Joey, Marky and Dee Dee (Oggy and the Cockroaches, season 5)

Joey, Marky and Dee Dee (Oggy and the Cockroaches, season 5) These cockroaches were ultimate CROOKS in this season. Or is it another word? Gender: Male Type: Obnoxious & Sadistic Comic Reliefs The Dark Side of The Cockroaches Species: Insects Portrayed by: Hugues Le Bars (archive recordings) Status: Alive Media of origin: Oggy and the Cockroaches

Joey, Marky and Dee Dee (The Cockroaches) are three of the four titular characters, comic reliefs and the deuteragonists/main antagonists of the French animated television series Oggy and the Cockroaches. They are a trio of cockroaches who annoy and pick on Oggy (a blue cat), and he has to deal with their various antics. The mayhem they generate generally ranges from raiding Oggy's fridge to blowing up his submarine with a barrage of missiles (and getting him and themselves killed in the process).

In general (particularly in the first two seasons when Gaumont Multimedia was at the helm), the trio are hilariously hammy and rambunctious villains with occasional soft sides, but during the fifth season of Oggy and the Cockroaches (generally considered by some fans outside of seasons 6 & 7 to be the weakest/worst season of the series), there was an even more irritating, malicious and generally unlikable side to their comically barbaric behavior tending to spark amongst fans of the show (such as Miraheze users on this very site) debates on what went wrong and how their callous nature was exaggerated into perpetually intoxicated plot devices with no real personalities beyond sociopathic imbeciles with an unpalatable desire struggled to please to wreck, destroy, and even murder with their demeaning mistreatment, buffoonish clumsiness and whimsical mischief, something which was previously designated and depicted a lot more humorously and tastefully in the 2013 film adaptation. Only in season 6 would the characters revert to their original personalities, and even then this is only apparent due to this season (commonly considered to be the absolute worst of the series) just remaking and remastering forty-three season 1 and thirty-five season 2 episodes shot-for-shot.

Intentional Bad Qualities

1. They have been badly flanderized from hilarious screwball pranksters to obnoxious psychopaths.
   • They have lost almost all of their charm and likability from the first two seasons, though it varies whether they're in-character or not in seasons 3 and 4.
   • The main problems with their flanderizations are that their new personalities went against the ones which were already established and that they got either replaced by clichéd stereotypes that make them blander, like Dee Dee becoming more of a fat idiot than before, or that their traits became exaggerated, like Marky and Joey's cowardice being taken up to eleven.
2. Something that made them unique from one another was the amount of detail in their expressions, movements and reactions, but now each of the trio act exactly the same, and none of the three stand out despite their looks and their personalities, even if it's not essentially the writers' fault for this, but the drastic change of animation style.
3. Their voices have become much more obnoxious and ear-piercing than before, a problem that started in season 4 but is at its worst here and even after this season.
4. Most of the stuff they do is even more obnoxiously over-the-top, very childish & undignified, rude, repulsive, disgusting, dirty and mean-spirited to the point where it's not even funny.
   • They even try to murder and enslave Oggy and friends several times.
   • They can sometimes do deformed, repulsive things they would normally wouldn't do, like abandoning each other for their own benefit in "Beware the Longship".
5. They begin to betray each other and start getting into fights which is something they normally don’t do in the previous seasons. Since their negative qualities are more obvious and their redeeming qualities aren't as frequent, their friendship isn't as charming as the first three seasons (and to some extent, the fourth and even some of the seventh) and feels more codependent.
6. They are usually miscast as villains in most of the episodes since their roles as villains or anti-heroes were depicted in an inconsistent manner, making them lack focus as the villains.
   • Never is this more apparent than in "Zmen to the Rescue", where they become straight-up doomsday villains instead of anti-heroic and antagonistic pranksters with sympathetic qualities, mutate into a disgusting species and mercilessly attack Animville.
7. They are also turned into huge butt-monkeys in this season as they have the least amount of wins, unlike the other seasons. Yes, they were also punching bags during the fourth season, but it was never taken this far.
8. Most of the time, the cockroaches are only present to move along the plot.
9. Thanks to the quick and stubby movements, their off-model designs can range from appropriately cartoonish & encapsulating to downright hideous, especially whenever they make extremely grotesque, intentionally comedic, screwy expressions or move utterly wildly. Especially the double-length specials "Oggy and the Treasure" and "Oggy's 1001 Nights".
10. They're quite destructive due to how they continously wreck everything in sight, and often on a whim rather than it being delicately calculated like in the earlier seasons. These include (but are not limited to):
    • Invading a pyramid after attracting grasshoppers in "The Cloud of Locusts".
    • Causing chaos on Oggy and Olivia's dream cruise in "Oggy on the Nile".
    • Wreaking havoc throughout Oggy's spa & getting away with torturing him in "Oggy Puts an End to Thermal Baths".
    • Exhausting Oggy by repeatedly holding up a bank in "Sheriff Oggy".
    • Nearly getting Jack sentenced to public humiliation in "Oggy, the King's Coachman".
    • Going around causing mass destruction in "The Levee of the King".
    • Booting out Oggy and Jack and wrecking Bob's castle in "Castle Life for the Cockroaches".
    • Nearly getting Jack executed by an Indian leader in "The Cockroaches and Cricket".
    • Momentarily trying to take credit for Charles Lindbergh's flight around the world in "Lead in the Wing".
11. Much like in season 4, they're at their most gratuitously idiotic, never formulating their plans and always being defeated. For example, the fact that they're still madly in love with and lust after Lady K even though she's shown to be a lazy, manipulative Mary Sue.
12. Overall, Joey, Marky and Dee Dee in this season take their worst traits from seasons 3 and 4 (being much crueler and annoying than they usually are) and makes them even worse, as there they are much more tolerable, less idiotic & slightly friendlier (mostly to each other, but sometimes to Oggy, Jack and Olivia as well).

Good Qualities

1. They are much better characters in seasons 1-4 and have massively redeemed themselves since season 6.
2. There are still plenty of moments or episodes throughout this season where the roaches are likable and retain their original personalities, or deliver funny slapstick, such as "Fragile Goods!", where Joey and Marky singing "Happy Birthday" to Dee Dee is rudely interrupted via a dynamite blast that chars them, even though they forgot to put it out since it's squished between Dee Dee's forehead, which adds to the ironic hilarity.
3. They usually do get punished for most of their actions, preventing them from being in the karma houdini category.
4. Their designs are still great and iconic, despite the massive downgrade in animation and art quality that would plague seasons 5-7.
5. This season did give Marky and Dee Dee character development.
6. Deep down, they still care about each other, and there are rare moments where they share amicable moments with Oggy as well, though not as much or as satisfying as the previous seasons.
7. The series/franchise would admittedly not be as great as it is without them.
   • On that note, since they're the main villains of the show and constantly torment whoever they meet, it's palatable that the trio are intentionally supposed to be unlikable.
8. When he isn't screeching their lines in archival recordings, the late great Hugues Le Bars (also the show's composer until season 5 and the 2013 movie) still does an awesome and memorably hammy performance as all three. You can tell that he had an absolute blast exaggerating their emotions, and making Joey especially come off as expressive and exuberant whenever he states in a comically greedy fashion of gibberish or if he's emoting excitement, sass, snark, misery, pain, scheming, concern, depression, relief, etc.

Trivia

• French music composer Hugues Le Bars, who originally provided the vocal effects of Oggy, the cockroaches and miscellaneous characters, died on November 1, 2014 after the fourth season of Oggy and the Cockroaches ended. This meant that from the series' fifth season onward (as well as future Oggy media feautring the cockroaches), archival recordings of Hugues Le Bars' voice clips were reused for the cockroaches.

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