Brad Marchand’s guest spot in “Big City Greens” debuted today!

Back in August, we announced that Brad Marchand will be turning his talents temporarily away from the ice and into the recording booth when he joined the cast of Big City Greens. Well today, the episode that Brad guest-starred in debuted at 8am this morning, and against all odds...I managed to watch it.

The lightning quick synopsis:

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, the Grandma gets into a protracted feud with the Mother character’s Father 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 Marchy 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 so I am half-assing it” quality to their work.

As such it’s often graded on a curve...but Brad actually puts his best effort forward and comes out sounding like a convincing voice actor. It helps that Marchy is super in his element here; he’s playing a comically violent hosehead, and he’s played enough Boston Bruins hockey to pick up what that sounds like intimately. But when he’s able to settle down and have normal lines...he honestly kind of sounds like Gary from Venture Brothers without the vocal fry.

Maybe if Doc Hammer has the flu, he can chip in as Henchman 21.

Other various notes from this viewing:

• The character of Nick is voiced by Billy West; the voice of Fry from Futurama, and it is very obvious. Billy West in general has a pretty distinctive voice, so it’s always a little jarring to hear him voice anyone other than some loser in the 31st Century or a megalomaniacal Alien.
• Funny how Marchand’s become Bruins captain and then the character on the show he plays ends up being captain too. DID THE MOUSE GET BRAD HIS “C”!? In this four and a half hour youtube video I will outli-
• While most of the written jokes weren’t exactly funny-funny, I do appreciate that their use of the cutaway gag is three seconds at most and the punchlines are generally pretty good. These are family shows on the Disney Channel, so anytime a half-decent joke makes you smirk should be treated as a win.
• Ever since the 40’s, anytime animation has depicted Ice hockey it has inevitably turned it’s eye away from the bloodlust on the ice and into the bloodlust of the fans; from Goofy’s shorts about noble sportsmen, to Bart and Lisa skating into the sunset. I am proud to say Big City Greens does not skimp on this by having the family effectively derail the entire game.
• There are no Zamboni drivers named “Tony”. Every Zamboni driver on earth is named Murphy. They are 65 years old, they smoke whatever is cheapest, and can tell you vividly the dark underbelly of the local youth hockey scene.

Would I recommend this?

Eh, watch it with your kids/grandkids. I’m sure they’ll get a kick out of it.

Look, it’s a Disney Channel show. Even when I was a kid, the Disney Channel shows were the ones you could watch in front of your parents with a younger sibling in the room without them getting pissy about violence (that was relegated to movies, a perfectly acceptable medium for children to understand brutality!), and this is definitely no exception; of all the kid shows on TV, this one is definitely designed with Children in mind.

But, given that this aimed at a target audience that is much, much, much younger than you or I, I think this would be a perfect half hour of half-decent entertainment for a couple of kids stuck inside on a rainy day.

The episode’s on Youtube if you really want to give it a shot.

Otherwise, congrats on a successful guest starring role, Marchy!