PAW Patrol - Season 2

As of Season 2, the PAW Patrol's police arm now has a
secret intelligence remit and access to drone surveillance.

So, now we've seen Season 2 of PAW Patrol and let me tell you, this is where shit gets weird.

Perhaps provoked by the escalating climate of intercivic tensions caused by Mayor Humdinger of Foggy Bottom's slide into cartoonish supervillainy, Police Pup Chase is given a second outfit and vehicle geared towards his secondary role as a super spy, replacing his trusty winch and megaphone with a zipline, a spy drone and a publicly denied shoot to kill policy*. Fire Pup Marshall also gets an upgrade, but his is basically first aid training and access to a portable backscatter x-ray screen, and Zuma's hovercraft gets a submarine mode.

In addition, the team goes global with the Paw Patroller, a massive SUV with space to house the pup houses, a spacious hang-out area, control room and, most important, built-in Pup-Pup Boogie(TM) system. It's driven by Robopup, a mechanical dog that went rogue in its first activation, so putting it in charge of a multi-tonne vehicle makes perfect sense. With this transport, the team are able to travel by road to such locations as the jungle (encountering elephants and harpy eagles in close proximity) and the Antarctic, where they meet idealistic young Scottish husky Everest, who gets reserve PAW Patrol membership, but not a spot in the credits yet.

Yeah, so... this happens.

As part of his general scheming to win various civic competitions, and tired of the PAW Patrol's meddling, Mayor Humdinger recruits his own team: The Kitten Catastrophe Crew. The KCC (I'm just grateful they didn't go with Katastrophe Krewe, because that would have been unfortunate) are basically six kittens with similar equipment to the PAW Patrol, who are summoned by Humdinger to aid in his nefarious plans. They are largely ineffectual, but have a cool spy-style theme tune and an honest-to-gosh lair. It is surely only a matter of time before the PAW Patrol rounds them up and renders them off to Guantanameow Bay.

Then Skye, Zuma and Rocky are turned into Mer-pups. For realsies.

Having met a mer-pup and helped Santa to save Christmas, it feels odd that
dinosaurs are considered a step too far.

Something odd in PAW Patrol is that, for all that they live in a world of talking dogs, magical tranformations and hyper-competent pre-teens, the pups display some remarkably old-fashioned and conservative views on gender roles. Sure, Skye is a pilot, but any animal seen displaying parental behaviours is automatically assumed to be a mummy. As a father, I resent this.

There's also an episode with dinosaurs, but that turns out to be a dream, which is actually weirder in context than a lost world of surviving dinosaurs. I mean... the pups swim with merfolk, are even magically transformed, they study the ancient art of pup fu, and drive to the Antarctic on a whim, but dinosaurs are too out there?

* I have no evidence of this policy yet.