The Growing Awesomeness of Kid's TV Programming

As anyone who was born in the late 80's/early 90's can attest, our generation is pretty obsessed with the cartoons that Nickelodeon and other kids' programming networks produced in the early 90s. Ask anyone of our age group what their favorite 90's Nicktoon is and they will launch into a lengthy, highly detailed list: Rugrats, Hey! Arnold, Catdog, Powerpuff Girls, AHH! Real Monsters, Angry Beavers, Doug, Rocko's Modern Life, Dexter's Laboratory, etc. These shows have a special place in our hearts and minds mostly because of the purely creative, ridiculous weird quality each one had. Each show appealed to a younger crowd by being cartoons and having silly characters, but they also enthralled the older generations of teenagers with their not-so-secret dark humor and often adult satirical plot lines. Each show was made not just to create a profit, but also to entertain and impress. You can tell by the sheer quality of the shows that the creators loved their creations.


In the past decade, there has been a significant decline in the quality of children's programming. Starting with the introduction of Spongebob Squarepants* in 1999, a new era of kids' shows began. Gone were the days Oh Yeah! Cartoons and What A Cartoon!; shows like Disney's Phineas and Ferb and Cartoon Network's Ben 10: Alien Force began taking center stage. While Ben 10 was a mere marketing strategy to capitalize on potential merchandising opportunities (something Disney does best), Phineas and Ferb lacks an interesting story and funny characters. Both shows lack any creativity in regards to both art and writing.

To make matters worse, live-action programming became wildly popular around the same time. Shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark? and All That were excellent in terms of quality writing in entertainment, but this trend got out of control in the 2000's. The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, Jonas L.A., Wizards of Waverly Place, iCarly, and Hannah Montana are huge money-making schemes, only created to turn a profit. These shows, and shows like them, lack the "soul" that shows of the early decades had.


However, in recent years, networks have decided to start funding quality animation projects. Three main shows come to mind: Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends, Chowder, and Adventure Time. Each show excels in creating a new, interesting story world, engaging and hilarious characters, and pushes the boundaries on animation. The art, writing, and production values are back up to par with that of our beloved 90's cartoons. And the best part? The shows are actually popular! I think it has something to do with our generation leaking into these networks and building a support base for more substance in kids' programming so that when we start having kids, they can have the same great experience with cartoons as we did.



* Still a great show, but doomed in my mind for creating a path to things like Fred.

Legends never die...just retold

Due to the massive flooding I have been watching a lot of television and by that I mean a lot of cartoons because I am twenty years young. While bingeing on cartoons I have noticed a pattern with some shows that I loved (and still do) and probably you guys and gals have watched too when you were little.

Let's see if you figure out which show I am talking about:

A trickster, a womanizer, a tough guy and a voice of reason travel great distances to collect X, be it for personal gain or to save the world. During their travels they stop at multiple towns to help the villagers out with their problems. They have a creature that they use for traveling and the trickster has a bo staff and can ride the clouds.

Give up? Obviously I was talking about Dragonball!

No wait! I just described Avatar: the Last Airbender!

Hold on! That kinda sounded like Pokemon!

What the hell is going on? Why are these shows similar to each other? Did they all just copy each other? Well kinda not really, to fully understand what is going on here we need to jump to 1590 in China.

Meet Sun Wukong...he is the inspiration for these show and many others that I did not mention. He is one of the main characters of the famous Chinese epic, Journey to the West. The basic summary of the story is a monk named Xuanzang must travel to India to recover Buddhist scriptures with the help of a monkey named Sun Wukong, a pig named Zhu Bajie, a water demon named Sha Wujing and a dragon king named Yulong that took the form of a horse. Along the way they encountered villages that required help or demons that are trying to steal Xuanzang and/or the scriptures.

Sound familiar? You can change certain key words like scriptures to dragon balls or Sun Wukong to Aang and you get the basic gist of each story. But why did these shows (and many others) use this story as a inspiration?

To give a really short answer to that question it is because Journey to the West is, at the basics, a pure adventure story. The story is about a group of people that go from point A to point B and dealing with challenges along the way; that is easy to use as a backbone for a story during any time, place or with any type of characters. The characters' personalities are simple tropes that can be molded into fleshed out characters with little effort. The story itself can be viewed as a basic skeleton of a adventure story that a writer can pick up and alter to fit the needs of the television show that they are creating.

I wanted to show the roots of shows that we have all seen as we were growing up.