“Of all the fantastical things TV brings into our lives, nothing indulges the imagination quite like cartoons,” says Rich Sands, a writer for TV Guide Magazine, and, with some of the amazing stories and plots of these shows, many are inclined to agree with him. Somewhat recently, one of these shows, Bee and PuppyCat, has been pushed back into the spotlight, most likely due to YouTube reviews and analysis videos, such as Henry Kathman’s Bee and Puppycat: The Future of New Adult Animation.

This show began with a pilot episode, aired July 11, 2013 on YouTube as Cartoon Hangover’s newest animated web series. Bee and PuppyCat was created and written by Natasha Allegri, a storyboard revisionist for the popular cartoon, Adventure Time, and directed by Larry Leichliter, a well-known animator and director of Adventure Time and the classic Peanuts specials. Surprisingly, the show received low ratings until it aired its first official episodes on November 6, 2014. Bee and PuppyCat became a hit among young adults and, in the December of 2014, was named as one of the best TV shows of the year by critic Robert Lloyd of The L.A. Times.

Revolving around Bee, a cheerful and recently-unemployed young woman in her twenties, the show is about her cross-dimensional adventures with her companion, PuppyCat, an egotistical dog-cat hybrid. After being fired from multiple jobs, Bee was out of ideas on how to support herself, claiming it was “too bad [she couldn’t] make a career out of getting fired,” but then she ran into PuppyCat and wound up taking him in, seeing as she was the only person who could understand what he was saying. Bee and PuppyCat receive various missions from TempBot, an artificial intelligence, and they are sent to different worlds to solve problems and defeat monsters in return for money. Despite the danger of these missions, Bee continues to accept them in order to get enough money for food and the monthly rent on her apartment.

Another ongoing plot point in the show is Bee’s romantic feelings for her friend, Deckard, a skilled chef who appears to have a crush on Bee as well but finds that his feelings are making it difficult for him to leave his hometown to pursue his cooking career. PuppyCat seemingly disapproves of Deckard and treats him in the same condescending manner he does the various insects outside of Bee’s apartment, commanding that Deckard “pick up [his] groceries, peasant!” upon their first meeting.

The tenth, and apparently last, episode of the Bee and PuppyCat series aired on November 28, 2016, and the show fell into obscurity until recently. Its slowly-rising popularity on YouTube has led to its various speedpaints and fanart works becoming slightly more frequent and receiving more positive feedback. It seems that the show could even pick up a new following at this rate, leading to a huge rise in popularity. With this fascinating web series “indulging our imagination,” this can only bring about good things.