Chowder: 10 Sexist Jokes That Would Not Fly Today

Chowder is a Cartoon Network animated children’s program about a purple bear-cat-rabbit hybrid boy who dreams of becoming a chef someday. Chowder lives with his chef mentor, Mung Daal, working as an apprentice for Mung’s catering company in Marzipan City. Alongside Mung Daal, Schnitzel, a tall, brown rock monster, works with the crew, as does Truffles, Mung Daal’s pixie wife.

Created by C. H. Greenblatt, the show was a product of the late 2000s, at a time when the network was experimenting with producing more weird TV shows. The success of SpongeBob SquarePants had proven that Gen Z and late millennial children preferred odd comedies set in worlds that make no sense. Soon, Chowder was born, running for forty-nine episodes during the late 2000s.

10 Endive Is Too Ugly For A Man

Like many Cartoon Network shows, Chowder is packed with jokes about ugly people. Aired at a time when TV shows entertained less sensitivity towards issues of appearance, most characters on the show are not spared from being labeled ugly. Nevertheless, the ire of the show’s writers is reserved for Endive, Mung Daal’s nemesis. She is constantly drawn to be bigger than her regular size, in an attempt to call attention to how masculine she is. Her overly macho competitiveness, big butt, and ugly face are consistently played for laughs, and used as justifiable reasons for why she is single, desperate, and still can’t find a man.

9 Endive Is Desperate For Marriage

Taking the joke of the detestable spinster even further, Endive is incredibly desperate for a man. In the episode where Schnitzel quits to work for her, Endive places herself in premeditated situations to gain Schnitzel’s attention. In one instance, she pretends to drown, so that Schnitzel would give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She then forces a kiss on the unsuspecting rock monster. At the end of the episode, she is so crazed from her loneliness that she assumes that Schnitzel is going to marry her. She plans a wedding, and puts on a wedding dress, forcing Schnitzel to divulge that he has a rock girlfriend.

Scorned and rejected once again, Endive locks Schnitzel in a cupboard forever, deciding that the fate of a strange man who refuses to marry is death.

8 The Bitter, Desperate Old Chicken

Gazpacho is Mung Daal’s favorite fruit seller: he sells the best and freshest produce in the market. And although he has deep relationship issues with his mother, he forms an endearing friendship with Chowder. Gazpacho is portrayed as a Norman Bates-like character, who is too enmeshed with his mother to find a girlfriend. When a giant chicken, Rosemary, begins terrorizing Gazpacho and taking his produce for free, Gazpacho has to learn to stand up for himself.

The episode’s end reveals that the cubed-shaped chicken is just an old, bitter, ‘leftover’ chicken who likes Gazpacho. Indeed, bullying him was her way of showing affection and getting his attention. Unfortunately for her, she finds herself once again “still single”, depressed and unwed while her smaller and more feminine chicken friends are blissfully married.

7 Panini Does Not Take No For An Answer

Panini is Endive’s apprentice. She is a pink cat who, like Chowder, is not shown to have parents. With so many things in common with Chowder, Panini develops a crush on him. In the show’s very first episode, Panini hits on Chowder, declaring that he is her boyfriend. Chowder does not want a girlfriend, however. Like her mentor, Panini is shown to be desperate for a boyfriend. Throughout the series, Chowder garners a catchphrase when he shouts, “I’m not your boyfriend” every time he sees Panini. Despite this, Panini refuses to leave him alone.

6 Panini Competes With Other Girls For Male Attention

While stalking Chowder – who has emphatically rejected her offer for a relationship many times – Panini finds him bonding with a new girl. Like Endive, Panini is enraged and jealous at the simplest sign of rejection. In retaliation, Panini tries to make Chowder jealous by flirting with Cerviche. When this doesn’t work, she confronts Chowder, crying. She has deluded herself into believing that her non-existent boyfriend discarded her. Panini teaches young female viewers to believe that their worth as girls rest in getting and keeping a boyfriend.

5 Panini Tries To Trap Chowder With A Baby

‘The Bruised Bluenana’ begins with Panini stalking Chowder yet again. Chowder calls her “a mad woman” and attempts to run away from her. When Chowder bruises some bluenanas in his haste to flee, he is remorseful and calls them his “babies”. This is all Panini needs to hear to get her madly excited at the thought of her and a similarly aged 10-year-old Chowder having babies. She tells Chowder that their “love will heal this baby.”

“There’s no love between us,” Chowder hilariously quips, but this does not deter Panini, who drags her “future husband” off to nurse their bruised bluenana baby.

4 Truffles Is Naggy

According to Chowder, Truffles is mean and always yelling. This is an accurate description of Truffles who, in fact, is always yelling. On the other hand, Truffles’ mean nature is more complex than presented. When Truffles is sick, for example, Mung Daal, Chowder and Schnitzel waste the business’ entire budget on sunglasses, massage chairs, and plastic surgery to make themselves look hot.

In another episode, Mung would forget his and his wife’s 150th wedding anniversary, ditching his wife to go to the beach with Schnitzel and Chowder. Mung is shown to be stupid, impulsive and needing discipline from his wife, while Truffles is shown to be mean, overbearing and controlling. Obviously, both stereotypes are incredibly sexist for both genders.

3 Truffles Can’t Get Along With Other Women

The female characters on Chowder are one-dimensional characters whose defining personalities are all revolved around being stereotypically ‘bad women’. Truffles is portrayed as a cranky, old biddy who, as a result, is unsexy, undesirable, and unwanted. She is shown to be so abrasive that she cannot get along with other women. In ‘The Elemelons’, Truffles is so cruel to a group of female elephant melons, that they go on strike, refusing to be squished for fresh elemelon juice. Truffles, using a series of demanding and abrasive techniques, tries to deceive he elemelons into being squished.

In the end, she has to learn how to become ‘girly’. This includes complaining about her husband, wearing face masks as a bonding exercise, and curling her hair for a girls’ night out.

2 Mung Daal

Mung Daal is a far more multidimensional character than his wife. He loves his kitchen, and loves being a chef. He prides himself on being a great cook, although this is a delusion, since his cooking is terrible. He has a nemesis who is secretly in love with him, and a wife who is tired of his flaws after 150 years of marriage.

In another apparent self-delusion, Mung congratulates himself on being a “ladies man”, despite constant overwhelming evidence that the opposite is true. While this is funny, Mung’s constant need to prove that he is a ladies man results in him objectifying and disrespecting women. For example, he is fond of referring to the women in his life as “Woman!” in a dehumanizing exercise that others women.

1 Gazpacho’s Mother

Gazpacho’s mother does not make an appearance on the show, yet she is portrayed in solely a negative way. In every Gazpacho scene, he overwhelmingly talks about his mother’s verbal and emotional abuse towards him. He presents his mother as a woman who has held him back in all areas of his life, especially his social life. It is not clear if the joke is supposed to be on an adult Gazpacho who allows his mother to control his life, or on the mother who abuses Gazpacho so that he never moves out.

The joke is dark and convoluted and, once again, portrays both male and female characters in a stereotypical manner. In ‘The Poultry Geist’, it is revealed that Gazpacho dresses up as his mother in a parody of Hitchcock’s Psycho.