Phaedra the Bunny

From a recent e-mail: “Hi, I'm a twenty year old girl. Lol, could you tell me what character I am in the ‘multiverse’?” Well, my brusque friend, you represent two firsts for this blog: The first lead character, and the first 2000-year-old talking rabbit.

Shows: Phaedra the Bunny (1983), Phaedra the Viking (1985), Phaedra the Conquistador (1986), Phaedra the Patriot (1987), Phaedra the Prime Minister (1988)

Genre: Comedy

Your Character: A Greek priestess-turned-rabbit named “Phaedra”.

Show Detail: In this universe, Phaedra (“fee-druh”) was a Greek priestess to the goddess of the hearth and fertility (AKA, “having sex in the kitchen”). Phaedra tricks the gods into granting her eternal youth, but they get their revenge. As Greece is conquered by Rome, the gods turn Phaedra into a rabbit. She flees, chased by starving Athenians.

Phaedra still has the ability to speak, but in all other respects she is a typical bunny. She survives the next few centuries by living like a rabbit, an existence that she hates. Centuries after the fall of Greece, she manages to become the pet of a rather dimwitted Roman boy. She engineers his rise to the top of the Empire with her savage intelligence and bitter sense of humor. We see ancient Rome through Phaedra’s eyes: slavery, orgies, binging and vomiting, gladiators, etc. (These are all things she approves of, and misses in future centuries.) While Phaedra gives the Emperor good advice, it is always a means to satisfy her greed for money (which she can't spend) and luxuries (which she can't use). Her ever-increasing demands finally drive Rome to the brink of disaster. In the last episode of the first season, a mob burns Rome, and Phaedra must go on the run again.

In each season, Phaedra appears as the power-behind-the power in a different era of history. She grows ever-more intelligent, and ever-more cynical. After Rome, Phaedra proceeds to terrorize Europe (Phaedra the Viking), destroy the Aztecs (Phaedra the Conquistador), and mastermind the American Revolution (Phaedra the Patriot).

Phaedra routinely betrays her human partners. For example, after the Vikings keep her share of their loot, she convinces them to colonize Greenland, an experiment that eventually ends in cannibalism and mass starvation. The tables are finally turned in the last episode of Phaedra the Prime Minister. In the early 1940s, Phaedra’s puppet is the war-time leader of Great Britain (who seems to be the dimmest partner of them all). British radar technicians accidentally find a way to turn her back into a human being, but rather than cure Phaedra, the Prime Minister orders the Royal Air Force to drop her behind German lines. He says, “When you convince the Nazis to surrender, then we change you back.”

You may wonder how your character could have been in a TV show that began before you were born. All I can say is that the parallel universes don’t seem to respect the boundaries of time and space. Also, your TV character probably doesn’t have that much in common with your attributes as a human being. At least, I don't think it does. Have ever convinced a war-like Nordic tribe to colonize a frozen wasteland?