-time character named Andy, completely unrelated to Katie and Orbie's recurrent friend with the same name.
• Opening Narration: Each story opens with a variation of the following:
  It had been an (adjective) day, Katie discovered (something), Orbie found out (something), and they both learned (something).
• Parental Abandonment: Orbie was sent away from his planet by his biological parents, who presumably died along with all their species due to pollution.
• Parental Substitute: Katie's parents for Orbie.
• Picky Eater: In the episode "Stone Cold Soup," Katie is reluctant to try minestrone soup for the first time. Unusually for a kids' show episode with this theme, she still doesn't like the soup even after she tastes it in the end, and her parents respect this and don't make her finish it. It isn't as bad as she thought it would be, though, and she still learns the Stock Aesop about at least giving new foods a try.
• Plot Allergy: "Does It Have Eggs In It?" revolves around the egg allergy of Katie and Orbie's friend Bryn, while in "Wild Flower Bouquet," Dad can't stop sneezing and everyone thinks he has a cold, but it turns out he's allergic to the wildflowers Katie and Orbie just picked.
• Precocious Crush: In "Puppy Love", Orbie gets one on Polly, the older (and human) girlfriend of his babysitter Tom.
• Remember the New Guy?: A particular example occurs in "Close to My Heart", which deals with Kerry, Katie's "best friend" having to move to another town and trying to run away with Katie. Kerry had never been seen or mentioned before, and after both girls say their goodbyes, she is never acknowledged again.
• Ruptured Appendix: This happens to Yee Ping in the episode "Yee Ping's Appendix."
• Satellite Character: From all of Katie and Orbie's friends, Phoebe, the younger sister of Bryn, a girl with an egg allergy, is this since she is never shown without Bryn and there isn't any particular focus on her like other characters.
• Series Continuity Error:
  • Chance the cat's gender changes from female in the series' 1993-1996 run to male in the 2001-2003 run.
  • Likewise, Micah's horse Spirit is first introduced as a male during the show's first run, but in the second run not only becomes female, but gives birth to a foal!
  • Polly's appearance also changes drastically: from being white-skinned and red-haired to brown-skinned and black-haired.
  • In Season 2's "Bugs," Mom is afraid of spiders but Katie has no qualms about them, but in Season 4's "Spider," Katie is afraid of them.
• Sick Episode:
  • Katie comes down with the chicken pox in "Chicken Pox Party" and tonsillitis in "Sore Throat."
  • In "The Park Swings," Orbie comes down with an unspecified sickness that turns first his spots and later his whole body green.
• Signature Sound Effect: Katie's happy laugh (although it is a stock effect instead of one made specifically for the series) and Orbie's chirp-like sounds and honks made with his nose.
• Slice of Life: The series is about the daily mundane life adventures of two preschool-aged children (well, a human girl and an alien boy), alongside their family and friends.
• Smelly Skunk: In the episode "Peeheew!" Orbie gets sprayed by a skunk. It takes repeated tomato juice baths to get rid of the smell.
• Straight to the Pointe: Downplayed in "Katie's First Dance Class" in that Katie is the only one in the class who's wearing pointe shoes.
• Suburbia: The main characters live in a nice, friendly one, apparently far from a major city. When they visit their paternal grandparents in the big city, it's like visiting a new world.
• Through a Face Full of Fur: Orbie early in the series. At least, it's just his spots that changed color along with his moods. But in "Park Swings", he began having green spots due to feeling sick. Later in the same episode, he got worse when he tried using a park swing while still sick and ended up being entirely green with blue spots.
• Title Drop: Many episodes mention the activity, thing or question for which they are titled.
• Token Minority: Among their friends: an Indian girl (Sacha), a Chinese girl (Yee Ping), a Native-American boy (Dakota), a Jewish boy (Arthur), a Black girl in a wheelchair (Charisse), and a girl newly arrived from an unstated African or Middle Eastern country (Belkis). Their babysitter Tom and his girlfriend Polly are also Black, and the store clerk that appears in some episodes seems to be Muslim.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Katie wears a tomboyish outfit, favors lively outdoor games and doesn't care for playing with dolls, but she does like playing dress-up, takes ballet classes, and keeps her mom's pretty childhood doll on her dresser.
• The Tonsillitis Episode: "Sore Throat" is an unusual variation. Katie comes down with tonsillitis, but doesn't have a tonsillectomy; it's just treated as an ordinary Sick Episode. As the trope page explains, this is more often Truth in Television than the surgery nowadays.
• Too Smart for Strangers: "Don't Talk to Strangers" has this Stock Aesop.
• Three Shorts: The series uses this format for each half-hour episode, alongside two 30-second interstitial segments.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Orbie's favorite dinner is mini burgers with spinach and cheese on top, which look like little flying saucers, and which the family calls "Orbos."
• Unnamed Parent: Katie and Orbie's parents actually do have names, but they are only mentioned once throughout the entire series. They are named Wayne and Susan (the latter likely after the characters' creator). On the other hand, their surname is never mentioned.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: An almost extreme example. Nobody, even people who meet Katie and Orbie for the first time, seem to care that they are seeing a pink, spotted alien who communicates by squeaks and honk sounds walking around. Those who are surprised by him at first glance, eventually get to like him after seeing how innocent and well-meaning he is.
• Valentine's Day Episode: "A Big Heart" has Katie and Orbie's whole family preparing valentines for each other. Orbie doesn't see any valentines for him and thinks his adoptive family must not love him, but in the end it turns out there are plenty for him, they were just kept hidden as a surprise.
• Very Special Episode: Though never promoted as such, there are several. Katie and Orbie met and befriended children with deafness, asthma, food allergies, cerebral palsy and Down syndrome. Another episode focused on their friend Andy having "two fathers" (a father and a stepfather) as his parents are divorced, with a nice and straightforward explanation of why a divorce occurs. This was in a time when talking about divorce or disabilities in a children's animated series was almost a taboo (just a few years prior, a Sesame Street episode about divorce was shelved due to negative reactions from test audiences).
• Would Hit a Girl: In his first appearance, Arthur, who was a kid with a short temper, smacked Katie on the arm just because he wanted the toy car she was playing with. He later attempts to hit her again but is stopped by Katie's mother.