If you like some freakin' Ponies, you'll love...

[logicow]

Aww, what a sad ending.

[Headless Horse]

I just watched the first episode of Spongebob (because I need to know about it if I'm going to be able to draw any intelligent parallels or contrasts between its popularity among adults and FiM's), and I think I already "get" why it's so addictive.

I didn't really know what to expect, whether it would be jam-packed full of adult gags and references while just being silly-looking and manic on the surface for kids, or subversive and suggestive in ways kids wouldn't get, or what; but now I see what it is: it's just a silly, goofy, wacky cartoon, that happens to have really sharp writing and great real-feeling characterization. It's literally the kind of thing where if you tell a coworker that you like to "turn your brain off and just relax with it", if he knows the show at all he'll just nod knowingly. It makes perfect sense. It's just pleasant and funny.

Would watch again.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

About a year ago I went on a tour at the Nicktoons studio (I have a friend who worked there). The SpongeBob space was on the top floor. From the people I talked to (Vincent Waller, Paul Tibbitt, and Doug Lawrence) it looks like the staff have a blast working there. I wouldn't mind getting a job on the show.

Mr. Lawrence in particular was great to talk to. Like alot of SpongeBob people he was on Rocko many years ago. He showed me a storyboard for a cartoon pilot he was working on. I wonder what became of it.

[NisslMarching bravely into a bold new pony future]

I'll have to give Spongebob another try; I caught a bit of it right when the series was released but was turned off right away by the characters coming off as fairly low IQ since I was deeply burned out on Simpsons and Family Guy at the time.

I guess it is one thing to say the show is bad, as many can and do, but, "irrelevance", to me is just worse. It is like saying "don't even try to make anything good, because people will just think what you do doesn't matter anyway."

Yeah, I know where you're coming from, but at the risk of doing nothing but digging the hole deeper... just because everything eventually fades in cultural impact doesn't mean it never captured any magic or didn't have tremendous impact originally or doesn't continue to have *some* impact and inspire new generations as a classic. This is natural and healthy; I mean, if Van Gogh paintings, Charles Dickens novels, and early Disney movies were the most heavily discussed cultural touchstones today something would be very wrong. Indeed, one reason a show's cutting-edge relevance can fade is if it changes the culture around it to the point where it becomes part of the mainstream culture rather than a critique of it (and here, again, I'm primarily thinking of The Simpsons as a major piece of the movement away from 80's sitcoms.) One other thing to clarify is that I'm not saying that a specific writer can't have an impact over their whole career - although the history of art is littered with examples of brief, brilliant impacts - just that certain characters and settings that allow really strong critiques of certain elements of a cultural period don't necessarily translate really well to new contexts as the culture changes over time. With regard to the examples we were discussing, I've heard great things about Book of Mormon, and if I'm not mistaken a number of Simpsons writers also started working on Futurama.

[BartonFink]

Random thought: I've never been a hardcore Spongebob fan but I've always liked it, and for some reason there's an early episode called "Pickles" which I always found hilarious.

It kind of falls into the "conceptual joke drawn out over an entire episode" trap, but it does it really well!

[GrimI'M THE WORLD CHAMP BETCHA CAN'T BEAT MEBALL SO HARD LITTLE GIRLS WANT A PONY]

^That's the one where Spongebob forgets how to make a Krabby Patty right? If so, that one also strikes me as hilarious.

I always found it funny how most of my friends and family seemed to dislike Spongebob (and some other cartoons such as EEnE, which I love) on the basis of it being 'stupid'. No real explanation beyond that, just plain stupid. This of course stems from them not being geeky and critical like I am, but it's always fun to analyze people when they make an oversimplified statement like that. Stupidity in the context of entertainment is what I consider the driving factor in any form of silliness, and the catalyst to that which is clever and amusing.

Speaking of amusing, has The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy come up in this thread yet? It's kind of similar to Spongebob when I think about it, but with more chaotic randomness and grossly cynical characterization. To me the show is kind of like having that friend who, despite being extremely silly and fun to be around, comes off as selfish and carries a certain scorn for their own existence.

That show is also responsible for this one bitchin' crossover episode which references a handful of CN's other great shows (and some others I personally don't care for), particularly in the credits sequence.

[Opposing FarceDon't you smile at my faceSpit on my backDo you kiss your mother with a mouth like that?]

Oh man I forgot Class of 3000 even existed until that credit sequence reminded me.

The show itself is kind of a blur, though. I remember thinking the visual style was kind of cool but that's about it.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

"Billy & Mandy" was okay, but I was pretty indifferent to it, and still am.

But on a whim I decided to look it up and damn! It lasted 7 seasons with 89 episodes!? And SIX TV specials? Never realized the show was that popular.

[kefkafloyd]

I always preferred the Evil half of Grim and Evil. It just didn't get the love it needed.

[Aurora]

No way, kefka. I'm right there with you. I think I enjoyed Evil Con Carne a lot.

[DavyinatogaEw, will you please just stop posting already so I can stop having to look at it?]

Echoing sentiments on Evil Con Carne as well. I guess there just wasn't enough room for both to coexist, even when on the same program (which I would have preferred myself).

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

Yeah, I felt that the "Evil" half was the better one.

I remember having a similar feeling with "Cow and Chicken". While they were funny on its own right, I felt "I Am Weasel" was the stronger of the two. Weasel eventually did get its own half-hour show, but it barely lasted one season before disappearing.

[GrimI'M THE WORLD CHAMP BETCHA CAN'T BEAT MEBALL SO HARD LITTLE GIRLS WANT A PONY]

I hope it doesn't seem strange that I say I prefer the Billy & Mandy half more, but I definitely wasn't exposed to the Evil Con Carne side of things as much as I would have wanted. I might not have cared for it in concept as much as I did the whole death-gets-tricked-by-kids thing, but it showed some clever writing in practice. I'm glad Skarr at least became a somewhat regular occurrence in B&M because I just find him delightful.

And yeah, keeping them in the same program might have been ideal. I wouldn't assume many people love one but absolutely hate the other, given their similarities.

I also never realized B&M got so popular.

[stonecutterOne-trick Pony]

So anyone watched "Regular Show" Halloween special? First two segments were okay, but the third was great. Really scary, with characters being killed off without actually showing blood (although Muscle Man got skinned alive)

I was surprised to see Muscle Man not only hold a gun, but actually fire it. When was the last time they showed a real gun in a kids cartoon?

The firing of the shotgun was a surprise to me too.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

You know, it just goes to show you how, in certain areas, cartoons have gotten sanitized.

Characters getting blown in the face was a staple in old theatrical cartoons and on the early TV cartoons. Sometime around the late 1960s there was a push by the parents to stop all this, leading to a very dark era of TV cartoons known as the 1970s and 1980s. Then cable came along and eventually cartoons were allowed to do these things again. Around 2000-ish, however, alot of kids cartoons became, again, sanitized (ADULT cartoons, however, is a completely different story).

Then couple years back Cartoon Network said "screw it" and started giving out PG ratings to their newer shows.

[BartonFink]

The late 60s was also the era of the cheap Hanna-Barbara cartoons, right? I remembered enjoying watching Wacky Races and liking it a lot as a kid (since CN used to air their old stuff all the time), but when I rewatched some a few months back I was...disappointed would be too light a word.

Dark days indeed.

[Headless Horse]

TV really did a number on all the old-school animation houses. Once people stopped going to the theatre to see the animated shorts that had made WB and Disney and other studios famous, there was a relentless downward pressure—worse every year—to force down costs and produce cartoons that could be played on TV schedules, with long sitcom-style series-produced cartoons that could be broadcast over a period of months instead of just here and there in front of theatrical movies. That meant the only studio to really survive those decades was the one that was the best at stripping itself down year after year and inventing cheaper and cheaper forms of limited animation: Hanna-Barbera.

Warner Bros. ended up as a hideous, painful-to-look-at shell of itself, forced to sell itself off in defeat. The words "Seven Arts" should make the skin of any animation fan crawl.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

Yeah. Same can be said for Walter Lantz studio. The latter-day Woody Woodpeckers and Chilly Willy just plain suck. The blame can be placed on Paul J. Smith, the studio's sole remaining director in the later years who was also probably one of the biggest hacks in the business. And Lantz himself, who was either indifferent or just plain had bad taste.

DePatie-Freleng were okay, though, but it depended on the series and the director. I'm very fond of the best Pink Panther and the Ant & Aardvarks. They were also the only studio to produce theatrical shorts (the last one to do so, in fact) and Saturday Morning shows concurrently. The Dr. Seuss specials that they made were pretty good, too, with the best one being "The Lorax". According to the DFE guys I talked to, Seuss actually preferred the DFE specials over the ones Chuck Jones did (apparently Ted Geisel hated the Christmas "Grinch" special, and he and Jones did not get along at all)

Well, okay, Terrytoons did theatrical shorts and TV cartoons at the same time, too, but by the 1960s the quality has degraded so much that there was NO difference whatsoever between the TV shorts and the theatrical shorts. In fact they ended up releasing TV cartoons such as Deputy Dawg to theaters.

[Opposing FarceDon't you smile at my faceSpit on my backDo you kiss your mother with a mouth like that?]

The Dr. Seuss specials that they made were pretty good, too, with the best one being "The Lorax". According to the DFE guys I talked to, Seuss actually preferred the DFE specials over the ones Chuck Jones did (apparently Ted Geisel hated the Christmas "Grinch" special, and he and Jones did not get along at all)

I remember really liking The Hoober-Bloob Highway when I was a kid, but I suspect I'm the only human being on the face of the planet who remembers it.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

I remember really liking The Hoober-Bloob Highway when I was a kid, but I suspect I'm the only human being on the face of the planet who remembers it.

I liked it, too!

A year back I interviewed the guy who directed it, Alan Zaslove (who is probably in his 90s by now). He wasn't proud of it; apparently Seuss was supposed to have a complete script ready but when he came in he only had vague outlines, so the two had to scramble around and use bits and pieces of stuff he previously wrote in the children's books to pad it out. Alan felt the final result was too incoherent.

[MochaBean]

According to the DFE guys I talked to, Seuss actually preferred the DFE specials over the ones Chuck Jones did (apparently Ted Geisel hated the Christmas "Grinch" special, and he and Jones did not get along at all)

That actually surprises me a little. Didn't Jones and Seuss do Private Snafu together? (I thought they did Horton Hatches an Egg together too, but looking it up I see that it was actually Clampett.)

edit:

That meant the only studio to really survive those decades was the one that was the best at stripping itself down year after year and inventing cheaper and cheaper forms of limited animation: Hanna-Barbera.

You're forgetting H-B's evil twin from that era: Filmation.

They did their fair share of animation atrocities in those years as well. From what I understand, it was actually the return to quality animation in the early 90s that finally did them in, since they couldn't compete.

[Mr. BigBrush is mightier than pen.]

Filmation shut down in 1989. What happened was that a cosmetic company L'Oréal bought the company, only to immediately shut it down. They only wanted the library of shows and wern't interested in continuing production.

I've talked to people who worked at Filmation. The studio environment was actually fairly nice, but they acknowledge that the shows were crap. One of the animators told me he spent more time at the xerox machine, copying layout drawings and then cutting/pasting onto the animation paper, moving the photocopied arms in each sheet. Apparently it was easier to do this than drawing/tracing each time due to how complex the character designs were.

Basically Filmation was doing tweens before Flash even existed.

That actually surprises me a little. Didn't Jones and Seuss do Private Snafu together? (I thought they did Horton Hatches an Egg together too, but looking it up I see that it was actually Clampett.)

Seuss was one of the writers. Other writers in the Snafu shorts included Phil Eastman and Munro Leaf.

Jones, while talented, was notoriously heavy on the "ego" side. Walt Kelly and Frank Tashlin were also dissatisfied with the "Pogo" special and the "Bear That Wasn't" short that he did. Supposedly Kelly disowned the special, denying that it existed at all.

[AramekYour MRI results have shown total infection to now be approximately one fifth of the full mass of the tissue."So you're saying..."Your brain is about 20% tumor.]

That show is also responsible for this one bitchin' crossover episode which references a handful of CN's other great shows (and some others I personally don't care for), particularly in the credits sequence.

How had I not seen that episode?

That was pretty damned boss.

"Samurai Mac" where he was Fighting Akblu was the best part.

[Aurora]

Nostalgia the episode.

Now I want to watch some Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy.

[IsaakEquus Ludens :3]

Cartoon Network was lost to me when it became a paid channel here
Now there's the internet...

Goddamn, that Billy & Mandy episode was Excellent. Pay close attention to Mandy Assimilator's face popping.

[NisslMarching bravely into a bold new pony future]

Having never sat down and really watched Billy and Mandy, I really enjoyed that episode. Specifically Mandy.

In the middle of pondering what makes a good children's show *work*, I wound up checking out the other animated Hub shows on the Saturday lineup for comparison. While I didn't feel pulled to keep watching any of them, there were definitely some interesting points.

Pound Puppies interested me because it got moved over to DHX/Top Draw after 8 episodes; I didn't realize Daniel Ingram is doing the music and John DiMaggio is Niblet. The show is now actually semi-enjoyable to watch for the character expressions, which convey emotion well even if they don't go over the top quite as much I would have hoped. I think the humans may actually come off the best; the reactions of the kennel warden and the security guy are really sharp even if the jokes they're working with are a little hollow. The dog tags and main character's bouncing ear are actually a bit distracting because they're so much fun to watch, almost the exact same way pony hair was initially distracting at times for me.

On the flipside, there's Strawberry Shortcake. After a couple of (painfully bland) exchanges I noticed that a few of the voices sounded awfully familiar and had really sharp timing despite having little to work with as far as character, plot, or comedy. So I skipped to the end and checked, and yep, Andrea Libman (Lemon), Ashleigh Ball (Plum), and Janyse Jaud (G3 Pinkie Pie, Orange) are all in it. What makes it fairly interesting is that both Libman and Ball are putting in strong efforts, but you'd never notice if you actually tried to follow the plot or watched the animation side of it. The incredible stiffness of the cartoon, presumably due to the limits of low-budget 3d, makes it barely convey any emotion. Watching Libman's delivery translated into *that* is surreal and highlights how much the DHX animation team makes ponies shine.

Dan Vs.: I watched a couple of Hub's promotion clips. On the plus side, I can say that it's a novel concept for a main character, it's reasonably sharply produced and it seemed to be accomplishing exactly what it wanted to accomplish. On the minus side, watching it just annoyed me. Dan is a... well, he's a whiny asshole, no other way to say it, and the show seems to be completely focused on him. He gets in fights with everybody and is a complete dick and somehow the other characters tolerate him, I guess because he's such a loser they don't even take him seriously? I just don't see why people would voluntarily choose to spend their free time with this character.

[BartonFink]

I had the exact same experience paying half-attention to Strawberry Shortcake waiting for ponies to come on. It's kinda nice, it gives a Yin and Yang effect.

[Opposing FarceDon't you smile at my faceSpit on my backDo you kiss your mother with a mouth like that?]

Dan Vs.: I watched a couple of Hub's promotion clips. On the plus side, I can say that it's a novel concept for a main character, it's reasonably sharply produced and it seemed to be accomplishing exactly what it wanted to accomplish. On the minus side, watching it just annoyed me. Dan is a... well, he's a whiny asshole, no other way to say it, and the show seems to be completely focused on him. He gets in fights with everybody and is a complete dick and somehow the other characters tolerate him, I guess because he's such a loser they don't even take him seriously? I just don't see why people would voluntarily choose to spend their free time with this character.

He's fun to watch because he's a whiny asshole. It's funny to see him get irrationally upset and swear vengeance over incredibly minor slights, especially when it's against something that couldn't have possibly done anything to him (like the state of New Mexico), and he plays off well against both the other characters and the world itself.

I get why some people don't like it, but having the main character be an unlikable asshole is kind of the standard for television comedies nowadays. Shows like Always Sunny are literally built on the fact that all of the characters are complete dicks to each other all of the time.

[Headless Horse]

Also The Office and Arrested Development.

I've got a friend I tried to get into AD and he only made it like one episode before telling me "I can't watch this. I wouldn't want to spend any time around any of these people in real life, why would I want to spend time watching them on TV?"

He then kindasorta proceeded to inspire me to watch ponies by being snarky and dismissive of the Flash animation. Yeah, I dunno, some people.

[Aurora]

The Office really went downhill after Season...5? Somewhere after the Writer's Guild Strike. Also I enjoyed what I saw of AD (about...8? episodes), just haven't had time to watch it. Also I'm trying to watch Parks and Rec now and I need to get into Breaking Bad oh god all these shows

[MochaBean]

It took me a while to get in to Arrested Development. For a long time I just couldn't sit through an episode, but eventually it gelled around the last season, although I can't really articulate why.

I think a big reason is because he characters are jerks, but some of them are also smart, and smart jerks who should know better aren't much fun. They come across as somewhat malicious. Contrast that with Sunny, where the characters are jerks, but they're also abject morons who wind up getting hoisted by their own petards.

Sunny is like Seinfeld, only where every character is George, and he's had a partial lobotomy.

[NisslMarching bravely into a bold new pony future]

Somehow I forgot to put Littlest Pet Shop in my writeup above. The clips from that show gave me a horrible Newborn Cuties flashback.

I get why some people don't like it, but having the main character be an unlikable asshole is kind of the standard for television comedies nowadays. Shows like Always Sunny are literally built on the fact that all of the characters are complete dicks to each other all of the time.

I'm historically more guilty of blowing off shows because characters are jerks than probably just about anybody else here; I'll admit that I had issues with even things like Seinfeld and The Godfather growing up for this very reason. So in case my review wasn't clear, if you would like a show focused on an unlikeable asshole this one executes reasonably well. Although I think Mocha made a pretty interesting character distinction; he's spot on that I'm able to watch the Always Sunny characters because they're also complete idiots and I'm able to sympathize with Office characters like Michael. I will admit that I find both shows tiring after an episode or two.

Also I'm trying to watch Parks and Rec now and I need to get into Breaking Bad oh god all these shows

I feel that. I have S1 Community and Neon Genesis Evangelion DVD sets sitting on my desk staring at me this very moment. Not to mention Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire and.... You know, there's never anything good on TV when you turn it on randomly after work, but thanks to internet recommendations I now have more good stuff to read or watch than I ever possibly could. It's overwhelming and I'm sometimes tempted to just blow it off and go watch ponies on repeat.

[FightingDreamerBrony For Life]

Why did I click on that Littlest Pet Shop clip? MY EYES.

Also, what did you think of the actual *writing* of Pound Puppies. I tried to get through an episode and couldn't because nearly every line was a cliche. A shame, as it has a great cast for the most part (I'll watch damn near anything with folks like Rene Auberjonois and John DiMaggio in them).

[ArtificerGoes well with All Natural Milk Naturally Flavored with Natural Flavors.]

Why did I click on that Littlest Pet Shop clip? MY EYES.

Also, what did you think of the actual *writing* of Pound Puppies. I tried to get through an episode and couldn't because nearly every line was a cliche. A shame, as it has a great cast for the most part (I'll watch damn near anything with folks like Rene Auberjonois and John DiMaggio in them).

What's the plot like?

[NisslMarching bravely into a bold new pony future]

I actually didn't comment on the writing because I also failed to make it through the whole episode so I felt like it might be overextrapolating and didn't want to completely trash the show based on such a small sample (basically this and the first five minutes of 2-3 other episodes). But since you asked, and keeping those caveats in mind: the first thing I'll say is that the show seems incredibly episodic and repetitive. As far as I can tell, every week it's going to be a different dog adopted out and then everything reverts to normal. Sure, FiM doesn't have Lost-style plot progression or anything, but the stories expand the world and setting and hint at character destinies and so on and occasionally things do change (e.g. characters learning about their shared past in CMChronicles, Fluttershy trying to be less timid in Best Night Ever, the end of weekly letters, Luna starts to reintegrate, etc.) The secret clubhouse idea is obviously cheesy, but I see what they were going for as far as wacky humor even if it doesn't really work. It would have been way more interesting to see the characters all get dumped at the pound and come together to figure out the ropes and build the clubhouse over the first episode or several. It also would have been interesting to explore kennel politics and we could have done some "new school, new friends" type themes and added some character layers. As it is, there's no sense of danger in this setting, and no prospect of getting away from the formula.

Turning to the characters, the main five are the dumb one (oh joy, again), the German scientist (ditto), the tough one (seemed to have a little nuance at least?), the "cool" leader, and the chihuahua (I thought the joke about stealing equipment in the episode I linked was in pretty questionable taste, and doubly so because he's Hispanic). While the ponies also come off as stereotypes if you only watch a few minutes, so I don't want to be too judgmental, I really do think there's much less complexity there, and I have no sense of recurring characters outside of the main five. Their position in the kennel and and internal group interactions feel pretty artificial and simplistic. Can't there be a cross-town rival or at least some dog at the kennel who just does his own thing or something? I feel like I've also seen the warden and security guy a dozen times in other shows. The joke timing isn't terrible, especially with the DHX/Top Draw front end (I enjoyed the guard's freakout at the alien dog a bit), and the voice actors are decent and aren't phoning it in, but it all feels stale and small. If anyone actually has a recommended episode, I'd check it out.

[FightingDreamerBrony For Life]

Yeah, that's about how I felt when I tried to watch it. At least in Recess (one of the previous shows the showrunners/producers worked on), there was a *little* more complexity, even if the show largely doesn't hold up as an adult.

[Pocketis she just gonna go booty booty]

Dan Vs.: I watched a couple of Hub's promotion clips. On the plus side, I can say that it's a novel concept for a main character, it's reasonably sharply produced and it seemed to be accomplishing exactly what it wanted to accomplish. On the minus side, watching it just annoyed me. Dan is a... well, he's a whiny asshole, no other way to say it, and the show seems to be completely focused on him. He gets in fights with everybody and is a complete dick and somehow the other characters tolerate him, I guess because he's such a loser they don't even take him seriously? I just don't see why people would voluntarily choose to spend their free time with this character.

It's one of those shows where you're not supposed to think about it too much. The whole thing takes place in a sort of Bizarroland where members of the Salvation Army Armed Forces have actual military-ish training and ninjas attack people just to steal their cookies. It's never explained how Dan survives without a job either. It kind of puts me in mind of some of those online Flash series like Bonus Stage or Waterman, if they had professional writers behind them instead of one college-aged hack with a pirated copy of Flash and too much free time. It's definitely less about characterization and more about the humor, and it does that very well. Especially considering it probably ended up on the Hub because all the other networks turned it down.

[TailspinQueen of the skies]

The whole thing takes place in a sort of Bizarroland where members of the Salvation Army Armed Forces have actual military-ish training and ninjas attack people just to steal their cookies.

Hell, in one episode two cops get a call about a werewolf attack and they respond to it like it's nothing unusual.

[kefkafloyd]

Plus, Dan is voiced by none other than Booger from Revenge of the Nerds, Curtis Armstrong. He has some great delivery.

[DavyinatogaEw, will you please just stop posting already so I can stop having to look at it?]

Plus, Dan is voiced by none other than Booger from Revenge of the Nerds, Curtis Armstrong. He has some great delivery.

That alone makes the show deserving of a at least one viewing.