Frosty the Snowman is Kinda Terrible

Rankin/Bass quite honestly did more harm than good in the longrun. No, I'm not citing stuff like sexism or racism in that. I mean we have a bunch of fundamentally flawed Christmas specials that are heralded to this very day from constant television airings. How else did Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory get its following?

I know no movie, show, special is ever perfect, but there's a limit, especially when it comes down to how its executed. It's a hard pill to swallow, but Rankin/Bass' animated specials, a majority at least, just don't hold up as well as they should. Exceptions apply, but without the rose tinted sunglasses you can't possibly see past the faults many of them have, especially if the remainder has little to show for it. Of all the Rankin/Bass specials, I consider Frosty the Snowman to be the worst of the bunch, bar none. If the only defense you can raise for it is nostalgia, it proves my point. Not to say you're not allowed to like it, if you enjoy the special you have the right.

There's a certain order when it comes to Frosty specials and their reps. Ironically, the few Frosty specials I kinda like, emphasis on kinda, are the two that're considered the worst, as contrarian as that sounds. Funnily enough, the worst specials tend to have more thought into character motivations, keep that in mind as I get into the 60s special. Frosty Returns at worst is an environmentalist pamphlet, but if so it's at least better than others like it. I get the picture, Holly wants to prevent the mass removal of snow if it means she has to lose Frosty forever, and to its credit the snow removal is done out of pettiness, so you can err more to Holly's side especially if you as a kid enjoyed snow days.

As for Legend of Frosty the Snowman, let me put it like this, the only takeaway people took from this is that it burns its ties to the Rankin/Bass special, that's all anyone ever says about it. What is this movie like in a vacuum? Honestly still not good, but not as bad as people claim it to be. At large it tries to be quirky, but it really lacks the staying power that something like Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer had.

But What the Hell is Wrong with Frosty the Snowman?

To put it simply, it had little thought put into it, you ironically feel more bad for the villain because he was essentially wronged and now forced to get the shaft, the jokes are bland and at this rate you'd wish it were stop motion because the cel animation looks like ass, lacking the stylization Peanuts had. It's not much, but beyond the songs, they essentially encompass the entire special. 

The plot can be easily summed up. Hack magician gets rid of hat that he believes doesn't work, kids find hat and use it for a snowman they made, snowman comes to life, hijinks ensue between their fun and the magician trying to get the hat back, snowman dies, Santa says it's no longer his hat because Christmas. You could argue that the plot was made as it were to go along with the song of the same name, but look, a little liberty can go a long way. High risk high reward.

I mean is it too much to ask for the plot to be about a girl finding an old top hat in her attic or buy it from a store, it turns out to be magic and Frosty is born. You'd probably argue that there'd be no conflict if it were that way, and if so, why not make it so the hat is valuable, and Hinkley had been after it in order to improve his career, thus he tries to snatch it. As for that emotional Frosty death scene at the end, why not have it as a noble sacrifice, where Hinkle falls under thin ice and Frosty dives in to save him, melting to nothing. Realizing the noble effort, Hinkle is unable to take the hat and lets Karen keep it as a sign of good faith, and hey, Christmas is the time to give so it checks out.

One thing that always bothered me about this special is that Karen basically stole a hat, whether intentional or not. Whether it landed on the snowman or in the vicinity of the kids, they just took it for themselves basically. In an era where parents were more prudish, this would've raised a lot of red flags, don't take what may be personal property, it's basic morality. It's not even like this was intended to be groundbreaking or subversive, this was just not well thought out.

And it gets especially bad at the end, where Santa comes in and says "Oh, you want your hat back? Tough. I'll put you on my naughty list and give you a punishment." What were they going for with that? This sounds like something Phelous would mock. This is what happens if you never grew up with the special, the faults take the forefront.

And look, this isn't to say all specials from this timeframe held up poorly, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol was the first Christmas special and it aged gracefully, so have most others. It's possible, but Frosty's issues are too big to ignore if you never grew up with it. It's certainly one of the more faulty Rankin/Bass specials, and what makes it worse is that while it's technically more competent than cheaper offerings, that means you can see the film more objectively, flaws and all.

You can do much better, especially with a dumb story or an over the top saccharine tale, or perhaps one with both. They're not any better, but they're certainly a lot more fun to watch.

My Question to You

If you still enjoy this movie, then answer me this. What do you see in it? You can still enjoy it, but I want to know your mentality, if it's anything beyond just being nostalgic for it.

My Most Overrated Movie

It's The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, it is what it is. To be perfectly clear, this is all just my personal opinion, you're welcome to disagree, just as much as I'm welcome to share. Otherwise what's the point? So let's get into it.

Personal Background

As another clarification, I'm not trying to be a contrarian, and I have seen this movie plenty of times before. I was a SpongeBob fan, and I remember actually being hyped for this movie when it was gonna come out. I got the movie's video game for GameCube, I believe I saw it in theaters then time later I got it on DVD and saw it however much I could then on. So I never went into the film as a hater, it was a slow burn leading to now.

Fallout

But what happened? As history shows, people like PIEGUYRULZ and MoBrosStudios effectively killed the SpongeBob fandom, and it's never gonna get better. As a consequence, SpongeBob fans had rallied in the name of Stephen Hillenburg, attacking anything they deem to be violating what they deem to be his wishes, and basically not understanding that the show stopped being his once the series made it to air, and there was nothing he could do even when he was alive.

Before you think I'm talking shit for the hell of it, keep in mind that Stephen was the director of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. He'd be dragged into this no matter what.

Textbook Defintion

Everything he did was essentially put on a higher pedestal than it was before, though ironically while he created SpongeBob he didn't always write every single episode, just saying. So, you have Stephen's work pushed to high heavens to honor him or shun later seasons. Now, combine that with the fact that the first  SpongeBob movie has become a nostalgic film, with those who saw it growing up now infesting the internet, and you have what is essentially a cold disaster. Nothing serious is happening, but there is the lingering sense that one side or the other is going to set off the proverbial nuke.

The big thing is that people are making this movie seem better than it actually is. Like others before and after it, this was just a film made by Nickelodeon to expand upon one of their brands. Not that it's a bad thing, it's just business as usual and people are allowed to enjoy it. When you take away the SpongeBob elements... you're left with a few things.

1: A Quite Frankly Ordinary Plot

Had this not been a nostalgic movie nor was it released when it was... how well does the plot hold up? The jokes have always been the high point of SpongeBob, at least back then, so what happens when you take them out? You're essentially left with a quite frankly generic plot, kids can do anything, so we've heard. You could say "Well isn't this just a kids movie, why are you being so hard on the plot?" Two things, one, people made it a point to fight the stigma that cartoons are for kids. Two, you'd probably say that in defense of a movie you love that I don't like. It's a lose-lose situation no matter what.

But I'm going at the plot like this, because previous Nickelodeon movies honestly handled things better, Rugrats in Paris with its humor and the framework of Chuckie wanting a mom, and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, with kids being kids and realizing what their parents mean to them. If it doesn't sound like much in writing, you have to see the movies themselves to really understand how well their plots are executed. SpongeBob feels basic by comparison, which you can forgive if you enjoy the film, you have the right. But remember, this is a film that has been praised more than I feel it deserves, and I have to hold it to some level of scruitiny.

2: Some Quite Frankly Basic Animation

So that was one big hot take on the plot, how about another? Sorry to say, but the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie's animation could be a lot better. It's not bad, but when you stack it up against other Nickelodeon movies before it, it looks sorta cheap. To its credit, it's not something a lot of people can pick up on right away, but since SpongeBob was becoming Nickelodeon's golden cow at this rate you'd think they'd put more money into it. Just saying, the Rugrats movie trilogy The Wild Thornberrys Movie each have better animation, and those came out before. The animation here is almost lower quality than that of Hey Arnold!: The Movie, and that was intended for television.

You could say, well those movies were made with traditional animation, the SpongeBob movie was made with digital ink and paint. You could also say that the animation direction was intentional because the characters are integrated into live action scenarios, but I'll get back into that in a bit. If you have those previous movies in mind, this sticks out like a sore thumb, and you can practically see characters snap between stances.

At best, this serves as a good example of the difference between digital animation and traditional animation. It's not bad, but it could be a lot better, especially given how big SpongeBob is, and that it has been a standard that went as far as Sponge out of Water. You have the money, the resources, the relevance, you were not in any trouble, there was only one other film coming out that year, just saying.

A quick thing about continuity.

For those who've had aneurysms over minor continuity errors, you could question how SpongeBob and Patrick didn't change into props when they entered the surface like in the episode Pressure, and this was by Stephen Hillenburg. I mean then again because he was involved people will turn a blind eye.

I dunno, it's just funny how this oversight was never really brought up. If you complain about continuity, but make exceptions for certain offenses then why should I take complaints like that seriously? You can complain, but be consistent.

#3: Also has Celebrity Voice Actors

This one will be brief. A lot of people complain about celebrity voice actors in kids movies. So I take it nobody knew who Alec Baldwin or David Hasselhoff were?

It's Not Culturally Significant

I know that seems like a stretch, given how highly people hold this film, but we have to be real. Had this not been associated with SpongeBob, people probably wouldn't remember it that much. Even back then, the most this got was a 68%, which while good, isn't to the level people claim it to be, not helping that there're people who complain about the rating.

I can accept people loving the movie no matter its issues or what not, but people don't know their limits. Case in point, time ago someone attempted to copy what Shrek Retold did by reanimating the entirety of the SpongeBob Squarepants Movie, it got claimed by Viacom, and naturally people got salty. Listen, when it comes to fair use, it can only be considered as such if the video provides commentary, criticism or is a parody. Rehydrated wasn't a parody, it was just the same story told with different voices and animation, you can get the intended experience either way.

You could say that was one of many contributing factors to a parasocial relationship people made with Stephen, and he can't even say anything about it now.

To describe how little cultural significance this show had, I want to compare this to a more accurate example. Shrek. Like SpoongeBob, Shrek is one of the most memed properties on the internet. You can credit Shrek for forever changing animated cinema. It was one of the first films, or the first to truly catch on with the masses, to subvert common tropes, incorporate pop culture references and commentary, and show how lucrative the computer animation industry was.

What did SpongeBob do to the movie industry? Nothing the TV series hasn't already done. Beyond starting out as a children's book, Shrek managed to become its own thing. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie can be considered a cash-in on the show's success, or better yet, an extension of a corporate property. There's a serious implication if you ask me, but I guess it just so happened to be a more likable film than other examples.

Final Thoughts

I never wanted to hate this movie. I grew up with it, I'm not even saying it's a bad movie, but let's face it, the fandom ruined it by making it seem bigger than it had any right to be. Whether running Stephen's name through the mud or playing dumb when it comes to a lot of the film's faults, I've had my fill, and I'm sure a lot of people are gonna hang me from a tree, or just post a comment and block me like they typically do.

Rugrats Go Wild: A Disappointment

 I've had old Nickelodeon movies on my mind for a while now, as weird as it sounds. In my defense, I did grow up with most of them, the first two Rugrats movies and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius to cite the bigger examples.

Nickelodeon Movies has truly evolved into its own little empire, covering everywhere they could, and even if most of their movies aren't much to write home about you gotta respect their commitment, though I prefer their more humble beginnings. Nickelodeon Movies wasn't just an extension of Nickelodeon, they wanted to get anywhere they could, whether it be book adaptations like with Harriet the Spy, their own SNL movie with Good Burger (because All That was essentially a kid friendly SNL), a screwball comedy with Snow Day, a science-fiction flick with Clockstoppers, joining in the computer animation boom with Jimmy Neutron, and expanding upon their popular Nicktoons like with their two Rugrats movies, Hey Arnold! and The Wild Thornberrys.

And also The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie I guess. I don't hate the movie, but fuck me is it overrated as hell.

While a lot of these older films aren't amazing by any stretch, they have their fans and I'd watch them. I wanted to give each classic Nickelodeon movie the benefit of the doubt, I can see kids back then enjoying it or just some dumb fun movie with an interesting idea and well enough execution, and of all of them... Rugrats Go Wild was the one that broke me.

Background

Rugrats Go Wild is both a threequel to the past two Rugrats movies, and a sequel to The Wild Thornberrys Movie. In the past, Rugrats was Nickelodeon's prime cash cow, and they went all out with their milking of it, from the show itself to that of its production company Klasky-Csupo. The Wild Thornberrys can be seen as another symptom of the milking, not that it has to be a bad thing, we got a lot of good stuff out of it, but it was clear Nickelodeon were struggling to keep everything afloat.

When it comes to Rugrats Go Wild, I can see the reasoning behind it, but to demonstrate I have to go into the previous films. The first Rugrats movie, while not a critical success, did gangbusters at the box office. You could say it in the right place at the right time. Rugrats in Paris was better than the previous film, and it also killed at the box office. As for The Wild Thornberrys, it was a critical and commercial success, and you can see why Klasky-Csupo became Nickelodeon's money printer, they can turn a profit every time.

However, as history shows it was clear that Rugrats was starting to run out of steam, hence why they had to add a lot to the original show, also spin-offs. Not to say the additions were a problem, Dil can be seen as the lesser of the two evils in the show's more radical changes, and Kimi and everyone else came in at what is generally considered to be the best Rugrats movie of the three, but then again they would've been better suited for a single appearance to mark the end for a long journey for Chuckie Finster finding a new mom, and even more. Just saying.

When it came to Rugrats Go Wild, there really weren't any stakes. Nickelodeon just wanted to get more money out of their bigger shows, or just their biggest contractee, and what better way to do that than with a crossover? All three films mentioned did great at the box office, so Nickelodeon would assume people would go to see it no matter what. It's all part of what I dub the threequel curse, where companies deem make a third film typically to cash in on their own property and thus it loses some of the punch prior entries had, especially if they do without some key personel.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Jurassic Park 3, Sponge on the Run, you see what I mean? Then again I don't think the former two films are that bad but unfortunately they suit my point. It's there that a movie becomes a brand and it's fair game for anyone in order to turn a profit or further existing projects. I mean, why else did they decide to make a crossover between shows that've been going on for a decent while that gets the most view time? Not helping that one of them had been going on for over a decade by this point.

Ignoring critical reviews as they've typically been low for Nickelodeon movies, I'll focus on the film's commercial success... which is hard to really describe. I heard that a box office success is a film making double its money back. In total, against a $25 million budget it made $55.4 million, which is a little above double but that's accounting for worldwide sales. In the US, it made $39.4 million. But if you want layman's terms, this did worse than the previous Rugrats movies.

Either the movie was that bad or people were starting to get sick of the property altogether. But I have a little theory to why this flopped.

While a lot of Nickelodeon movies were made to cash in on properties they owned, this one felt a lot more cynical compared to previous films. Exceptions are made because the experiences they provide can override said cynical elements, or the properties themselves are already so beloved to begin with people would just eat that shit up no matter what even if they contain elements that people complain about in kids movies like musical numbers, celebrity guest voices, pop culture references, mid animation, dumb jokes and the involvement of a guy people formed a parasocial connection to, *cough* SpongeBob *cough*

Cynicism

The best place to start is the opening logos, and it's not the logophile in me. Prior to late-2004 with the release of Lemony Snickets: A Series of Unfortunate Events, every Nickelodeon movie had their very own Nickelodeon Movies logo. Along with unique movies, they had unique identities, the executions equally so. It's a subtle trick, or perhaps it's just some extra creative juices flowing. So, what Nickelodeon Movies logo did they use for this film? The same one that was used on Hey Arnold!: The Movie, just with a different song. Not that it's a bad logo, but seriously, couldn't spring for something that either suited the movie or was just unique. It wasn't even a synonymous brand, otherwise it would've been used on more movies.

I'm harping on this, but it's really only because of a dire implication. I won't deny past Nickelodeon movies were made to promote the network's brand, but with Rugrats Go Wild and just using a straightforward logo it feels a lot more cynical, or just obvious. It doesn’t help that Klasky-Csupo also has an opening logo here, which does look cool and reflect their growth, but also reflects how they essentially became a brand themselves, Nickelodeon essentially had them under thumb at this point. Of course it’s something kids don’t pick up on, and the logos are good, it’s just a subtle red flag that usually indicates where a movie will stand.

Okay enough logo talk.

One interesting thing about this movie is that it made use of its own stab at Smell-O-Vision, remember that weird shit? Though credit where it's due, rather than forcing the odor into the viewing rooms, viewers got scratch and sniff cards, see the number on the screen, scratch and have a whiff. You know, the only other film I know of that came with scratch and sniff cards was Spy Kids 4, and if you want my opinion on that film, it made me less ashamed for being nostalgic for Spy Kids 3D: Game Over.

Regarding that, you could say this movie was made as a testing ground for a new gimmick, but they didn't want to base the film entirely around it, half hearted commitment. If not, you could say this is meant to act as a promotion for whatever, whether it be a new actor, new artist or a brand new television series... I tell ya I wish the SpongeBob fandom wasn't so broken that I can approach criticizing Sponge on the Run with good faith-

But What do I personally think of the movie?

In short, it's more like a 5 out of 10, not the worst thing ever, but up against other films it does not land on its feet.

When it comes to the previous two films, there was some kind of standard set, a grand adventure with some emotional moments along the way. From a brotherly quarrel reaching a fever pitch and Spike seemingly giving his life to save his babies, to Chuckie dealing with the lack of a mother, continuing on a defining character element. For Rugrats Go Wild, either more emotional moments are far and in between, or stuff like gross out humor outweighs it. Not to say the previous films didn't have it, but they were sorta better about it.

The story doesn't fare as well either, at least in my opinion. A crossover between the Rugrats and the Wild Thornberrys could be done well, and who knows, maybe to a lot of people it worked, but it doesn't feel like it does, it feels a bit too basic. A major problem here is the influx of characters that get the spotlight. By this point, Rugrats' main cast has inflated considerably, and with the addition of the main cast from another show, it's too many characters to get invested with. If you focus on every character the story would be all over the place, if you focus on a few characters then it would feel like something was missing. I feel like the movie was backed into a corner on that one. 

One cool thing that was utilized at least was, as this is a Wild Thornberrys crossover, this means Eliza could potentially communicate with Spike, and she does. But perhaps this was done to get in a big celebrity cameo, Bruce Willis. At first I thought it was kinda nice we can learn how committed Spike is to his babies, but we kinda got that already in the first film, a good example of show don't tell in that regard. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of hearing Spike talk, but if it's just for the sake of a celebrity voice or dumb jokes, then it lowers the impact considerably. Of course I don't expect Spike to be stoic, but a little balance can go a long way, just saying.

Moving onto what I recall, in this movie Susie has a bigger role here than in previous films, and she is a very 50/50 character, or I just don't like her. I get it, she was meant to be a foil to Angelica, but she left a lot to be desired. If you don't like Susie this won't be too fun. This movie is also a musical. I mean, so was the first movie, but they went further with it, or just didn't do it as well.

Let's close this off by going over the underlying points behind each movie. The first Rugrats film was meant to introduce Dil, i.e. a new character to spice up the show which had been going on for seven-eight years by this point. A movie would be a grand entrance for a new character, while working out new development for existing ones. The second Rugrats film was meant to close off an ongoing story for Chuckie, who wants a new mom while learning to be brave, and he would not only get a mom, but a whole family out of the deal. This would also introduce more characters to the main series, but it provided a perfect closing to an ongoing deal with Chuckie.

Though in a better world this would've been a great finale.

So what was the point behind Rugrats Go Wild? At best a neat crossover idea. At worst, just a glorified promotion of Nickelodeon's most successful shows at the time that contains a laundry list of popular kids movies cliches with very little nuance. As if, the more you look into it, the worse it gets. There's the prospect of world building, yes, but this would've worked better if it was established in the past that the shows are connected in some way, build up anticipation and make the crossover hold more weight.

Nostalgia

Now, this can be considered a nostalgic movie for a lot of people, and that's perfectly fine. If you enjoyed it as a kid and still find enjoyment in it now, you have the right. I never saw this film when it was new, which is why I'm approaching it the way I did. I can't possibly speak for how kids would feel about this film, nor was it a part of my childhood, but if it was, would I speak more highly of this film? Maybe. Keep in mind, the first two Rugrats movies are nostalgic to me.

Final Thoughts

At best, Rugrats Go Wild works best as a freebie movie, coming in a multipack consisting of the previous two Rugrats films, a little bonus that you may not go for, but it's nice to have the option. A lot of people consider this better than the first Rugrats movie, I don't know why, not trying to be mean I'm just curious about that line of logic. They have the right, but personally I consider the first movie better for having more humble intentions and not going as hard on worser tropes... or maybe I'm just more nostalgic for it.

Sometimes it's easy to tell when a film is made as little more than a money job, especially when valuable IPs are on display. This could've been made better if the connection between both shows was made clear early on, if they cut out the common trappings of profitable kids movies, try to put in more emotional moments and either cut the cast down or make something work for a larger cast. Perhaps have a majority of them held prisoner and the rest try to save them. I dunno. Was nice to hear Spike talk though, but that's about it.

Who knows? Maybe all of this can change. Maybe one day I'll revisit the film and I'll have a better time with it. I wanted to like it, but I should've seen it when it was new. I'm well out of bounds now, but I don't want that to remain set in stone.

LTA: The End of Zaid Magenta(?)

 This was a surprise, to say the least. For those who're not in the know, Zaid Magenta, or MisAnthroPony, he was a content reviewer. You may've heard of him through his less than pleasent discussions of Doug Walker, The Last of Us Part 2, the new Star Wars movies, and if there was anything else he did it pales in comparison.

Those of you who followed me way back would know I didn't particularly like him. While I'm no fan of toxic positivity, that owed to something more personal, Zaid fit the opposite extreme to a T. I felt like he embodied the worst aspects of those who support the causes he preached, referring to his views on media. He's essentially what those on the other side consider that side to be, negative, aggressive and petty as fuck.

When it comes to progression and how far you push your support, it can come off as disingenuous at best, as if you just took an idea at face value and ran with it without any sense of what you are fighting for, or you just took a kernel of what's going on and sought to inflate it based on the words of others alone... or you were just trying to be cool and thus put little thought into how to present yourself, or worst case, you're hopping onto a bandwagon to cover the fact that you're attached to something ten times worse than what you're trying to confront.

Zaid isn't a predator, he just has a fixation on par with Star Giant Productions.

Throughout his heyday, it was clear that Zaid had no filter, and he had the idea that if someone tried to talk him down he took it as a personal attack, and he stuck with that mentality no matter what. It doesn't help that a lot of his comments came off as immature, I mean, compared to parody accounts where he comes off the most like a self-parody, it's hilarious, no cap.

He had no self-awareness, it was his way or no effin way when it came to what he wanted to talk about. Naturally such behavior got him in trouble. Case and point, Cartoonshi. Cartoonshi to me is a mixed bag, but I will never deny that he has faced constant harassment because of his opinions on cartoons people enjoy, and that neither he, nor anybody, deserve that. But if you want the full scope, I'll provide a link to the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l7CsbPDc5A&pp=ygUMemFpZCBtYWdlbnRh

And somehow, in spite of all that, he kept a devoted following. I mean then again anyone could get a following so why complain. For a time, Zaid had managed to get into a circle of friends consisting of LioConvoy, Tek-No, among others. It began earlier, but really began to set in following a call between Lio and meat puppet Rosa Rey Ramsey regarding constant discussions of Star Wars.

Don't get it twisted, I'm not here to justify either side here, Ramsey especially, because keep in mind, she was complicit, she had turned a blind eye to not one but apparently two predators in Star Giant's Discord server, and I say apparently in the event it's on Star Giant's head for the second, Sean Sohn.

Because of his connections at this point, as well as the fact that Zaid's biggest enemies happened to be total goons like Crimson Mayhem and Star Giant, in a way Zaid felt like he was essentially untouchable, that if anyone tried to criticize Zaid in any way, it would be met with a counter-attack. When it comes to the internet, never make anyone feel like they are invincible, because chances are you're gonna slowly destroy them.

Of course he even had the bright idea to make a documentary relating to his haters, a documentary that surprisingly I was not considered for given how much shit I talked about him. While it would've been funny to see it come out... it didn't, and it's never going to.

Fallout

To nobody's surprise, Zaid's attitude and actions would soon cause him to collapse in on himself. To make matters worse, these events came after he claimed he would try to improve himself. But bad habits die hard, his continued negativity, and we're talking destructive negativity here, even making burner accounts to harass those that blocked him, the message was clear. Zaid can't change.

He would make a community post and a video vowing to be better, with the latter featuring a blatant case of emotional manipulation. If I were his father and he was holding my heart, it would surely ignite from the anger in his soul. And then, after all that, he quit. He lost everybody that stuck with him, with the big one being LioConvoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nstv_VQlBLE

And with that, he's gone. His YouTube, his deviantArt, his Facebook, his Twitter longer ago, they're all gone. All that's left is his now empty Patreon profile, along with any burner accounts he forgot to delete, hypothetically.

Is he ever going to return?

To reiterate, what led Zaid to finally close his account, beyond the negative comments he got, was his own friends telling him that he's fubared, he burned his bridges and cannot possibly restore any good faith, and that all he can do is just leave.

Worst case, he would frame this as him leaving the internet for a while to clear his head... or just hope the drama died down long enough to trick newcomers into backing him up. Maybe he'll come back under a more discreet identity, who knows?

I'm going with the majority on this one, he's not ever gonna change for the better, and we'll be better off if he never comes back. Any good he has done is easily overshadowed by the bad, and if we supported him in his more toxic episodes, we'd give him validation and make him believe he'd never do anything wrong.

So what's the lesson here? If you see a fire, keep an eye on it, otherwise it will grow out of control.

LTA: Tales from the Hood 3

 Whether or not I get this out on time or after, Happy Halloween, belated or not.

In the past I sought out movies to review if I could see them for free, so not to judge it based on how well worth it my money was. But things change, and now I’m not only registered on Hulu and Paramount+, but I also buy episodes and movies from YouTube. What helps is that it’s a one time purchase and usually no greater than 20 bucks, so a drop in the bucket that you can keep as long as you want. And what did I decide to buy?

Tales from the Hood 3

Before I get into why I'm jumping to 3, let me go over some backstory. This is the third installment of Tales from the Hood, duh, released in 1995. Tales from the Hood was directed by Rusty Cundieff and produced by Spike Lee, it's a horror anthology whose stories are based on issues that affect African Americans, police brutality, racial profiling, domestic abuse, gang violence, and most obviously, racism.

While not the greatest anthology film ever, I give it props for being so raw when discussing the issues presented, they do not hold back in the slightest, and it has some charm in its dairy quality, or cheese. While not a rousing success, it would spawn a sequel in 2018, a paradox if you will. How can you cash in on your movie if you happened to be the directors of it? While Tales from the Hood was fairly on the nose when it came to the issues they talked about, at least the stories were written well enough for you to get into.

Tales from the Hood 2 isn't so lucky, and the tales suffer for it. If you're not with the message, you're not gonna have a good time. They have a section relating to Emmett Till, and there's a town election involved. It's also a lot cheaper compared to the first film, coming to a head in the first section. Keith David is also in this, and I'll give him this, he proved to me he can do more than deep imposing voices.

I was going to review Tales from the Hood 2, but given that American Nightmares, also by Cundieff and Darin Scott, gave me such a terrible time I question how far I'd make it before I'd find myself determining what happens because of how on the nose they are with their social and political commentary.

Tales from the Hood 3 was produced for the SyFy channel, a red flag given that a lot of that channel's original movies are quite frankly cheap and terrible, thanks a lot Nu Image and The Asylum. However in spite of that, most people consider the third film to be a return to form of sorts, or at least better than the second. Well, I'll be the judge of that, with 12 bucks on the line.

The Movie

As is customary of anthology films, there is a frame story that would lead us to four different stories. In this frame story, a man is taking a child to safety, safety from what look to be evil spirits. To keep the tension low, the girl tells him stories. The past two films had the stories told by one Mr. Simms, the devil in secret. It seems they're trying something new here at least, especially as the second film burned away any good will those wraparounds had.

One thing I learned is that the less we know about those in the wraparounds, the more likely they are to die. It's a step up from the previous film where everyone is a strawman.

Story 1

The first story deals with a slumlord, no other way to say it as it's a landlord looking after a slum apartment, David Burr, who wants to take down the apartment he's looking after to build high rent condos. Admittedly, not the first time I've seen a story like this, last time it was an episode of Tales from the Darkside, Parlor Floor Front, either way I can already tell who the bad guy and good guy are, but let's be fair here.

Burr wants to evict the Bradfords, but they refuse to go. They do a little something different here, with the reason being that their son has cancer, went through chemotherapy and the stress involved with moving to a new place, let alone if the family can find something new, can stress him out and potentially kill him. And in situations where a child is said to have cancer, this turns out to be true. On a downside, any sympathy we have for Burr is not as high as it should be, beyond some small details like him being up against his boss, who would sue him for fraud if the deal didn't go through, and another thing that will be brought up later. The issue is that we expect them to get it in the end, that they're not people, just characters. But credit where it's due, it's not as strawmanny as American Nightmares, even if he curses out a kid.

Here's where the plot gets going. Burr makes a deal with his friend to burn the building down, but as another sympathetic point, Burr intended to just drive the family out, and in the context of a horror film, of course that won't be what happens. But back to no sympathy, we get a strong implication an arson job had been requested by him previously.

I get it though, make it clear who we're supposed to root for, if the family winds up striking back we'd feel better about it. This black and white mindset works better in a series of self-contained stories so that way we don't need that much time to get to know the characters. We get a scene where Burr gets a bizarre phone call, implying there was a jump ahead in time, but then it goes to the apartments as the bodies get hauled out. Either it was poor timing, or a hint to how an ensuing haunting is going to occur.

For some more credit, for those who did die, it was the father and the son, and that honestly helps. If the father lived he would peg Burr as a suspect. If the son lived the phone sene would be pointless. The mother survives, but is horribly burned and likely to succumb to the injuries, and the only reason they didn't get out in time was because the smoke alarm didn't work. So far, things seem well thought out at the very least.

If Burr wanted to be sympathetic, he would call off the deal out of respect to the parted or tried to. Either he was remorseful or realized that this would come back to haunt him, case in point on the latter, that weird phone call from before? It was the boy dribbling his basketball, along with an answering machine that admittedly caught me off guard.

The way I see it, either this will end with Burr admitting his part in the fire and getting arrested, or he gets burned alive in his own house. We're about to find out, but first, Burr winds up killing the arson he hired. So, looks like he's taking that little secret to the grave, or his paranoia is gonna be his undoing. We also get a little more of the guy pushing Burr to drive the family out, and let's just assume he's going to die or something, even if he didn't intend for Burr to do first and third degree murder. The boss says he's going to board the love boat, and I would make a comment about how everyone involved with the series of the same name is dead, but it turns out only one of the main actors involved with it is dead as of this writing, and it was only two years ago, go figure.

Anyway, the mother is dead, and we get more apparitions and sudden phone calls, along with some gags like the phone suddenly catching fire and a Scooby-Doo homage that happened earlier on. Burr would go back to the apartments, and something tells me he's about to die either poetically or not, he's already planning on shooting ghosts. Anyway, clearly CGI basketball comes into play and nothing bad happens yet... because he's on the way to the scene of the crime.

I expected a jumpscare, just not in the way the movie would play out. If he had the opportunity to just walk out of the room I feel even less bad for his inevitable demise, it's just taking forever and a day to get there. I'm not saying that as a negative, I just know it's gonna happen. But hey, at least this film's drag isn't as bad as the typical Spumco cartoon, for one thing it's not ugly.

And of course there are some good jumpscares, the key is to not make the suspense drag out for longer, and catch us off guard. We're about to hit the end soon, as Burr is thrown out the window, and doesn't die right away... until a few seconds later. And that's it.

The story was fine, a good introduction, just a simple little tale. I think a twist could've worked where the family lied about the son having cancer and the fiery death turned out to be karmic justice. I mean it was worth a try.

Story 2

It seems Rusty and Darin couldn't help themselves, because this next story concerns a bigot, and it comes off as wishful thinking for a little girl to be telling the story. Then again this could be from secondhand knowledge.

One interesting I found is that the bigot in question vandalized a sign that said All Lives Matter, a phrase used by those who lobby against Black Lives Matter. Weird. The story sees said bigot who lives in a bunker isolated from the rest of the world, communicating via a racist radio station. Last time I encountered a bigot running a radio station, I watched American Nightmares, and I already have an idea that this one will be the superior of the two.

While the man spouts common racist talking points, it really just feels like bringing them together rather than making a strawman out of him, and if there's no one else, whom would he be a strawman to? Nobody, but the voices in his head. That seems like the schtick here, the man is driven crazy by years of isolation and that will be his undoing.

But that may change, as we see one guy shut off his smart watch implying he's trying to get him out. Either that or their constant focus on the man's sex dolls is gonna play a role in the ensuing twist, downfall, whatever. Or maybe it's the poster he muses over. Whatever the case, just like before we're taking some sweet ass time to get to the end. If the end is gonna see him get sweet relief from years of isolation, that'll be pretty bold given who he is and what the directors stand for.

After a while, we get our twist. Apparently the area he's in is surrounded by a force field, and he fires his gun which lands in his head. So... was he a prisoner this entire time and finally cracked? Okay I was close, he was trapped like an animal in the zoo, was because he's dead. So, it turns out this is the distant future, where the whole alphabet soup of degenerates are trapped like zoo animals. I don't condone degenerate behavior, but this is probably a dream utopia in action for MovieBob, or AniMat, or Quinton Reviews, or insert terminally online Twitter user here.

Benefit to this is that it subverted expectations, I guess he wasn't directly targeted, just left to his own devices.

Story 3

Simply put, a pop singer and her manager plot to murder a wealthy retiree, but we can count on things to go horribly wrong. Think story one, but with a focus on first degree murder. I will say, Chela does have pipes. Anyway, I guess the mere existence of one of the singers pisses another one off, no wait, Chela's the backup singer, and she would be picked up by a guy to become her manager.

The retiree in particular is Marie Benoit, another faded primadonna, see how many get that sweet Metallica reference. She had been burned due to her performing a rendition of Carmen, and outed for being a black woman doing so. I'd say she was well ahead of her time, but I'll go no further than that, I think the keenest eyes would know where that's going.

Anyway, with one scene where Marie asks for blood, two things come to mind, she'll either be revealed to be a vampire, or this will be a repeat of the third segment in Tales from the Hood 2. This segment has more of a focus on the characters compared to the previous two, and it's kinda interesting how Chela and Marie would form a kinship based on their burns from the music industry. I sense a betrayal is in bloom...

And look at that, I was right. When Marie didn't shower Chela with praise, she would literally murder her. I mean it's not funny, but this can apply so well to a lot of people these days, those who put themselves on a pedestal and crumble at the slightest bit of criticism...

Until it turns out it was okay to laugh for now because this was a fantasy sequence that clues us in to what kind of person Chela is. You got me there. Anyhow, I think we're about to get our plot device real soon, a jewelry box filled with expensive goods no doubt. Either that or we go back to the blood detail, as Chela goes to get a bag of it for a transfusion, and amazingly this turns out to be innocent.

But anyway, the two pull up to her house, Chela bringing her simp of a manager, and the two would consider murdering Marie, and somehow I feel like Chela has more of a soul than SSSniperwolf, why else does she have a nightmare? Oh wait, it's because this is what would encourage her to go through with the murder plot, at least that's how it looks.

Anyway, as far as their little murder plot goes, the blood transfusion actually plays a role here, as they plan to mix type B blood with type O blood, and the manager guy gives her the option to back out of the plan, so I guess while he may suffer she may get the worst ending possible. Marie dies, and hey, you ever wanted to see people swimming in money in live action? Now's your chance, these two are complicit as fuck, and also huge fans of Dave Chapelle by the sound of it.

But now I'm at a crossroad, how are they going to suffer at the end? We've ruled out the vampire deal by this point, so what is her dream gonna come to life? No, just guessing blindly, the music box may have something to do with it, then again maybe not, because right now we have to dip into what the fuck territory, with a man engaged in a satanic ritual.

But perhaps vampirism may play a role if my sporadic guesses suit me well. The manager turns out to be a twist villain, drinking blood and likely using Marie's death to get access to it, or perhaps Park, I really should get in the habit of referring to people on a first name basis, intended to use Chela as a means of providing fresh blood to rejuvenate Marie, using young talent to do just that, which, while predictable, works given the context.

Look at that, I was right, he was a twist villain. But there's more. Marie alluded to a man who helped her land the lead role in Carmen, and he is revealed to be that man, hence using young talent to steal their life to rejuvenate her and thus give her a chance to show a new world how capable she is, in a contrast to what was once a discriminatory one.

As of now, this is my favorite story of the bunch, it had a twist that caught me off guard and a surprisingly compelling end.

Story 4

Okay, throughout the wraparounds, we get the narrative of this big man attempting to bring a girl to her mother while avoiding evil beings. They build up to this at least, and I will say it's better than Tales from the Hood 2's wraparounds in that there's build up, rather than just taking forever to be upfront. But we have one last story to go over.

For this story, we focus on a simple tale of karmic justice. A thief assaults and robs his victims, and his method in doing so makes him known as the Punch and Run Bandit. Well, it's leagues better than Ronnie the Robber, and yes, that was a name used by someone unironically. In one of his acts, he would get cursed, and that curse would come in a pair of shoes he gets from a crime, you know, walk a mile in their shoes.

As is tradition at this point, they make us hate the guy that's gonna suffer the most at the end, but can I really complain about a crook being one-dimensional? About the only thing about, well, Percy, is that he's receptive, they point out a consistent element to his on-the-street work and changes it up. We get our plot device quite soon, a guy with a pair of gold shoes. He's not virtuous, he's just defining booty calls and is probably a few sins away from being that guy in a horror story.

So, as you may figure, the shoes are cursed and won't come off, and as you may not figure, he begins to go through the signs of death. It starts comedic with his bowls being voided, okay fair this is the first instance in this movie where toilet humor is used, and I guess you can't have someone dying without everything just letting loose.

It seems this is more of a comedy horror story, I mean it helps diversify things here. I don't have much to add to this story to sum up, but I do have one thing to share. Apparently whoever wrote this film's Wikipedia article really favored this story and gave a complete synopsis for it. Either way, I may skip to the end of this, but that doesn't mean I didn't watch the story the whole way through, I just don't have a whole lot to say about it, other than symbolism up the ass, I guess they wanted to flex their mad editing skillz with a scene involving an angel and a demon, they manage to portray the stages of death fairly well, more mad editing skillz, Ezra Miller as the Flash hauls Percy to his fate, Percy doesn't have a happy end, shocker, and we get a shit load of exposition, though to be fair it does kinda help explain the bits that seemed to exist for the hell of it.

But the final end, I assumed Percy would be begging for mercy at the end, but good thing I misread, because now, Percy gets torn apart as his body is linked to the guy he killed in getting the shoes, by an impatient bitch and another doctor he tries to talk to just says absolutely nothing as his body is now tied to reality forever.

Let me say this, compared to the last story I saw in American Nightmares, this is superior to that, not only because I made it to the end but because it was an interesting tale all together, he certainly deserved it at the end, I guess. Though one other thing about this story is that it seems kinda familiar. I have a feeling I caught this on TV time ago, certain scenes definitely look familiar. But maybe it's just me.

Ending

Back to the wraparound one last time, we get a twist ending, where the man is revealed to be a killer who targets children. He would be surrounded by the spirits of his victims, the bad things he was on the run from are escorts, sorta like the demons from the previous story and the girl herself is a demon. All else you gotta know is that the reveals on each are well done, keeping up the thrills and tension. It was totally worth watching through. And while we never got Mr. Simms, we do get his famous line at the end.

The souls of the slain are freed, so an otherwise happy end.

Final Thoughts

I spent around 15 bucks on this movie, and honestly it was worth the investment.

Tales from the Hood 3 doesn't hold a candle to the first movie, but it works with what it has. Its stories have enough twists to keep you on your toes, they commit to more gruesome scares and at least it doesn't try to regurgitate previous tales, while keeping with the spirit of the previous entry.

It's certainly better than the previous film, which was just cheap and way too on the nose, and as this is a SyFy movie, it just makes it even more commendable how well the third film turned out.

If you wanna see my ranks for the four stories, it'd be the third, followed by the fourth, then the first and then the second. But they're all good stories, don't get it twisted. And if not, this is way better than American Nightmares, that's the bottom, stories executed so badly you'd swear they're satirical.

I was desperate for something Halloween-related to cover, and I'm glad I gave this a shot. So with that, thanks for reading, and to all...

Happy Halloween... MOTHAFUKAS!

LTA: That Thundercats Cartoon Few People Remember

 Its been a while. The dust has settled on Thundercats Roar, the original Thundercats is hardly touched upon nowadays, everyone had their say and now I think we're at a point where we can look back at what we got with some fresh eyes. Maybe they just needed some time to settle, or something far worse came around to make you realize that you had something before it was gone.

It's important I bring up Thundercats Roar because it plays a role in the show I'm actually talking about. Around the time discourse surrounding Teen Titans Go was at a reasonable peak, any good faith I had in the original Teen Titans was reduced to nothing and the bean-smile bullshit began, I will not say Calarts, because I think John Kricfalusi has always been shit and he invented the deragatory term. With that in mind, Thundercats Roar was seen as a byproduct of a slowly growing tumor in the animation industry. If it was a comedic spin on an action series then it must be the worst thing in the entire world. That mentality had carried on for years, and the only exception to this was Be Cool Scooby Doo, then again with something like Velma I wouldn't be surprised if Get a Clue was gonna get another shot.

Now, where the hell am I going with this? There was another Thundercats cartoon that came out years prior, and only one person of note ever mentioned it. I had never seen anyone compare this to that cartoon, but then again by this point I deemed the entirety of the animation community to no longer be worth watching.

Title

The only two people I know who mentioned the existence of the cartoon were Guru Larry and Egoraptor. That's it. The latter was when he negatively compared Roar to it, and when Larry said that the 2011 version was superior to the 80s version in his opinion, that's it. Now that I fulfilled the title, let's move on.

Waxing

I was watching Cartoon Network around this time because I lacked any self-control. I managed to catch stuff like Mystery Incorporated, The Looney Tunes Show and stuff like that, and if you want my opinion on those back when I saw them with fresh eyes... I didn't really care about them. I watched them when they were on but I thought very little about them. For The Looney Tunes Show they had the worst portrayal of Lola Bunny by far, annoying as fuck. About the only thing that kinda interested me was the fact that Daffy Duck had a girlfriend in it.

As for Mystery Incorporated, it just so happened to be on and wasn't bad enough for me to change the channel, but it had very little impact on me. I wasn't begging for more when the last episode aired, and if anything it seems like the only reason it worked with so many people was because it played to their interests and just so happened to be the first Scooby Doo show to really try a darker format, complete with cliches.

I was never a fan of Thundercats, and any knowledge I had of it was fleeting, to say the very least. I didn't go into the 2011 series as a fan, it would be my first proper introduction to, well, just about everything. As with the previous two shows I mentioned I never felt too strongly about it. And after ten years... I barely remember anything about it.

About the only things I recall about the show that didn't come from scattered clips was part of a commercial that had Wiley Kit and Kat trying to convince Lion-O on his adventure, and parts of the fourth episode. That's it. So either I didn't really watch much of it, or perhaps, hear me out, while it has interesting ideas on the surface, they lend very little memorability. I don't like Avatar: The Last Airbender but I manage to remember a majority of it years later, it was just too big for its own good, and it set an impossible standard.

Something tells me when Cartoon Network took this show on they had Avatar fans in mind and wanted to get a similar turnout. They got a crew member from Avatar, Ethan Spaulding, to co-develop the show. He would also work on Legend of Korra, but perhaps I know him best for directing Scooby-Doo Return to Zombie Island. But you wanna know who also developed the 2011 Thundercats caroon? Michael Jelenic, who also co-developed Teen Titans Go, and of course he co-directed the Super Mario Bros Movie.

Hmmm I wonder, do I back the guy who managed to produce lucrative and successful films and cartoons, or do I back a guy who focused on toothless action shows and when he struck out he made a steaming turd...

Anyhow, regardless of fan reception, Thundercats 2011 bombed out after a single season of 26 episodes. While there isn't any concrete reason behind why, rather than just assume Cartoon Network didn't know any better, I can sum up my guess in a word...

BUDGET

Shows like Thundercats look to be quite expensive to make and manage, and if there's any indication that it's not getting the success its looking for, why sink any more money into it? When you take into account that the show's animation was outsourced to Japan, who wavers a higher price tag than Korean studios, along with managing a fairly wide cast and how prices for most animated series tend to go into the mid-high millions- fuck it, why explain business when people operate on feelings and parasocial relationships alone?

Whether it was because the show was essentially a money sink that wasn't able to get the support necessary to justify keeping it alive, or perhaps it was the schedule that people couldn't keep up with, Thundercats died out and only a small few even remember it exists. Way I see it, it's yet another example of a generic Cartoon Network action show, hitting many of the same notes as other shows like it. The ideas aren't terrible in and of themselves, but the problem is how often they're done, practically verbatim, and I feel Thundercats did not do anything new with ideas generally associated with shows like it.

I'm just saying, if they did more people would've remembered the show, well, outside of a dedicated fanbase of those who enjoy shows like it.

A lot of you may know by now that I'm not a big fan of dark action cartoons. The last one I still enjoy is Todd McFarlane's Spawn. It seems Cartoon Network, DC, Time Warner, whoever, have found a formula and milked it for all its worth, and people ate that shit up every single time. I get shows like these make up for cliches by having moments that strike a chord, but if the moments are played out verbatim to other shows like it, or you can predict what happens by the end of it, that's not good writing, I'm sorry, but it could be much better.

And it really fits into how I feel about Thundercats 2011. Once more it was either a byproduct of CN's toothless action shows, or they wanted to get Avatar fans to tune in, why else did it take so long for them to think "Huh, that's weird, I suddenly have this urge to reboot Thundercats."

They play their action scenes relatively straight, at least from what I've seen, and I assume they would do the same to everything else. For instance, let's refer to the fourth episode. The crux of that is that Lion-O and company encounter a species of people that rapidly age. When I first saw this, even back then I figured "Oh, this character is gonna die of old age.", and he does.

I get what they're going for, but there's a huge problem there. If you give any idea this character would progressively get older, you can expect them to die at any point. And unsurprisingly, they play this as a heart-wrenching moment, they took this more seriously than a keen-minded viewer would. It's honestly insulting. I hate to criticize a death scene because it's gross to comment on a tender moment, but the execution there left so much to be desired. Were they trying to make us feel bad in an earnest attempt that went wrong? Or did they do it because they were obligated to? If its the latter, it reaffirms why I really don't like shows like it, it's formulaic, and thus leads to a hollow experience. Not helping that many of these series existed to push toy-lines and get money, which not even generic animated sitcoms had that as their MO.

And I have a feeling the rest of the episodes have a checklist. Lion-O's dad is killed, we have those shipping moments, Lion-O learns to be a mature and proper warrior, drama, you get the point. If you can predict what a series would entail before you see it for yourself, it's a sign that the writing leaves much to be desired.

But you may be thinking, "You're being a dick, if the writing is at least engaging and entertaining enough you can forgive these so called overdone cliches right?" Of course, that's perfectly fine. Just because I don't see it that doesn't mean you can't. If you enjoy shows like these more power to you, I won't deny you that right just because I happen to disagree.

Not even referring to the show's overall reception, but regardless of how it's reviewed, few people ever brought it up since it aired, and the only time it saw any kind of spotlight since was when Thundercats Roar hit the scene. It didn't do anything new, which doesn't have to be a bad thing, and it'd be hypocritical for me to say that given I can forgive most adult animated sitcoms, but it's easy to see how Thundercats can be lost in the shuffle, especially given the density of other shows like it on Cartoon Network.

Maybe CN didn't do the best job at promoting it, maybe it just aired at a bad time, maybe they couldn't get it to sell toys, maybe it cost too much to manage, but by the end of it all, what does this show have that I can consider worth it, that no other show had done already?

Beyond a dedicated niche and a few reviews on YouTube, how much success did this show have? How many people are talking about it? I'll give it this, for as many times as people called everything underrated in spite of these things already being beloved, I guess it can apply to this show, if I was into the genre.

Defending A Third Dad Cartoon

 If I was forced to choose a Chris Savino cartoon for the rest of my life, his run on Dexter’s Laboratory would be my choice. It’s down to perspective when it comes to the final two seasons of the show, if you view it with some degree of separation from prior ones, it honestly kinda helps it.

I never take any discussions on the state of long running shows seriously, because no matter what, it always comes down to how inferior later episodes are, no matter what. And some get it worse than others.

A Third Dad Cartoon is considered the worst episode from the Savino era, and I honestly disagree. Here’s why.

While a lot more went on in the previous two Dad cartoons, this one took a different direction, and to put it simply, it’s a few things. It’s a demonstration of how boring golf is, and Dad is an enthusiast who would take it seriously to the point he would take a while for the perfect swing. It’s down to patience in golf, pick the right club, make sure you’re in the right position, relax, no sounds, they nail how it goes.

There’s also an obvious joke.The joke is that we’re waiting for him to hit the ball, and then bam, the suspense leads to a fake out thanks to a rain out. Either that or there’s a hidden subtext. They ran out of time and wanted to pad the rest of the block out with this.

Even with this in mind, I get it, it leaves a lot to be desired, but my problem is that the joke went over everyone’s heads. It’s not “I get what they’re doing but this was just boring.”, but more “Hit the ball already! Jesus abandoned us!” I can’t control how people think, but I can still whine about it. If you have to spell out the joke, it would make it even less funny than it actually is.

So, TL;DR, A Third Dad Cartoon was either filler or a demonstration of how boring golf is as told subtly through show don’t tell. Or perhaps I just don’t hate this episode as much as everyone else. Pick your poison.

Worst Family Ties Episode

 I've been binging a lot of classic sitcoms lately, my go-tos have always been MeTV and Antenna TV. What helps either is that their schedules are consistent. One of the shows I have always tried to catch was Family Ties, a classic 80s staple that I figured would age like milk, but that wasn't the case. It's a great series with a believable cast.

I'd like to make something clear about the show given the context of the episode. I know Family Ties is more liberal compared to other shows from the time. It's like a tame version of All in the Family with a more liberal slant, it's subtle compared to All in the Family but when it shows it shows. The more liberal portions of the family consist of Stephen and Elyse Keaton, and the youngest daughter Jennifer, who will be the crux of the episode I'm going to focus on.

Rain Forests Keep Falling on My Head

This episode immediately followed an episode of Designing Women, one focusing on the allegations of sexual assault from Clarence Thomas to Anita Hill. Following that was an environmental episode of Family Ties, two social-issue episodes in one hour. It doesn't help that one did it better than the other. While Designing Women is certainly liberal, they did a good job in trying to keep things neutral. Then again the prospect of socially-liberal activism in Designing Women may seem odd given that many of these situations arise when black figures just so happen to be on the wrong side, and the show just so happens to take place in a southern state.

Clarence Thomas, as well as Julia running against a black man, I'm going to hell for this.

But while that dealt with a situation that involves allegations as well as the prospect of women holding little say in situations like that, especially against people in higher power, Family Ties was a lot more petty when it came to the social issues they covered.

It's an Environmental Episode

Let me make something clear, episodes of any show focusing on the environment hardly ever turn out good. A stark majority of them tend to have the same problems and turn out the same way. One character in particular would get derailed as they suddenly become obsessed with the environment, they run people ragged or turn other characters into strawmen, and by the end the environmental-case is seen as in the right.

Each episode is some variation thereof, and it always feels unpleasent to watch. For another example, refer to the King of the Hill episode It's Not Easy Being Green, or whatever the hell it's called. Perhaps ironically enough they did another environmental episode into its twilight seasons, and it was much better, in that nobody suddenly became a watered down Charles Manson.

Jennifer Keaton RIP

As mentioned before, I'm aware Jennifer is among the more liberal of the Keatons, moreso than her parents whom have mediated their views over the years. The episode has an interesting concept, Jennifer finds herself becoming depressed after learning of some unfriendly truths about how certain things negatively affect the environment, and she can't deal. In the past Jennifer was known for not making the best decisions when she was under pressure, such as how she tried to get back a childhood friend that was dating Mallory, or how she tried to become popular and lost sight of who she was.

But then again those are non-partisan issues, or lack any basis in social activism. Whether or not this is fair game for Jennifer, either they didn't do a good job executing it, or this was a bad idea from the start. As to be expected, Jennifer begins to chide everyone who does things that harm the environment, you can count on styrofoam entering that chat. Spoilers it does.

I can forgive an environmental episode because in spite of the negative elements I brought up, at least it did its job. The problem is that the episode implies that environmentalism is starting to harm Jennifer mentally, and I'm not reaching here, she says even the weather channel is making her depressed. In this situation, the episode would end with Jennifer having an emotional breakdown, but we don't get that. We do however get her absolutely breaking her guidance counselor though and something so close to making it clear she's going about environmentalism in a bad way.

But it all goes to nothing by the end. I feel like end was tacked on, with everyone essentially enabling her, because that's how you resolve depression, feed into it and let it swell into something worse. It felt like a jump to a radically different issue, or just an earlier portion of it, yeah I really shook my counselor, but lol thanks for caring. It really killed the entire episode, and by the end, I was absolutely stunned. It was the first episode of the night, and in the first quarter of the second, I just shut the TV off and went to bed, I was shook.

Final Thoughts

Rainforests Keep Falling on my Head is not only an example of a typical environmental episode derailing a character, but it embodies how badly a rushed ending can ruin an episode. It didn't feel satisfying and it did nothing to sell me on the message it told.

How could this have been better? Well, they could've followed in the footsteps of the episode where Jennifer tries to get in with the cool kids, she gets in trouble when she imposes her views on others, she and her dad have a heart to heart relating to how hard activism can be on any front, and while she'll stick to her environmental views she'll try to show some self-control when she sees others infringing, ending with her catching Stephen trying to smuggle a styrofoam container, or cup, something to make for a good final joke.

The issue here is that along with adhering to similar trappings of other environmental episodes, the episode feels very disjointed, rushed and borderline unfinished, and that wasn't even an issue with the rest of the series. I can forgive Jennifer sticking to her guns if there was more thought put into it, and they just abandoned the depression angle, perhaps just have her freak out over small things, argument, then have someone talk things out.

Way I see it now, this was a damning blow to the series, I can be hyperbolic about it because Family Ties isn't a kids show, never was. I don't want to see any more of the series for a good while. I can forgive episodes that lean in on ideologies, but if you want to keep me invested, you have to make sure there's more to it, and you put in the right effort.

Why I prefer the Games Ren and Stimpy

Ever since the downfall of John Kricfalusi, as in, people actually decided to speak up and reveal him to be an utter piece of shit, and thus it pulled the curtain back on the actual quality of John's work, we see what he can do without any interference, and sufficed to say it turned out to be shit. I once did an edit of Cans Without Labels and he proceeded to flag it down, so you can say I'm a bit biased, and I also did an edit of the George Liquor Program.

But in spite of all that, John's initial tenure with The Ren and Stimpy Show is still held to some decent regard. It's history by this point, but allow me to break it down:

• The Ren and Stimpy Show proved to be a very influential show for Nickelodeon.
• John was a creative with no filter and fought tooth and nail with the network on how the writing went down.
• He was a perfectionist at the cost of getting shit done on time and sought to push boundaries where they weren't welcome.
• Nickelodeon would fire him over the missed deadlines and thus take over the remainder of the series.
• People either really hate or consider this era of the show to be mid.

While the Games era has its fans there're still some people who consider it to be a far cry from the older seasons, or they just don't like it. I can see where that comes from, once the creator is taken off of a project it shows in later episodes. I'm just saying it's hard to look back on the originals knowing what we know about John now, and how a lot of the faults in his later works reflect in the Spumco seasons, and the only reason they're any better now is because of network interference, of course some things would slip out.

So why would I prefer the Games era to Spumco? Let's look over both.

Spumco

What made the Spumco seasons so good? A lot of people would say it was because it had a lot of daring adult jokes that would fly over everyone's heads as a kid, and really hit them as an adult. Ren and Stimpy did it first and I can see where the novelty lies, but two things, one, once you figure out the joke, it can get a little worn out as now the joke turns from complicated to making you laugh once or twice but now, it's time to move on.

Second, Rocko's Modern Life was also known for its adult jokes, but that show had more class. Both shows did work on trying to slip stuff by the censors, but the smoking gun is the kind of jokes either shows get away with. One hand, double entendres, the other, cigars look like turds and gross out. It's down to preference really, but I prefer the former because the way the jokes are carried out are funny enough in their own right to keep me interested.

Ren and Stimpy certainly introduced the concept, but others would do it better, and Ren and Stimpy was around for much longer so therefore it would stick with more people.

One other thing that keeps me at a distance is the drag. It's just me, but most of the time I feel like most jokes and scenes go on for an eternity. Now granted, it can work to great effect like in Sven Hoek, other times I'm thinking that if John had not been bothered, we would've had the equivalent of A Third Dad Cartoon where nothing happens until the very end, and it's not even to make a point.

I'm just saying, you can trim out gaps of nothing or more of the same happening and nothing would be lost. Suspense and comedy don't always go well together, either that or John sucks at it. Artists should be allowed creative freedom, but John doesn't deserve it, Cans Without Labels and Adult Party Cartoon demonstrate just as much.

Games

I had said I may be biased against John early on because he flagged down one of my videos, well the favor is also extended to Games... because I saw a Games era episode first. Lair of the Lummox to be exact. I'm aware the season has its bad episodes, and there are some episodes I don't like. Either I got lucky and was exposed to episodes generally agreed upon to be good, or I just didn't have any quality standard set because I got into the series so late in the game.

For a lot of the episodes in this period, it seems like a lot of them are used by the animators to vent their frustrations about John. Stimpy's Cartoon Show proved to be one of the era's best episodes because of it. However, when it comes to trying to keep with the spirit of the older seasons, they were in a lose-lose situation. If they tried to do their own thing, the fans would hate it, if they tried to replicate what the older seasons had, the fans would hate it.

I can't possibly defend the entire period, but I can say I enjoyed what I saw of it, and I feel more comfortable returning to it than the Spumco era.

Separation

Some may suggest that I should separate the art from the artist, but that is difficult when it comes to Spumco. John played Ren, he put in a stark majority of himself into the character. It came to a head in Adult Party Cartoon, and we've seen how horrible he was to work with even in his prime. I can't possibly view Spumco episodes with any ounce of good faith. I won't hold it against anyone who's the opposite, but there you go.

Whether people want to admit it or not, maybe Ren and Stimpy was better off without John K., and Bob Camp is the true genius behind it.

LTA: Rugrats Royal Ransom

 I'm feeling nostalgic today. I can't possibly think of a more beautiful day to revisit one of my childhood games... via a longplay. Rugrats Royal Ransom. The GameCube was my shit back in the day, and so was Nickelodeon, and naturally I wanted to find stuff that can appeal to both.

Royal Ransom was released in 2002, and was developed by Avalanche Software. Avalanche were behind the Tak and the Power of Juju games, the N64 version of Mortal Kombat Mythologies Sub Zero, a whole bunch of licenses, don't ask if they're worth playing though. It came out for GameCube and PlayStation 2, and something tells me around this time Nickelodeon were trying to avoid the XBOX as much as possible, the most we got in 2002 was Nickelodeon Party Blast, a pity indeed.

The game wasn't particularly liked, but it wasn't to any extreme degree, at most X-Play in their usual wisdom underthought while going for a version of the game that I didn't own, and you'd think nobody knew about the GameCube back then, I mean until the Wii U it was the lowest selling Nintendo console so, got me there I guess.

Along with nostalgia, Royal Ransom is special for another reason. It was there that I got an introduction to SpongeBob SquarePants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman through a trailer that was included. By that point I already played Battle for Bikini Bottom and the movie game, and since it wouldn't be for another few years until I got another SpongeBob game for the console, I figured I'd give it a shot, and if you want my quick thoughts on it, I get why people don't like it, but a lot of the complaints people raise are arbitrary, to say the least, and I'd wonder how big of SpongeBob fans they are to miss blatant easter eggs.

Got that out of my system, back from one cash cow to another.

On the premise, Stu builds a giant play palace, Angelica takes over the castle up top and steals the babies' toys and they would travel up to try and get them back, their imagination making each level a journey. Not bad, especially given where the show was at this point, I can see this happening in an episode of the show, beyond Stu managing to pull off something with such a wide scope and nothing blew up or whatever.

The game lets you play as either Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, Lil or Kimi, you don't make the selection at the start, you just have either five going right into it. Some had complained about this because each character is essentially the same, but I think I figured out why they made that choice. To explain, you need to pay a certain number of coins to get into the play palace. If you play a level and lose you get sent back out. Now, what would five different yet similar characters mean in this situation? If you manage to get all five babies onto the play palace, you have additional chances at the levels before you have to pay to get back on again, and since they play the same, once more, extra babies, extra chances. I'd do a mic drop, but I don't own one and that's cliched as hell.

There is some mild variety in each stage, but not that much. While the goals, methods and what not vary, each stage is either some variation of race, wandering from one place to another or finding items and bringing them to designated spots. I'll give it this, there's more to do here than in Fairly Odd Parents Breakin Da Rules, there's more to collect and while core principles of each level are similar, they're not exactly the same. The unique worlds you go to are realized well enough which help keep things different. For example, in the moon section you actually have looser gravity in your jumps.

There is also mild reward for exploration, as along with batteries you find money you can use to pay for extra items.

The goal of this game is to beat enough levels on three sections of the play palace before you get to confront Angelica, to get to the sections you need to collect big batteries which you get after beating said levels, to get to levels you need to collect little batteries you find in the sections or the levels themselves. You're not obligate to beat every single level in this game as long as you get enough big batteries, so that's a plus, as long as you have enough little batteries and you can't stand a certain level, you have the option to skip it, but just to be safe, keep your battery number in check.

Some had complained about the jumping in this game, and to that I have this to say. Either it's a problem with the PS2 version, or somebody's full of shit. The jumping has never been an issue for me, it never hindered me in any way. I know not every game is gonna have precise jumps, but come on, you can do way worse. I also heard some claim this game is buggy as hell, and yeah, there're times you can fall through the floor, but you have to really make the effort to break through. Some minor glitches don't even affect you.

Moving on, the game operates on a difficulty system, and the reason I came back to this was because I played it on easy, and only now saw what normal difficulty was like. I never saw what the hard mode offered, so I'm gonna be referring to normal and easy difficulties herein. The normal difficulty has a high number of items you need to get, items are further away from one another, there're more enemies on screen along with landmines in the form of jack in the boxes. But, as an interesting mechanic you can bounce off the top of them if you so choose.

On easy, there're some huge changes. Items are either closer together or levels are cut shorter, there're less enemies, the land mines are removed entirely, and that's just obvious ones. To single out two examples, I'll refer to the boss fight at the end of Cone Caper and the final level. The former has you fight a mechanical clown head that would fire projectiles at you, while the final level has you launch boulders at doors covered by gates you can only open by sitting on pressure pads. In easy mode, the clown doesn't attack you, and all you have to do is drive over the pressure pad once and the gate stays down. Another minor change, referring to Temple of the Lamp, in normal difficulty beetles are found nearly everywhere in the open, but in easy mode, the only way to find them is if you break the vases some are hiding in.

I can say with certainty that the difficulty changes are far from arbitrary, there are some serious contrasts between them.

The music is decent, and while Mark Mothersbaugh didn't compose it here, some tracks have the Rugrats charm, or they're just enjoyable to listen to. But there is a caveat, the music loops, and it happens quite soon.

Last thing I'd like to go over is the graphics. For a show that has a particular art direction, and for how it translates to video game graphics, it actually doesn't look too bad, of course it's not great, but you know what? It's already vastly superior to the 2021 Rugrats reboot, and I'd say that no matter what. There is some decent attention to detail in the backgrounds, whether you get to see cars driving on the road in the hub, or you get some decent views and scenery in the actual levels.

Final Thoughts

I can't say for certain that time treated this game well, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy this game. Every level felt like a journey, and hey, that was the bottom line. The game has some weird elements, but either it fits with the show or helps craft a unique identity, which is something I'd give to Revenge of the Flying Dutchman all the same.

Sorry if this came off as a bit disjointed, I wanted to get something out there while the game was still fresh in my head.

LTA: Uncle Gus

 This week in lost media finds, Uncle Gus, among the more elusive Cartoon Network pilots has finally been found. Well, one of two, but you get the picture. In the event it gets taken down again I gave it a watch, and I figured I'd share my thoughts to see where it stands against others and whether or not it had any potential as a series.

The pilot was produced by Lincoln Peirce, aka the guy behind Big Nate which I would've assumed was yet another quirky cartoon the greater cartoon community latched onto, but then I realize it was based on a comic strip Peirce created back in the early-90s, so it seems he's doing just fine these days. Peirce had pitched Uncle Gus to Cartoon Network twice, but allegedly thrice, so it seems there wasn't anything wrong with the pilot itself, it just didn't get as many votes, and the shows that did win out, let's be honest, they deserved it at the end, we got a lot out of them, they're amazing shows and the pilots they stomped had very little longevity in them, a season or two tops.

But back to the pilot, while it never truly caught on, it was able to sustain itself with audiences another way. Gus got to appear in the Shockwave game Cartoon Cartoons: Summer Resort, that is, in that game's first episode, and it seems that honor was given if the pilot managed to get respectable voting numbers. Best way I can explain is to refer to the other characters, Longhair from Longhair and Doubledome, Prickles the Cactus, eponymous and Vivian from Foe Paws... I smell a rig.

Anyway, Foe Paws being the exception, Uncle Gus, Longhair and Prickles both got a second chance in some capacity, the former two getting another pilot made for the second big pick in 2001, and Prickles getting a flash cartoon sequel on Cartoon Network's website. So it certainly had its fans, but I guess some people just weren't able to snag it sooner.

Now that I got that out of the way, let's get into the pilot proper.

The Pilot

Uncle Gus, if it went to series, centers on the unemployed Uncle Gus who lives with his talking anthropomorpic horse Flapjack and his annoying nephew B-Otis, and I'm not saying annoying to be negative, he gets on the nerves of the other two with his tendency to break out into song.

Uncle Gus can be compared to the likes of CatDog and Johnny Bravo, that is, having a lovable loser who can't help but find himself getting in trouble through the best intentions. Uncle Gus is no moron, he's not wacky, obnoxious or means anyone any harm, the worst he can do is indulge, like when he spent his unemployment money on a new TV. Flapjack is otherwise the straight man, but compared to others like him he seems to be a bit more lax on crazier ideas and errs more to Gus' side depending on the situation.

When it comes to pilots, while a premise can help make a pilot stick, the actual content needs to be well enough for the potential to truly show. In the pilot, Gus discovers an old flame, now a zoologist, is still wearing the engagement ring he gave her, and he attempts to determine if she still loves him. Gus and the others wind up breaking into a monkey exhibit where the zoologist is, and after a misunderstanding where the monkeys assume Gus' advances are a challenge, he is forced to fight the monkey's alpha male.

It could only get bad if he is determined to win her love, but it seems Gus stood no chance. The resolution comes from B-Otis getting nabbed and then after falling from a tree he was on knocks out the gorilla. If the zoologist loved Gus and B-Otis managed to steal her heart then that would not only be unsatisfying but weird as all hell. It turns out that she didn't love him and the only reason she kept the ring on was because she couldn't get it off.

Admittedly I knew the zoologist would not love Gus anymore, but credit to the pilot it proved my expectations wrong on how things would go down, and it seemed Gus was gonna flounder no matter what. It ends with B-Otis taking over Gus' house with the other monkeys, and as Gus and Flapjack were always trying to silence him with the singing, I guess I can see why he'd have them locked out.

How was it?

So, where would I rank Uncle Gus? Does it come close to the unholy three I talked about not too long ago? Nope, not even close.

Referring back to CatDog and Johnny Bravo, the schtick behind each is that both star lovable losers, people who find trouble no matter what they do. We want to see them succeed which is why we keep coming back to them. I feel like Uncle Gus would've fit in comfortably with shows like that. Gus is a likable character for sure, he's not dumb, and we've all been in his shoes at some point in our lives. Some may consider B-Otis annoying, but so do the characters.

Because the show stars an older man character it'd allow it to stand out from other shows like it on Cartoon Network. It just so happened to not make it to the top three. At the very least, this didn't deserve to be lost for so long. Unfortunately, at least in its entirety in English, the second Uncle Gus pilot is still lost, but on the upside, if we can get it located we can give it another shot and see what more we can get out of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjIWgOjRDaI

Worst CatDog Episode (according to me)

 Previously I talked about Back to School, one of two episodes CatDog fans deemed to be the worst. At least, that's how it seemed. Looking through the show's wiki, it dawned on me that it is in utter disrepair. Any pages with more details tend to throw in some worthless comparisons to other shows and reception based on... nothing by the looks of it.

Apparently most episodes were written with haste due to how many new ones needed to be made, and thus inconsistency is gonna play a factor. Looking back at Back to School, I had complained about it being inconsistent, and it was in many ways. Why is Lola a science teacher when she's a zoologist? I mean granted she is scientifically inclined but this is the first an only instance of her being shown as a teacher. The big one here being that Cat was apparently a graduate already, not just based on the opening, but a flashback in the episode Remain Seated, which shares the same writer. Also here we have two different characters named Sally. If the Sally here was meant to be the same one as It's a Jungle In Here's Sally, it's a lose lose situation basically. Seems like she would’ve been a loose bet as she always deemed him a loser, still question Dog’s smugness toward the end, I mean what’s up with that?

But these in mind elevate that episode to… meh. It works for a typical conclusion to a CatDog episode, and the fact that the a-segment was Kooky Prank Day helps balance things out quite nicely.

Trespassing is another episode fans deem to be the worst, allegedly. There're times where Cat doesn't deserve to go through hell, but the end kinda helps things where he isn't devastated, he just basically accepted it, like yea, things can only get worse, and I know it.

So with that out of the way, I've found two episodes that I'd consider to be the worst episodes of the show, at least in my opinion, one of which has just edged it out. Climb Every CatDog and Just Say CatDog Sent Ya, the former being a runner up.

Runner Up: Climb Every CatDog

Now, this episode was originally going to be my pick for the worst, and it was owed to its conclusion. While Cat managed to best the rival of the week, it all came crashing down when Dunglap managed to get first, and take what I said about Trespassing and do the opposite. What's the joke? Is Cat's sadness supposed to be our joy? What were they going for here?

It was an unpleasant end, but that was it, an end. The journey was fine enough and hey, the only thing that went wrong was someone else getting what Cat wanted at the end, I guess. It just felt kinda off, but oh well, it was etched out.

Just Say CatDog Sent Ya

This one hurt, especially since this is one of a few episodes I remember watching growing up, that always hits harder than it has any right to.

The defining factor against it was that it felt like Cat was poised to fail at the end. They had an idea to how things would be screwed up by the end, but it seems they ran out of time to do more. Dog eats all of Cat's stock, Winslow delivers a crushing blow by selling Burger Bones, and CatDog get chased off by the Greasers. It's the kind of episode that would confirm claims of mean-spiritedness.

I'm not saying this episode is mean however, it just felt disjointed and almost rushed even, and it wound up making characters come off in a worse way, well Dog kinda does that as he did what was particularly selfish. Just the fact that the next episode has Cat do something selfish and get punished at the end for it really shows how little balance there was between segments.

This episode, even Dog's Strange Condition just leave a bad taste in my mouth, like two dire experiences for the price of one, an episode that has a more fleshed out conclusion followed by an episode that leans in on the worst aspect of Cat, implication of favoritism, or I just didn't like it very much.

Final Thoughts

While Cat gets the worst outcome in most episodes, sometimes he deserves it, other times he achieves what he sets out to accomplish but the success turns out to be worse in the end. This and even the b-segment feel off, I mean even Back to School felt more in line even if the writers conveniently forgot Cat did graduate. I'm just saying if Dog had to get his degree and decided to bully Cat to relive his glory days then learn a lesson, and if you really want the classic Cat ending have Dog steal Sally be my guest.

But Just Say CatDog Sent Ya was not enjoyable, not even the jokes landed much, and Steven Banks can do way better. And that's the best way I can sum up the episode. It's a typical CatDog episode... but they can do better.