Comment on February 14th, 2007.
Yeah, I love the old Warner Bros. cartoons, but I almost completely missed the boat on Animaniacs... I did however see the Pinky & the Brain spinoff fairly often, and I loved it. This post makes me want to check them out.
Comment on February 14th, 2007.
Mindy & Buttons' scenario is a twist on the old Sylvester & Tweety situation: human admonishes Sylvester not to follow his nature and eat Tweety; rest of cartoon revolves around Sylvester trying to do what is natural for him and (literally) evade the Man.
Someone should do or probably has done a paper on cartoon heroes as revolutionary archetypes; there's certainly a lot of data to mine.
On a less academic note, I hope you and Velma saw WB's attempt at an animated Monty Python-style of humor, "Freakazoid!" While various bits did have the occasional ending, they would run out things like "Conversational Norwegian." Very surreal.
Final note: did the Wheel of Morality ever land on bankrupt?
Comment on February 14th, 2007.
I liked one Slappy Squirrel cartoon, the "Bambi's Mom" one. I liked one "Mindy" cartoon, the one you mentioned. The Warners themselves hit the mark about 30% of the time, and in that 30%, they were pretty good. P&tB were almost always good (the only one that bored me was the "Brainstem!" song), and Chicken Boo amazed me by having one joke, but having it always be funny to me. I think it succeeded by not overstaying its welcome.
I honestly can't remember Rita and the Runt. The Hip Hippos, the Goodfeathers, Katie Ka-Boom... not funny once.
Minerva Minx was really funny once, and pretty funny one other time (and used Julie Brown, which was a fine thing).
Freakazoid was almost as funny as it thought it was, which is not a bad thing. My favorite ep on there was the one with Toby Danger, and also included the "Candle Jack" cartoon which was funny in several places ("...because it had been TURNED to WOOD!")("...and then Candle Jack; then that Great Big Monster...").
Even Tiny Toons was funny a couple of times (changing the topic slightly). The "Dark Duck" stories had examples of funny writing and razor-sharp timing. One wonders why they couldn't do that the rest of the time.
One of my all-time favorite TV seasons was the one where they seemed to be stretching for that all-important "Kip Williams demographic" by offering Freakazoid, The Tick, Felix the Cat, and Earthworm Jim, which continually saved itself from lameness by sheer exuberance and overstatement ("We're doomed! Doomed, I tell ya! Doomed, in case you weren't listening! DOOMED!" "Eat Dirt, everybody in the vicinity!") and the fact that nobody ever wore a space helmet.
The fact that everything seems to suck now is probably just temporary. We've been there before, and then they came back with the New Mighty Mouse (50% inspired) and Pee-wee and Ren & Stimpy...
Comment on February 14th, 2007.
Oh, as to Mindy & Buttons maybe trying to be uncomfortable with the physical abuse, I don't think they were. The same creators were reveling in it in too many other places to have any reservations about it. In my opinion.
Comment on February 14th, 2007.
RJ, I don't think Mindy & Buttons has much in common with Sylvester & Tweety other than the admonishment from outside authority and that neither is very funny. Sylvester is trying to eat Tweety, but Buttons is trying to protect Mindy; Tweety abuses Sylvester, but Mindy does very little directly to Buttons, and likes Buttons (after her fashion).
I've never seen Freakazoid, but it keeps getting recommended to me, so I will.
Kip, I can't believe I didn't mention Chicken Boo, which I always find hilarious and can hardly explain why. The short length definitely helps.
Rita and the Runt was sophisticated cat and dumb but good-hearted dog in musical numbers. Rita was played by Bernadette Peters.
There's only one Slappy cartoon I don't like ("Little Old Slappy from Pasadena"). It's hard for me to imagine how a cartoon fan can not like Slappy. Gp figure. "Bumbi's Mom" is the best one, yeah.
I part ways with modern cartoon lovers in shrugging at Ren and Stimpy. The animation's terrific, but it relies heavily on grossout humor. I thought it was okay -- I'll watch it if it's on -- but not something I need to have around.
How do you feel about Drawn Together (which I've seen a couple of times and seemed promising)?
Comment on February 14th, 2007.
I've enjoyed a lot of Tweety cartoons. Tweety is just unbearable enough for me, I guess, and Sylvester is a great character. My favorite Sylvester cartoon doesn't have Tweety in it at all -- it's the 50s version of a cartoon they made two or three times, where Porky and Sylvester stay the night in a sinister hotel, and Porky has no idea his life is in danger, and the quivering cat has to keep saving him.
I just never warmed to Slappy as a character.
Ren & Stimpy was best when they had to deal with network censors. The fascination with ducts and glands and bodily excretions, along with ultraviolence, eventually did the show in. "Space Madness," which was an exercise in unrelieved psychological tension, and "Stimpy's Invention," which cranked it a notch higher, are two of my favorite cartoons ever. ("It's a Happy Helmet," explains Stimpy, who brandishes a remote control, "and this determines how happy you'll be!")
Drawn Together seems to be the cartoon nobody likes. Except me. I sit in front of the set and laugh while it's on. In some ways, it's more amusing than South Park (which is becoming almost schizoid in the division between Genius-level shows and Idiot-level shows). It's a guilty pleasure, and rightfully so. Like South Park, there's always something I regret having seen, but they get real laughs out of (1) the genres and styles of the different characters, and (2) the nonstop veniality and complete amorality of same. The framework makes the pop-culture references fit in, and it works. Apart from myself, I have yet to see anybody in the animation newsgroup say anything even remotely nice about it.
Another couple of shows I've liked a lot: Rocko's Modern Life showed unexpected depths, even from the first episode (Rocko buys a huge vacuum cleaner that sucks up everything in the house. At the end, the house and Rocko are all inside the vacuum cleaner, so he resumes his normal lifestyle. The camera pulls back, and we see that every house on the street has been replaced with large vacuum cleaners.), and it reached a sort of peak with the "Gib Hootson" episode, with a well-nigh unbelievable gag about Rocko's roommate Heifer and a milking machine.
I've found recently that Duckman episodes are on YouTube. If you didn't watch them before, watch them now. Download them! Almost every episode has stuff that makes me laugh out loud. The two best eps are "Haunted Society Plumbers," with a comedy-team plot out of Martin and Lewis, Abbot and Costello, and the Three Stooges; and whatever the one was called where Duckman is Kirk and King Chicken is Khan. Jason Alexander is a huge fan of Shatner, and it shows here.
One that I keep missing on TV but have caught up on via YouTube is The Venture Brothers, a twisted and heartless updating of Jonny Quest that pays off over and over in nasty laffs. The more you learn about the characters, the more twisted it is. It has built up a cast of primary and secondary characters that include the Race Bannon character, possibly the most important person on the show, and a Dr. Strange fellow whose genuine powers still don't convince Dr. Venture that magic is better than science.
Comment on February 14th, 2007.
Meh. I still think that if Mindy & buttons was meant as a commentary on the form, it wouldn't have been necessary to have so many of them. When in doubt, cheer for the good dog rather than the destructive toddler. But yes, "In the Garden of Mindy" is one of the best things ever done in that art form, and I'm glad to know it's available on DVD.
(I'm heartsick that "Happy Feet" did not come out in time for V-Day, but I guess studio marketing execs don't think it's a good bet for the romantic crowd.)
Comment on February 14th, 2007.
How could I forget Chicken Boo, too? My favorite is still "Boo, James Boo."
Comment on February 14th, 2007.
Hmph. I can't make any kind of cogent comment on this because I was at the target age (child verging on adolescent) when Animaniacs first aired, and I haven't seen it since. In the runup to this past Christmas, various family members kept saying things that hinted to me that I was getting the DVDs, but apparently it was unintentional. Come Christmas day, all there was was luggage.
That said, I'm pretty sure that vast swathes of my current psyche were formed under the exclusive influence of that show. Specifically, I can trace bits of my self directly to the one where the Warners interacted with a Raffi-type singer, the one where Wakko can't find a place to pee, and Chicken Boo in general. Probably if I were to watch them again (which hopefully I will soon) I would find more.
Comment on February 14th, 2007.
Ethan Potty Emergency is in this second volume.
And Scraps, at the end of the credits, as Buttons is sitting there, Mindy appears, and Buttons half-shrieks and limps off, with Mindy chasing him. He catches on, slowly, but eventually.
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