One of my favorite things about Phineas and Ferb is how Perry somehow comes off as a more talkative character than Ferb, even though Ferb talks once or twice an episode and Perry talks never. Perry is so visually expressive you can almost forget that the secret agent subplot in each show pretty much consists of Dan Povenmire as Doofenshmirtz monologuing to himself; every one of those scenes reads visually as a complicated back-and-forth conversation between two very different characters with strong, stubborn personalties. At any given moment, you can tell exactly what Perry the Platypus is thinking and what he would say if he could, which not only makes him the ideal figure to react to the endless ranting of his nemesis but also gives Doofenshmirtz something solid to react to (when he says a line like “Perry the Platypus, you’re making this harder than it needs to be,” we know he has good reason to say it).
Ferb is “quieter” than Perry because of his near-total lack of expression. His occasional verbal asides are funny becausethey’re our only way to glimpse his thoughts, which frequently take us by surprise (it turns out he’s in the inventing game “for the ladies”; after deadpanning his way through an entire episode in which his partner in crime breaks down beside him from summer-scheme withdrawal, he declares, “If we hadn’t been able to invent something soon, I was going to scream.”)
The surefooted way that this show uses writing and visual cues to achieve comedy on multiple levels is really something else.
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allieinarden: One of my favorite things about Phineas and Ferb is how Perry somehow comes off as a...
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