Can we fix it?note
Bob the Builder is a children's television series created by Keith Chapman and produced & distributed by HiT Entertainment, first broadcast in 1998 which involves the eponymous manual labourer and a group of living construction vehicles accompanied by rock music. The original series (up until the conclusion of Ready, Steady, Build) was regularly broadcast on The BBC's television channels, including CBeebies.
In 2015, the series was rebooted with new designs and animation by Mainframe Entertainment for Seasons 1 and 2. In 2018, the 2015 series was animated by DHX Media (now WildBrain) for the third season.
An animated film is currently in development and will star the voice of Anthony Ramos, who will also serve as producer.
Has nothing to do with the "Bob Is Building An Army" copypasta
that arose on Youtube in April 2009.
This programme contains examples of:
- Art Evolution: Initially inverted, but then played straight. The show started off as a rather high-quality Stop Motion series. Then, when it was relaunched as Ready, Steady, Build, it changed to low-quality CGI animation like several other kids shows seemed to be turning into at the time. The reboot (despite the controversial redesigns) is animated with much better CGI from Mainframe Entertainment.
- Birthday Episode: The classic series has three of them:
- Bob celebrates his birthday in the Series 1 episode "Bob's Birthday", but unknown to him, Wendy and the others are just pretending that it's an ordinary day and plan to surprise Bob when he comes home from a job.
- Wendy celebrates her birthday in two episodes. In "Wendy's Magic Birthday", Bob and the gang wish her a happy birthday, but she doesn't want any fuss, so Bob and the gang prepare to surprise Wendy with a magic birthday show for her. In the Ready, Steady, Build! episode "Wendy's Birthday Surprise, the gang are getting ready for her surprise birthday party, but Scoop wants to get everything ready by himself. Unfortunately, Wendy's birthday present falls down a well that Bob and the team were working on causing Scoop to realise the error of his actions and that he needs help from his friends to complete the job and get the party ready on time.
- Black Bead Eyes: Everyone (except for the vehicles) have these kind of eyes in the classic series.
- Bowdlerise: The original version of the episode "Wallpaper Wendy" features a scene of Bob mumbling after the wallpaper gets stuck on his face, and this mumbling was misinterpreted as him swearing the words "fucking hell." The later versions of the episode had Bob's mumbling muted.
- The Cameo: "Scrambler to the Rescue" features toys of other Hit Entertainment properties in the toy factory; Terence the Crocodile from Rubbadubbers, and the titular character of Thomas & Friends (complete with his whistle sound effect and two coaches that are similar in color to Gordon's express coaches).
- Character Catchphrase:
- Once an Episode (or once with Bob and once with another character), someone would ask, 'Can we [verb, usually 'fix'] it?', to which other characters would respond, 'Yes, we can!' - long before someone from America became associated with the catchphrase.
- Spud's "Sorry, (character).", "It won't happen again, (character)." and "Spud's on the job, (Bob\Wendy\character)!"
- The main machines:
- Scoop: "No prob, Bob!"
- Muck: "Muck to the rescue!" and "Let's get mucky!"
- Dizzy: "Brilliant!"
- Roley: "Rock and roll!"
- Lofty: Er/Uh, yeah, I think so!" (usually said in response to the "Can we fix it?" routine)
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Several characters are absent in the 2015 reboot, most notably Travis, Spud, and Farmer Pickles (though Farmer Pickles returned in 2018). Spud was not in the 2015 series because the reboot has a more realistic and gritty aesthetic, and a sentient scarecrow that goes around causing trouble would break that illusion.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The construction vehicles.
- Cowardly Sidekick: Lofty. Downplayed in the rebooted series, with Lofty having more subtle instances of nervousness and does not say "Uh, yeah, I think so!" after the "Yes, we can!".
- Cultural Translation: Despite the series being pretty blatantly set in Britain, the American version is dubbed with US accents. Reputedly the dub is at least partly to avoid confusion over words like "football".
- Darker and Edgier: The 2017 feature film special "Mega Machines" is noticeably darker compared to even earlier episodes, with its first ever villain (Conrad) who outright threatens to scrap his machines if they don't do as he says, and a full-on flooding that's taken surprisingly seriously.
- Dreadful Musician: Bob in "Bob's Bugle". He constructed a trumpet out of leftover brass radiator pipes and a funnel, and had no idea that the music he was playing from his trumpet was so awful that everyone, except Roley, couldn't bear it. The terrible music kept the machines awake one night when Bob played his makeshift trumpet before going to bed.
- Dub Species Change: The American dub changes every mention of hedgehogs into porcupines.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: A Pilot of the show from 1997 exists. It was unknown for 23 years until it resurfaced online in 2020. Scoop was originally named Digger, Bob looked more humanoid and had thick pink lips. Here it is.
- The Eeyore: Lofty.
- Egopolis: The main location for the original series is called Bobsville, named after Bob's father, Robert, who built most of the town himself.
- Filthy Fun: Muck likes getting dirty, and claims he would roll in the mud nonstop if he was Dizzy's size.
- Foreshadowing: In "Clumsy Roley", Mr. Fothergill says he thinks he may be allergic to parrots. This theory is confirmed in the season 7 episode "Hamish's New Home".
- Four-Fingered Hands: All humans in the original series have this. However, it was one of the most notable shows to be re-shot in Japan so that the characters have five fingers on each hand due to cultural reasons.
- Genki Girl: Dizzy the concrete mixer.
- Injured Limb Episode: In one episode, a background character Mavis sprains her ankle on a jogging machine.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Spud will get his comeuppance for the trouble he caused for Bob and his team in most episodes.
- In "Travis Paints the Town", Spud secretly hooks the line-marking machine onto Travis and tricks him into hurrying off to the duck pond saying that Farmer Pickles wants him there immediately. However, Spud is soon found out by Farmer Pickles and Bob who then punish Spud by forcing him to clean up the lines that Travis has left behind as well as the white paint spillage from the line marking machine after Travis swerved to avoid crashing into Muck.
- In "Naughty Spud" when Bob is on the roof of Travis' new shed that is under construction, Spud takes the ladder behind his back and uses it to pick all the apples from the tree before coming back with a tummy ache after eating too many apples.
-
Licensed Game: There was video game titled Bob the Builder: Can We Fix It? released in 2000 for both PC and PS1. There was a GBC game based on the show, too, titled Bob the Builder: Fix it Fun!. - Market-Based Title: The Scottish Gaelic dub is called Calum Clachairnote to keep the Alliterative Title, making Bob fall victim to Dub Name Change in the process.
- Missing Mom: JJ lives with his daughter, Molly, whose mother is never seen nor mentioned.
- Leo from the reboot counts too. His father Curtis is a recurring character, but his mother is never seen or mentioned.
- The Movie: While the show had a few 50-minute specials early on ("A Christmas to Remember", "The Knights of Can-a-Lot" (or "The Knights of Fix-a-Lot" in the US), "Snowed Under: The Bobblesberg Winter Games", and "Built to be Wild"), there wasn't an actual movie as such until the show's first feature length movie "Race to the Finish". The short lived "Ready Steady Build" series also had two "movie specials" ("The Legend of the Golden Hammer" (or "The Golden Hammer: The Movie" in the US) and "The Big Dino Dig"). The 2015 reboot only had one entitled "Mega Machines: The Movie".
- Mr Fix It: There's a reason he's called "Bob The Builder."
- Never Trust a Trailer: The reboot aired on PBS Kids, which was also the channel that aired the last few seasons of the original incarnation of the show. As a result, some PBS stations used an up next bumper for the older series, which has a different animation style than the reboot does.
- No Antagonist: For the stop-motion and CGI, series, the closest character the show had to an antagonist was Spud, who can be a bit troublesome at times but means no harm. The reboot special Mega Machines features the first villain in the franchise, Conrad.
- Obliviously Evil: In Mega Machines, Thud and Crunch are extreme jerkasses to Muck, then Lofty gets an idea when he sees Conrad belittling them, which causes them to cower. After confronting them about their behaviour, their confused reactions heavily imply that they've been bullied so much by Conrad that they think that acting like him is the equivalent of being polite. They get over it in the end.
- Oh, Crap!: A lot of this happens in most episodes if something goes wrong or has happened.
- In "A Christmas To Remember", Bob, Banger and Mr. Bentley all have one each within their thoughts when Mayor Bunty Ferguson announces for Lennie Lazenby (who lost his voice due to a sore throat) to switch on the Christmas lights.
Bob: Oh no! I hope they don't blow again!
Banger: Oh no! I forgot to change the guitar!
Mr. Bentley: (while sweating nervously) Oh no! What's the mayor going to say? - Perpetual Smiler: The humans always have a smile on their faces, even if they aren't happy. Averted with the machines, who can change expressions. This is averted "Ready, Steady, Build" onwards, as the CGI allows the human characters to frown and express negative emotions.
- Role-Ending Misdemeanor: In-Universe: Ace was the star of a very popular TV show, but got fired after accidentally squashing his boss's empty car with a huge boulder.
- Setting Update: The rebooted series has a much more modern-day look to it, with Bob now based in a bustling city and smartphones and tablets often being present. The redesigned machines also more closely resemble the types of construction vehicles seen in modern-day use.
- She's a Man in Japan:
- Muck is male in the UK, and female in the American English and Swiss German dubs. In the rebooted series, however, he is male in both dubs.
- In the original series, Scoop is female in the Swedish and Polish dubs.
- Slasher Smile:
- Every human character in this show (as well as Spud) is prone to these.
- In the rebooted series, the machines are now also prone to these.
- The Smurfette Principle:
- Dizzy is the only female machine in Bob's crew. Subverted in the US dub of the original series, since Muck is referred to as female in said dub.
- Same thing with Sumsy in Project Build It, she's the only female machine owned by Farmer Pickles.
- Spoofing in the Rain: The music video for the show's cover of Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5" features the human cast imitating the famous musical during the second chorus.
- Story Arc: Ready Steady Build had two for their "feature-length specials/movies", (unlike its sister show, the specials were produced as six standalone episodes that aired as three half-hour episodes in the US and six standalone episodes in the UK); "The Legend of the Golden Hammer" (Spud and Scrambler searching for pirate treasure) and The Big Dino Dig (building the dinosaur theme park).
- Strong Family Resemblance: Bob and his twin brother, Tom, look like younger versions of their father, Robert.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Despite being a show largely aimed at children about anthropomorphic construction vehicles, this happens surprisingly often. Mostly it crops up in the form of one of the machines doing something that they really have no business trying to do (EX: driving on ice) with...predictable results.
- Theme Tune Roll Call: The original theme song lists the main cast as such:Scoop, Muck, and Dizzy
And Roley, too
Lofty and Wendy
Join the group
Bob and the gang
Have so much fun
Working together
To get the job done! - Three Shorts: This is how the show was presented when it premiered in North America: An 8-minute story, a 1-2 minute short, another 8-minute story, and another 1-2 minute short.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Lofty is often skeptical and has to be reminded of all the great things he can do.
- You Don't Look Like You: The 2015 reboot, where the humans are more realistic looking. The machines were vastly different as well.
