Pointless Non-Musical List of the Week

10 Favorite Animated TV Series of all time

1. Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (includes Mr. Peabody, Dudley DoRight & Fractured Fairy Tales)
2. Space Ghost Coast to Coast
3. The Simpsons
4. George of the Jungle (includes Tom Slick & Super Chicken)
5. Jonny Quest
6. The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse (1980s Ralph Bakshi/John Kricfalusa version)
7. Ren & Stimpy
8. King of the Hill
9. Daria
10. Kim Possible

And depending on my mood, South Park, Futurama and the 1960s Spiderman can rotate in.

Hey, where's QT Hush?

Hard to disagree with anything there, but there was a great, early-80's version of Flash Gordon that ran on NBC that used rotoscoping, and had pretty mature themes and action for a kiddie show. Then they added the usual weird pet-thing for Season 2 and it went downhill quickly. I might add The Tick, too. That version of Mighty Mouse was one of the best things ever. If anyone has a way to find copies of those, you should announce it to the world.

I have no idea why the 80s Mighty Mouse cartoons have never been released on DVD. They're brilliant - I think they're better than Ren & Stimpy, but have never gained the same amount of cult devotion. But I still think there's enough interest in Kricfalusi that a dvd release would have been warranted a long time ago.

A case could be made for:

Danger Mouse
Animaniacs
Aeon Flux
and Beavis and Butthead, of course...

On the subject of weird pop cultural cartoons did anyone catch Bryan Fuller's (he's creator of Pushing Daisies and Dead Like Me) cartoon pilot on the Sci-Fi network last year called "The Amazing Screw on Head"?

The Head (voiced by Paul Giamanti) is a mechanical head with artificial intelligence and is an agent of the government during the Lincoln administration before the US Civil War.

His arch nemesis is Emperor Zombie (voiced by David Hyde Pierce) who is bent on world domination.

Very bizarre but worth seeing especially if you like Bryan Fuller's morbid sense of humor.

BTW - Dead Like Me the Movie is released to DVD in July!!!

That's based on a comic created by Mike Mignola, Hellboy's daddy. I've seen the DVD at my local video store. Sounds like it's worth seeing.

I have been waiting for Johnny Sokko to come out on DVD for years! I always preferred that to Ultra Man as a kid, but I do love the Ultra Man DVDs.

I love me some Ultraman, too, but look out for The Space Giants! You can download individual episodes of Johnny Sokko at Amazon.

I still get more big laughs out of Family Guy than any other animated show.

It's love it or hate it stuff though no question .......

Enough people whose opinions I respect (notably Mats & Paganizer) have admired FAMILY GUY that I recently took two weeks and watched it every night to see if I could see what they see in it. After all, my initial reactions to SOUTH PARK and BEAVIS & BUTTHEAD were negative, also, so I figured it was possible that I was wrong about FAMILY GUY.

After the two weeks, I was simply reinforced in my opinion that I would rather not have a tv at all than be forced to ever watch another second of it. A lot of times when there is something that I don't like, I can at least understand why other people do - anything Stephen Malkmus has done post-SLANTED & ENCHANTED, for instance. I can't stand it, but I suppose I can see why other people like it. Not so with FAMILY GUY - I honestly cannot understand how people can even find it watchable, let alone funny.

I realize that senses of humor are subjective - I'm only stating my opinion and if anyone can argue in favor of FAMILY GUY and convince me to give it yet another chance, more power to them. From other posts on this board, I am on the same page as Mats and Paganizer well over 90% of the time - so if they see value in FAMILY GUY, I really have to believe that there MUST be some. I just haven't encountered it myself, and if Mats can show it to me, great. But I suspect in the end it just comes down to being a matter of taste.

I think I hate it for a lot of the same reasons I hate a movie like GARDEN STATE - it doesn't feel like it comes from a genuine place, but is the product of someone who envied the stature of someone else's work and wanted it for themselves. GARDEN STATE felt to me like Zach Braff wanted to make a quirky indie film so he sat down and made a checklist of what makes an indie film quirky and dutifully worked what he found into his script, so we ended up with the standard creepy loser brought to glorious life by the free-spirited beauty too good for this world but who is just damaged enough herself to see the greatness that lies within him. Yeah, whatever. As soon as he pulled away from the gas station with the gas pump nozzle still attached to his car in the first five minutes I thought "Oh, God, it's going to be one of those movies." By the time he was tooling around town on a motorcycle with a sidecar accompanied by a helmeted narcoleptic Natalie Portman insisting he listen to the Shins, I was ready to shout FIRE in the crowded theater and then throw myself on the floor in front of the stampede...anything to make it stop.

I have the same feeling toward FAMILY GUY. I don't get the impression Seth McFarlane has any point of view of his own. I think he just saw the cultural significance of THE SIMPSONS and SOUTH PARK and thought "I want to do that, too" and set about disassembling them to see what made them work, completely missed the point, then reassembled them in a loud, shrill pile of crap that poses like it wants to outrage for the sake of outrage (a dubious goal in and of itself), but in reality is playing it completely safe - it's not really trying to shock anyone. It's trying to flatter its audience into thinking they're hipper than everyone else because they think such "shocking" things are funny. FAMILY GUY is the wiseass who sits at the jocks' table at lunch making fun of all the other losers in the cafeteria, and the jocks laugh not because he's actually funny but because he reinforces their belief that they're better than everyone else.

And FAMILY GUY is often held up as a great example of using pop culture references for humor, which it attempts to do but not very well. It makes the references, but rarely brings any humor. It just throws out some random name and gets a laugh out of the recognition, but doesn't actually use the reference in a funny way. For instance, (and I am making this up entirely on the spur of the moment) on FAMILY GUY Brian the dog might make some remark such as "Wow. This dinner is crashing worse than Super Dave Osborne." Then there'll be a cut away to a scene of a terribly drawn caricature of Super Dave Osborne. He'll say "Hi! I'm Super Dave Osborne!" Then a plane will crash on him. Then it will cut back to Brian the dog looking sadly at dinner. That's an oversimplification of a typical FAMILY GUY pop-culture reference, but not THAT overly simple. From what I've seen, FAMILY GUY rarely does anything that's actually funny with references. They just trot them out and expect the audience to laugh because they trotted it out - "Ha ha! Super Dave Osborne. I remember him!" That's not funny. That's just saying "Hey! Look!" For an example of a show that does pop-culture references right, watch 30 ROCK.

If FAMILY GUY were a band, it would be Candlebox or the Nixons. Unimaginative hacks looking at what their target demographic enjoys and trying to recreate it, but instead of doing anything admirable or creative just serving up a plate full of microwaved shite.

Again, these are just my opinions, and humor is definitely subjective, and like I said - I think if Mats & Paganizer like it, there has GOT to be something about it that I might just be missing. There are other people's opinions that I'm willing to say "whatever" about and move on, but theirs carry more weight with me than others'. It's entirely possible that I just watched two weeks of bad episodes, and I freely admit that I wasn't watching with the most open mind in the world. But like I said, I really hated SOUTH PARK the first couple of times I watched it, but it won me over, as did BEAVIS & BUTTHEAD. FAMILY GUY not only didn't win me over, but repeated exposures to it only made me dislike it more.



Post Edited (01-26-08 11:01)

Breno, here here! Family guy is a hateful, loathsome show for all the reasons you mentioned and more. In fact, lack of creativity is not even my particular problem with the show. I have watched a grand total of 1 episode in my life and it was vile. In that particular episode, within 5 minutes, there was a character wiping piss off the bathroom floor with a Bible. Now, I am far from a Puritan but that type of nihilistic humor is where I draw the line. South Park is almost equally as dreadful. Call me judgmental, but I do not exactly consider it a point-in-favor when acquaintances I meet admit to liking this show.

Family Guy to me operates by the 33.4% rule :

33.3% of the time, lazy unfunny jokes.

33.3% of the time, offensive jokes I can't laugh at because I'm too aware they're offensive.

33.4% of the time, offensive jokes that make me burst out laughing.

Heck, even I find myself saying "I can't believe I just laughed at that" sometimes.

Still, I think we can all find a meeting place when it comes to matters of music, because we all know a quality tune when we hear one :


[www.youtube.com]

Thanks, Mats - Brian the dog is the one tolerable character on the show, and I will admit that the one thing I ever saw on the show that I thought was fairly funny was a faux-Broadway number done by Brian, which showed more wit and cleverness than anything else I've ever seen on it.

And one of the reasons I didn't bring up LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is that I, also, didn't want to get started on it...

Halle-fucking-lujah to Breno's expose' of the dreadful FAMILY GUY (and to a lesser degree GARDEN STATE, which is redeemed [somewhat] by the enchanting Natalie Portman. You know, I think I'll go make her a mixtape)

What was I saying?

Oh, yeah. Anyway, If you hate FAMILY GUY you've gotta see the "Cartoon Wars" episode of SOUTH PARK, where the shocking nature of the FG writers is revealed. It's a middling episode but still...

The world would be a more hopeful place if SOUTH PARK's version of the FG writers was a fact. Instead we have to live with the awful truth: a group of smug, hateful people actually write this crap, and are wildly successful at it.

Of course, the most heinous offender among the pile of recent 'indie'-pretenders/cultural vampires was the noxious LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. Compared to that, GARDEN STATE and FG are without sin.

But don't get me started...



Post Edited (01-26-08 13:58)

I just wanted to mention that I couldn't even sit through 5 minutes of Family Guy.

number one in the hood, g!

I'm ticking for the...
Dethklok!
Dethklok!

Neko Case & Kelly Hogan are on Aqua Teen Hunger Force this weekend.

> Neko Case & Kelly Hogan are on Aqua Teen Hunger Force this
> weekend.


and schoolly d does the theme song everytime.

[trouserpress.com]



Post Edited (01-26-08 18:54)

Man,

Mutherfuckin cartoonists rule.

> Neko Case & Kelly Hogan are on Aqua Teen Hunger Force this
> weekend.


good grief! that was horrible.

I watched some of the Mighty Mouse stuff on YouTube over the weekend, and I am still amazed at how "out there" it was. The Cow is the greatest cartoon villian of all time.

Family Guy is very hit and miss, for me. It's like the old adage about using a shotgun, because while some of it will definitely miss, at least some of the pellets will hit the target. It's the only show that's ever disturbed my 6-year-old, and we watch Doctor Who and Angel pretty regularly (geeks).

I managed to track down an on-line Mp3 of an old J. Quest album featuring a very scary (for its time) and very loose adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. That show held up well, at least if you don't mind the pretty blatant racist imagery and Hadji. Hey, it was all the rage at the time, and still enjoyable as long as you don't condemn them for having what was then society's attitudes. Aren't we so much better, now?

That Sid-And-Marty Krofft is still great to watch. My daughter loves the first 2 seasons of Land of the Lost, and it's just as stoned/mad-crazy as anything ever.

The Oblongs. It's Father Knows Best meets Brave New World, seasoned to taste with toxic waste.

[www.angusoblong.net]





Post Edited (01-26-08 22:18)

I wasn't impressed, though I did enjoy hearing Neko sing the name "John Kruck".

The Oblongs was an odd little potential gem of a show. I wish it hadn't been cancelled and been given a chance to really find its stride. Oh well.

I'm 100% with Brad on Family Guy. I've tried multiple times and find it consistently heartless and unfunny. But there are people for whom I have a great deal of respect that love it.

As long as we're on the subject of animation, I want to give shout-outs to my favorite cancelled 'toons: The Critic and Invader Zim.

I always loved how horrified the Cow would become when he began laughing maniacally and accidentally mooed.

My favorite line was when the Cow began sabotaging dairy products, and Mighty Mouse saw a headline reading "Butter Becomes Weightless" and responded "Hmmm. Raymond Burr must be in orbit by now." It was a cheap shot that I can't imagine very many children watching Saturday morning even understood, but it was great.

Petey Pate was a great villain, also.

The thing with Land of The Lost is that the first season was written by respected sci-fi writers - David Gerrold, DC Fontana and I think maybe Larry Niven? (I could be wrong about that last one). So if you can get past all the cheesy, low budget aspects of the show, it was actually pretty intelligent.

I'm still impressed with how much LOL tried to be a serious science fiction show w/stop-motion dinosaurs and the Pakuni. The blue-screen stuff still impresses me, since I know how that stuff works, and I still like the whole aesthetic look of the show -- Lost City, Enik, etc. (how geeky can you get?). It never talked down as much as many of those shows tended to, back in the day (ever try watching an episode of Super Friends lately? "The Liquid Light! It's headed down the mountain towards that village, and it destroys everything it touches!" Except the ground, of course.)

I remember when Mighty Mouse was cancelled because of that non-controversy where M. Mouse sniffs a bunch of daisies to regain his power, and many "looking-for-controversy" peoples thought it meant he was snorting cocaine. Then they all suddenly realized that Bakshi was the guy who made Fritz the Cat. Sheesh.

That was the Rev. Don Wildmon. A friend of mine used to get his newsletter just because it specifically called out all the dirty bits on tv, so it made it easy for my friend to know what shows he should watch if he wanted to see a bit of the sex and whatnot.

And no, by "my friend" I don't mean myself.

I have the complete Ultra Man DVD collection, and after watching it again, the episodes are still imaginative, surreal, and enjoyable. The special effects still hold up. I don't care if they are guys in monster suits, it's still entertaining as hell. If the creators of this show were on drugs, well, good for them.

Now let's see if I can find Johnny Sokko and his flying robots.