Last Fall, Netflix debuted Dr. Seuss’s Red Fish, Blue Fish, an animated series loosely based on the 1960 book, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Season one had five episodes, but it wasn’t that long a wait until the second season rolled out another five episodes.
The show is geared towards preschoolers and features two fish friends and their adventures. Red Fish is the reckless and temperamental one while Blue Fish is shy and more careful. Their world is about as opposite as they are. Each episode is about a pair of words that are each other’s opposites. Red Fish and Blue Fish try to accomplish one goal or another, and through their task, they experience the meanings of those words. Aside from the title words, which are spoken several times through the episode, there is very little dialogue.
While this show is simple and for younger kids, it’s not dumbed down at all. Red Fish and Blue Fish face some real peril and even go up against actual antagonists (like a greedy octopus or a trio of destructive starfish). The plot starts simply enough, but many episodes kick things into a faster pace. The jokes are all visual, and there’s a lot of slapstick. Anyone can laugh at what happens to the fish.
The biggest flaw in the show is how it constantly ignores the fact that this is all supposed to take place underwater. All the sea creatures hover, and bubbles are produced with their movements, but aside from that, things work just as they would on the surface. They fly balloons and kites, light fires, get rained on by clouds, shoot water out of hoses, and everyone is subjected to the laws of gravity. It’s usually easy to ignore and just go with it, but it can be distracting at times.
Season two is five episodes, but each episode contains three seven minute vignettes. So it’s more like 15 episodes this season. Here’s what we get:
“Pick Up/Drop Off” – Red Fish and Blue Fish want the last dolphin toy in a store, but a belligerent octopus has his sights on it as well.
“Win/Lose” – A game of strength at a carnival offers an appealing prize, so Red Fish and 
Blue Fish have to figure out how to actually win the game.
“Push/Pull” – A farmer needs Red Fish and Blue Fish to help him bring the cows into his barn, but they have difficulty moving a particularly stubborn cow.
“In/Out” – Red Fish and Blue Fish try to put an octopus baby to sleep, but when it gets out of its crib, they end up chasing it through a post office.
“Yummy/Yucky” – Red Fish and Blue Fish have a picnic, but before they can eat their yummy cookies, something yucky keeps happening to it.
“Up/Down” – The fish get a kite and try to keep it up even though it keeps coming down.
“Lost/Found” – A pirate has a map to a lost treasure, so Red Fish and Blue Fish help him find it.
“Same/Different” – A shrimp wants to put on a dance show but gets frustrated when Red Fish and Blue Fish’s dance moves are different from the other dancers.
“Here/Gone” – A gopher keeps stealing vegetables from Red Fish and Blue Fish’s garden, and they want him gone.
“Hard/Easy” – When a turtle egg hatches in front of Red Fish and Blue Fish, they learn that getting it back to its mother is harder than they think.
“Build/Destroy” – Red Fish and Blue Fish build a magnificent sand castle in a contest, but jealous starfish attempt to destroy it.
“Appear/Disappear” – Red Fish and Blue Fish put on a magic show where Red Fish makes things appear and Blue Fish makes them disappear, but Red Fish’s competitive nature gets in the way of the act.
“Grow/Shrink” – An inventor builds a device that can grow and shrink things, but when he leaves the room, Red Fish and Blue Fish play with the device until they lose control of it.
“Fast/Slow” – Red Fish and Blue Fish want to go to a concert and get stuck in slow traffic, so they have to find fast transportation.
“Excited/Calm” – A game show selects Red Fish and Blue fish to be contestants, and while they are excited for the games, Blue Fish must achieve inner calmness to win.
All around, some good episodes with a wide variety of words. I can see how constantly repeating the words while Red Fish and Blue Fish are trying to accomplish their tasks are important (like in “Up/Down” or “Grow/Shrink”), but I think the best episodes are the ones that can show the words can have multiple meanings. Helping the turtle in “Hard/Easy” was hard as in difficult, but they get a hard (as in firm) hug in the end. “Same/Different” had a good lesson in the end because while the shrimp wanted everyone to dance the same, he learned the benefit of giving the audience something different.
The weaker episodes didn’t have much going for them beyond their premise. “Push/Pull” had a conclusion that didn’t have to do with either word. “Appear/Disappear” kind of dragged because it was mostly just things appearing and disappearing.
There’s a lot of charm to the show. I like the animation style. It’s not quite what you’d get 
in a Dr. Seuss book, as it is somewhat cleaner, but it’s unmistakably in the Seuss style. The character designs are adorable, and Dr. Seuss crazy contraptions show up in episodes like “Build/Destroy” and “Fast/Slow” (apparently Red Fish is quite the inventor). The show could do better with having recurring characters that look unique. There’s this whale that looks like she’s always exercising that pops up from time to time. It’s hilarious and I wish there were a dozen more characters like her. The inventor could easily be used in other episodes.
I have to praise the voice work of this show. Narrated by Naomi Tan, each episode’s scene is laid out in the classic Dr. Seuss rhyming meter. Her voice over closes out the episode too. This is probably the best way to get the rhyming involved without taking the viewer out of the episode. Brian Drummond stars as Red Fish with Andrea Libman playing Blue Fish. Despite not saying many words (they are almost exclusively limited to the two words of the episode), they do a lot of work. Red Fish and Blue Fish are expressive in their screams of terror, sighs of exasperation, and any noise between excited and scared. They’re basically making some kind of noise throughout the whole episode, which is probably just as big a task as spoken dialogue.
Dr. Seuss’s books may have been meant to be read, but don’t doubt they can be made into longer movies or TV shows. Red Fish, Blue Fish has exotic underwater locations, fun upbeat music, and expands the premise of the original book beautifully. Dr. Seuss’s Red Fish, Blue Fish is produced by Atomic Cartoons and Dr. Seuss Enterprises. All five episodes of season two, along with the five episodes of the first season, are available on Netflix.
