The big three kids networks had indirectly bred some interesting characters. Nickelodeon is a veritable cesspit of creeps, pedophiles and 85% of the SpongeBob fandom, Cartoon Network is the birthplace of Steven Universe and minimalist art direction and Disney is a brothel of soon to expire talent, though to be fair people may recognize Hillary Duff more than Gage Golightly.
Then there's Butch Hartman. On one hand I like it when celebrities decide to make YouTube channels and showcase a more approchable side. On the other hand, it was through YouTube that Butch was revealed to be a piece of shit. You're probably wondering why I'm talking about him after all has been said and done.
Me too.
Well most recently Butch's Twitter was taken over by some NFT merchants, so he is back in the spotlight to some degree. Oh, and he's also executive producing an incredibly crappy Fairly Odd Parents spin-off for Paramount+. And to think people give Harper House shit.
But that's not why I'm here. I want to talk about a short he made that has fallen under the cracks, which is actually a good thing because I do not want Saberspark's fat fingers, Just Stop or LS Mark's somewhat smaller fingers on this. I think PIEGUYRULZ is preoccupied with more.... personal matters, let's call them. Did that body pillow ship?
By the way I'm doing this as a hobby, I don't care about burning bridges.
Background
Before joining up with Nickelodeon in the 90s, Butch Hartman previously worked at Hanna Barbera, and of the companies he worked at, HB is the most important based on what's gonna be talked about.
Interestingly, along with Doogal, Butch had some involvement with Disney's Pocahontas. How do people feel about that movie? Well the lead has been unofficially claimed by the hulkout community, and my only window to objectivity suggests this film was more problematic than anyone would let on.
Another thing to bring up is that Butch and Seth MacFarlane worked together during this era. They would collaborate on an Oh Yeah! Cartoons short and both would produce shorts for Cartoon Network's What A Cartoon Show in the mid-90s, and that's where this is going.
One of the earliest shorts Butch helmed for immediate public consumption was Gramps. This isn't talked about as often as his other works, maybe because other reviewers don't like making the extra effort? From what I can see, very little of this has served as a basis for anything in his later works, save for one thing that I'm gonna bring up in the plot.
Is the lord with you for this short Butch? I'm about to go through a routine exorcism... right after I work on my transitional skills....
Plot
On a rainy day, two kids and their grandfather, the aptly titled Gramps, are sitting around doing little much. The two kids, a boy and a girl named... okay so they're not named, but let's give them some to help the summation go a little smoother.
Let's see, we'll call the girl... Jillian, and we'll call the boy... Billy... McDouglastonChesterfieldO'Donnelstein, the third, esquire.
Anyway, Jillian and Billy argue about who killed an alien in a game and hey, I found something wrong. They imply the point of the game was to destroy an alien, but only one ship is present along with the alien monster. Maybe Billy wanted to cause a fight and Jillian has too much pride to see through bullshit.
One thing that kinda got revisited in later works is Jillian exclaiming "twerp." Some may think Vicky started out as an innocent girl and the trauma of losing her elderly caretaker turned her evil, but that would probably be undone by contrivance, because Butch's circuits fried as early as the first Fairly Odd Parents short.
Marmel cannot be credited for anything because he is somehow more generic than Butch, and is also a hell of a lot lazier. Do people get paid by the hour to talk politics on Twitter?
Where was I? Oh yeah. During a fight, this causes Gramps' oxygen to come loose. I'm not gonna question cartoon logic where oxygen is confused with helium, but soon we have our plot. Gramps decides to tell his children about the time he stopped an alien invasion, and the gag is that he gets corrected, a lot.
You know what? I'm cool with that, invite these kids onto Family Guy and watch them tear into the Tracey Ullman gag (which I only bring up due to MacFarlane's aforementioned start on What a Cartoon.) As a matter of fact this would make for a pretty interesting show, have the two kids come in to offer corrections on ludicrous tales, it would make for a killer educational series.
Anyway, we do find some Butch trademarks, such as common running gags and some very straightforward jokes, even dragging some gags for a bit too long, not even the Twilight Zone gag made me smile because of how forced it was. Just because both involve aliens that doesn't mean the reference would fit, just saying. To be fair, they try to be aware of it, but it's not that it's been done, it's that it was done poorly here.
So, there's very little I can take away from this short, but hey, it's not insufferable at least. I'd sooner go back to this than any of Fairly Odd Parents' pilots, and that says a lot. One thing else to note is the contrast between the style Butch is known for now compared to here. It has the signature 90s Hanna-Barbera style, and you rarely see any of Butch's style with any character... probably because he's not Stephen Silver.
Thing of it is, it doesn't even look like something associated with his own style. If someone else didn't handle this, I'd call this the peak of Butch Hartman's art direction.
They do pull the fake story may actually be true BS, but it's still more plausible than what happened in Recess: All Growed Down.
Conclusion
As someone who views Butch Hartman very lowly, and by that I mean I hate everything he has ever done at this point, even things that Steve Marmel had more involvement in, where does this short stand with me?
It's honestly the best thing Butch has ever done. It has potential to be something more than a one time deal, even beyond being a self-contained series. For better or worse, none of these characters got ran through the wringer, so maybe there is hope in this life, and maybe hopefully we won't see these characters again, lest someone other than Butch or Marmel are out of the picture.
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