Chavo and the Wolf (El Chavo Animado)

Chavo and the Wolf (El Chavo y el Lobo in the original) is the 5th episode of the third season of El Chavo Animado.

Why It Deserves To Be Eaten By The Wolf

 * 1) To get the elephant out of the room: While it's true that wolves in real life can be dangerous, the episode exaggerates that when trying to teach children that wolves are evil creatures with insatiable hunger, being the most menacing among all carnivorous animals capable of devouring people and being able to cause great destruction. This gets even worse because Professor Jirafales basically educates his students by saying this at the beginning of the episode. In real life it has nothing to do with it, in fact, wolves are generally afraid of humans, avoid them, and also don't seek to eat them, and if one attacks you, it's more out of self-defense than hunger.
 * 2) Misleading title card: The title card shows the wolf apparently being friends with Chavo, leading to believe that the episode would involve friendship between Chavo and the wolf, but the episode basically shows the opposite of that.
 * 3) The episode also tries to convey an educational message about good eating, since Profesor Jirafales tries to educate Ñoño to start eating healthy and confiscating his lunch box that is full of unhealthy food, but the episode fails miserably to give that moral.
 * 4) The episode begins with a gross and unfunny joke about Ñoño needing to go to the bathroom. This joke occurs two times in the episode.
 * 5) There are a lot of unnecessary fat-phobic jokes with Ñoño throughout the episode.
 * 6) The joke about Quico talking about the animal food chain at class is forced and unfunny.
 * 7) Señor Barriga's appearance in this episode seems like a filler character, as he appears only to read the newspaper breaking the news that a wolf has escaped from the zoo and then leaves (without even charging rent to his tenants).
 * 8) The subplot in which Ñoño invades Quico's house to retrieve his doll from his lunchbox is very weak and poorly written. Also, this subplot takes up a large part of the episode which makes the plot with the wolf seem less important.
 * 9) There's a mean-spirited scene where the adults accuse Chavo of having eaten their food (when it was actually the wolf that ate the food), treating him in a very unfair way, it doesn't help by the fact that action was repeated in two more episodes (¡Que Bonita Navidad! and "La máscara del Justiciero").
 * 10) When Chavo, Quico, and Ñoño find the wolf sleeping and fat after eating all the food in Ñoño's lunch box, the wolf groans in his sleep, looking like he's suffering from a stomachache after eating too much.
 * 11) Terrible Ending: The wolf starts chasing Chavo until he bumps into Señor Barriga (who returns after a long absence during the episode), the wolf ends up flying (probably after bumping into Barriga's belly), falls on a clothesline and... The episode ends without showing what happens next with the wolf! It basically ended in a cliffhanger.
 * 12) The title is just a random way to make a fairytale reference as it is meant to play on that of "Peter and the Wolf".

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) At least Quico and Ñoño believed Chavo that the wolf ate the adults' food, making the first one unintentionally sympathetic.
 * 2) At the school scene gives a decent teaching about carnivorous animals, even if the execution in the plot was terrible.
 * 3) To be realistic, Profesor Jirafales was right to confiscate Ñoño's lunch box that is full of unhealthy food and replace it with water and an apple, since he was sick to his stomach.

Trivia

 * The episode was apparently inspired by fairy tales involving the Big Bad Wolf (though it doesn't have any fairy tale mentioned in the episode), the title is a reference to Peter and the Wolf, which should explain why the episode portrays wolves as evil animals.