Back in August, the Disney corporation announced that their long-running Disney Channel original Big City Greens would be receiving an absolute glut of guest stars for their upcoming season. Among the pile of names like Margo Martindale, Michael Bolton, and Justin McElroy, was Boston Bruins winger, Captain, and notable pest Brad Marchand.
That episode premiered on October 21st at 8am, and I watched it for you. Because I care and respect you enough to not screw up your own YouTube recommendations.
The Synopsis
Big City Greens is about a family of farmers, the Greens, whose house has sat in the middle of a large city for a good long time, and is about the family’s trials and tribulations with making their folksy, redneck adjacent lifestyle work in a big metropolitan area. Most of the episodes appear to be split up into two proper episodes; one that’s a normal comedy cartoon, and a more plot-focused episode in the back-half of the show.
The Green’s Grandma buys hockey tickets for the whole family, who all get into some form of hijinks; the Mother and Son character try to ride the Zamboni, The dad tries to get a corn dog from a vendor who keeps ignoring him, the Grandma gets into a protracted feud with the kid’s other Grandparent since she didn’t get him tickets, and the Daughter character tries to mediate the violence of the hockey players to predictably mixed success.
It’s the daughter scenes in which Brad Marchand shows up as Mikey LeBuff, the captain of the Big City Icicles.
How does Marchand do as a voice actor?
Honestly? Not bad at all. In fact, if you didn’t hear his voice previously you’d almost entirely forget he didn’t do this for a living.
Whenever sports figures or other celebrities try their hand (or whose services are purchased by the production company) at voice acting, there’s always this clear “I am being asked to do something for a paycheck and I’m probably super hungover, so I am absolutely half-assing it” quality to their reading of the script. Mercifully, Brad actually puts his best effort forward and comes out sounding professional.
It helps that Marchand is very much in his element here; he’s playing your garden variety maniacal hockey player; a favorite of any TV show that has hockey, and he’s played more than enough Boston Bruins hockey to pick up what that could sound like like intimately. But when he’s able to settle down and have normal lines?…he honestly kind of sounds a little like Venture Brothers’ Doc Hammer doing his Gary voice, without the vocal fry to signify him as a nerd. You could, with a little extra training, see him transitioning into this kind of thing full-time after his career’s over.
It’s notable because…well…we don’t really have a good number of recognizeable NHLers who have his kind of charisma, and as much as fans dislike Marchand’s on-ice antic-ry…it’s this kind of thing we desperately need from the NHL, and more of it. One can only hope they find a way to inject this kind of thing into guys like Connor Bedard.
Is it recommendable?
Well, it’s definitely one of the extremely few bits of ice hockey in animation you can show children, if that’s what you’re asking.
Ice Hockey in the world of animation has had a lot more representation on stuff you’re probably not supposed to show kids, such as South Park, or the beloved Simpsons classic “Lisa on Ice”. There is a Goofy short from the 1940’s about hockey, but that’s buried so deep in Disney+ you almost need to know it exists ahead of time. This show is definitely of Disney Channel’s ouvre; even back in the 90’s it was always a show for more family friendly fare where Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon (and even FOX kids) were willing to let kids see stuff that wasn’t always necessarily acceptable in every household. But if you’ve got younger kids, I think this is a perfect 15 minutes you can put aside to have a little fun at the game’s expense.
It helps immensely that the Disney Channel Youtube page happens to have it up for free viewing. If you’ve got kids rolling around in your life, I’d give it a watch with them.