Family Dog!

This one’s gonna be tough, as I’ll be describing something I haven’t seen or even really thought about in literally three decades:

I’ve run episodes of Amazing Stories on Dino Drac After Dark before, but this one was a massive departure from the show’s usual lean on semi-macabre stuff.

Premiering in 1987, Family Dog was about… well, a family dog. What I remember most about the episode is how hard my whole family laughed at it. Like serious fist-pounding laughter, from a roomful of hard sells.

By 1987 standards, seeing a cartoon dog piss on a cartoon carpet was unheard of. Family Dog seemed downright edgy in its time, and we couldn’t help but draw comparisons between the titular pooch and our own dog.

Family Dog would get its own series in 1993, but I don’t believe I ever caught it. No idea how firm the connection was to this older Amazing Stories episode, but the lineage is definitely there.