Well, that genie was kind of a dick. Bonus points for the theme forcing the Bottom Biting Bug song out of my head, though.

While Nickelodeon hasn't exactly been competitive on writing, animation quality, or character design lately, at least they've shown they're willing to step up with gross. Breadwinners seems destined to unseat current titleholder Sanjay and Craig from the slimy, mutated-bug-infested, repulsively-but-suspiciously-not-quite-feces-colouredly-crusted toilet which serves as the champions' dais. It might also be the most butt-centric cartoon west of Bottom Biting Bug - although they have not been daring enough to depict humanoid buttocks in anything more than a still-pantsed state of half-moon, Breadwinners is unafraid to tap into the universal truths of comedy. This may prove its undoing, though - relying on (for all their biological content) 'safe' laughs means it doesn't often venture a truly novel joke or visual. Making the title characters ducks, arguably the default "funny" animals, belies a similar lack of comic ambition - although Buhdeuce and SwaySway look a lot more like Bub from Bubble Bobble and a green Pops than any duck I've ever seen, animated or otherwise.

In animation there's inspired weirdness/weirdness with genuine heart, and then there's "zany". Spongebob Squarepants can be used to plot the curve, transitioning almost seamlessly from the former to the latter post-movie. Uncle Grandpa is all over the chart, sometimes near both extremes in the same story. Breadwinners has its moments of cleverness, but is completely and committedly zany.

Oh ho ho, how utterly random!

The aforementioned half-moon is at the center of the proceedings - even the title sequence features Buhdeuce half-assed, and monsters (in accordance with the new tacit standard) are free to display their ass whole. The word "fart" is spoken, shouted, sung and generally accompanies the phenomenon it represents whenever it occurs - to the point where I could have written the jokes when I was no older than 25, never a good sign.

Where Bottom Biting Bug is playfully bizarre (and does more with the material than "in this program, butts exist and are acknowledged to perform some of their real-world functions!") Breadwinners just seems forced, and you know what happens when you try and force a fart...joke.

The actual lines that accompany this, sung as a soulful power-ballad:
"You've got levers and fancy parts. I've got a belly and a butt that farts."
If I think something is too juvenile, there's a problem.

Although to be fair, I don't think I've ever seen a frog fart bees, and I'm positive I've never seen one look so happy about it. Not quite everything about Breadwinners is predictable.

It seems I've gotten an object lesson in being careful what I wish for (itself like something out of a lazy cartoon - oh, the almost irony). Breadwinners includes earthy jokes aplenty, but utterly lacks the charm of Bug or the punchy writing of Sanjay. Judging by the three two-segment episodes I've watched so far, it seems a rather cynical outing, openly mimicking Regular Show's delivery and The Amazing World of Gumball's 'best buds' dynamic. Breadwinners delivers everything a modern cartoon can be expected to have - sprite art and video game references, photo cut-ins, Beavis and Butthead dialogue without the bleak satire, bloodless monster-dismemberment, relentless attempts at establishing catchphrases - but it hasn't yet shown anything to make it stand out from the other cartoons doing the same schtick with a unique hook. Even the puns - plentiful and normally guaranteed points with me - strongly recall Chowder (now that just sounded disgusting).
Spontaneous breaking into song/rap/beat poetry aside, Breadwinners does feature very competent voice work - the leads are the only non-cameo characters to appear in the early episodes, and it's an achievement in its own right that 11-minute stretches of their interaction never become intolerable. SwaySway is voiced with overcaffeinated aplomb by relative cartoon-voicing newcomer Robbie Daymond, while Eric Bauza provides Buhdeuce with a voice like a screech-reduced version of Uncle Grandpa's Belly Bag (another ongoing role of his), the metal-toothed whine of BB turned down to a hint of teenage stoner grate.

They also yell a lot.

Like many a cartoon character before them, the Breadwinners work in food service (this time as business owners, omitting thus far a greedy, incompetent and/or easily agitated boss), which allows for plenty of gags involving bizarre, contaminated and expelled food in various states. "Stank Breath" features a standout, inspiredly disgusting if still sligtly derivative - a rotten-teeth point of view shot more than worthy of first-season Ren and Stimpy.

That same episode features absent-minded screwing around with cosmic consequences, fortunately abated by the intervention of a supernatural being of immense power but narrow focus. This, for some reason, seems familiar, almost as if it was not only another show's premise, but one that show had itself already overdone.
There's always room in the world for genre work - medium-quality animation clearing houses like YTV have to fill a broadcast day somehow, and expecting every cartoon to be Adventure Time is like expecting every science fiction novel to be Cryptonomicon. A show positioned like this should at make some attempt to innovate within the genre standards, though, and if Breadwinners is going to take the Spongebob approach of idiot ball plots and the occasional spectacular grossout shot, it's really committed itself to a narrow area for invention. This is distinct from escalating the vileness level, a much simpler task to accomplish.
Video game references are officially the new version of the vintage life-becomes-pinball gag, and despite the enormous range of material to mock, are getting played out even faster. Likely due to the fact that 8- and 16-bit games were what the current generation of creators played as kids (and currently have retro-hip status among the young people), most shows don't reach much further than Mario, Zelda and a handful of iconic arcade games (most recently, Street Fighter 2 has become a stock parody).
A related phenomenon is animation scripted with the tie-in videogame first in mind (a natural evolution of toyeticity, I suppose). Breadwinners has several moments where it is difficult to tell if the action onscreen is heavily influenced by video games or deliberately designed to generate content for an upcoming one. Being both, of course, is also entirely possible - even probable for this series.
The debut episode "Thug Loaf" introduces the Breadwinners' rocket-handed Party Punch, an ability tailor-made for action platforming. Their prized Rocket Van, engaged in every episode, seems all-too-ideal for flying through suspended rings (of bread) in an invisible aerial corridor, collecting a trail of boost bread. In "Stank Breath" Buhdeuce acquires destructive, prehensile halitosis, which is used to repel enemies and solve simple puzzles in the lead-up to the episode's climactic battle, a tap-control-friendly bread-throwing confrontation with the filth golem Stankasaurus.

Coming soon to mobile, Breadwinners Stank Breath Endless Swing! Hear up to three authentic voice clips from the show, over and over! Collect a bakers' dozen different types of Bread...and the more Bread you grab, the more fun you have! Spend real money on Golden Loaves, or grind your life away earning the fractionally valuable Loser Type!

Aspects of the video game "boss battle" (inspired by anime in the first place, mind) have been creeping into cartoon fight scenes for well over twenty years. Only in the past decade, though, has the full medium shift and "gameplay" sequence come into common use for entire sequences rather than split-second sight gags. The ducks defeat the monster in a (literal enough I'm going to assume it's at least a deliberate pun) rail-shooter sequence, and what's tedious to play is completely pointless to watch.

Having it flash red at critical health shows their work, but this is just about as captivating as a light gun game's attract mode.

Breadwinners' style is more gaming-influenced than most of its contemporaries. In addition to frequently adopting the framing and pace, a pixelated pseudo-SNES look is applied to most action and effects shots, as well as many creatures (close-ups, however, are in classic Kricfalusi style - I must admit Breadwinners does deliver on this where Uncle Grandpa is inconsistent at best).

This is conceptually interesting - the pixellation provides a sort of stylistic censor blur, creatively allowing more to be conveyed than actually shown. The Stankasaurus (above) comes very close to depicting blood (the Rubicon of Western "children's" animation), and the sloth-spawned food waste monster (sigh) of "Brocrastination" would be outright gruesome without this filter.

Breadwinners is certainly a product of its time - fifteen years from now, when nerds mock this decade's entertainment media, it will make a fine example. The title sequence in particular can be identified on sight as 20-teens Nick as surely as a Canadian can spot 80s National Film Board animation from birth.

"Do a barrel roll!". Really? Talk about your low hanging breadfruit.

I'm not ready to rank this show among Schnookums and Meat and Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island but it has an uncomfortable similarity. All expend a tremendous amount of sound and fury making stock plots and derivative characters "zanier", but are unsuccessful in masking uncanny similarities to their most popular long-running competitors. I haven't abandoned Breadwinners - Unlike Numb Chucks, it's tolerable enough I plan to watch all the extant episodes before deciding - but if Hearthstone or re-watching One Piece eat into any more viewing time, by sad necessity it will be among the first to go.