I watched Bronx Buds

The YES Network--or the app, anyway--yesterday launched an animated series for kids, alternately titled Bronx Buds and HexClad Presents Bronx Buds. They plan to release episodes on Saturday mornings, because everyone cherishes the memory of Saturday morning cartoons except for kids, teens, recent college grads, and some of the people currently having kids, who are all too young to have watched them. Running time of the first episode is a generous 8:23. 

I was mainly curious about what message the show might try to put across. I mean, there would be at least one, because kids aren't allowed to enjoy themselves without having "sharing is good" hammered into them so it can be traumatically stripped away when they grow up and go to work for McKinsey. But would the message somehow relate to the Yankees? Is there any way a brief, uncomplicated cartoon could pass to a new generation the values of this team under Hal Steinbrenner? 

I am here to tell you yes, my friends, there is a way, and the producers of Bronx Buds found it. Indeed, they put their finger on the core of this organization's true faith. As anyone who ever watched or listened to a Yankee game can tell you, that simple, cherished ideal is in-show advertising. 

The climactic scene--consuming an extravagant 2:34 of running time--is a baseball game, the most important of the season, between your Bronx Buds, a Little League team, and their rivals, the fearsome and despised Queens Hamsters.  The game is played in a well-appointed ballpark with grandstands, dugouts, and an outfield wall peppered with real-life corporate logos. Ad clients on and off the wall include HexClad, which turns out to be a frying pan company (really?), the YES App (I get it), TZERO (which I'll get to), and, most jarringly... 

...Bical Auto Mall of Brooklyn (which exists). As a wide shot establishes the pitcher's POV, an animated beaver drives a car sporting the company logo to the middle of the frame, stops to leer at the viewer, then speeds off. Just like some animated plug on a real Yankee game. Friends, I fell to my knees and wept. Beauty moves me.

So far, we're being sold frying pans, cars, and a streaming app. Nothing a kid would buy. No harm done, right? But the door is open. How long before a Bronx Buds establishing shot is obliterated by an ad for DraftKids?  

I promised to tell you about TZERO. It's the animation studio behind Bronx Buds. Well, not an animation studio, exactly. According to its website it's "a team of visionary artists, storytellers, and animation enthusiasts dedicated to pushing the boundaries of animated entertainment." And push them they did.