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6 years 6 months ago
- Posts: 22
| Hiro wrote: People seem to confuse nostalgic sentiment with quality. Some of these old shows get more credit than what they deserve. Some of you fail to realize that not every single show from the past was made with quality. A lot of those shows were crap.
I re-watched shows I liked as a kid and teenager only to find out how horrible they actually are.
The only shows from the past that I can still enjoy and not cringe at is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hercules, Xena, Seinfeld and a few others.
As for TV animation, any cartoon from the 70s/80s is garbage period. TV animation has reached it's golden age in the 90s and it's actually still in it's golden age. You all just don't hear about it much. There are some good cartoons today, you all just won't give them a chance.
Move beyond kids shows, reality TV and MTV and you will find some good stuff. Watch My Name is Earl, House, 24, Prison Break, Heroes, Lost, The L Word, The Sopranos etc and tell me they are crap.
True on how tend placing nostaglic sentiment over reality, but I must disagree about you saying cartoons from the 70s/80s being complete garbage. There were a few gems amongst the rocks, the problem was from that age was dealing with these watchdog groups and the fact if you covered a live-action show with fast-action montages and goofy songs, it didn't matter how bad it was.
Meanwhile with the 80s itself, when ACT (Action for Children's Television) started crumbling, many decided on basing cartoons off of toys and merchandising, the way the 70s based cartoon off of sitcoms and celebrities as a means for appeasing the masses.
Though I'm not disparaging the way animation is today, you have to admit, bad writing and horrible scripts can ruin a show, movie, etc. no matter how high-tech you make it. Just because you dress a pig in a fabulous dress and sensible shows, it's still just a pig.
The reason most have negative views with today's animation is not the animation itself, mind you, but the production values and writing. In all fairness, they all start off good, then immediately devolve into a pale shadow of their former self when it could've been better.
Case in point, take Freakazoid! Originally when Paul Dini was assigned for the project, he wanted the series as a revival for the lost 'teen superhero' concept. Which was why he did the origin of Freakazoid and the Dance of Doom episodes. They weren't supposed to fall into a Monty Python realm of nonsense. But alas, it wasn't meant to be.
For one thing, Speilberg wanted the show to air on Fox instead of Kids' WB, mainly because Freakazoid! was going to be aimed towards the older demographic of young teens rather than kids. And because of Dini's success with Batman the Animated Series, Speilberg wanted him working on the show directly. However, Warner Bros. had other plans. One, because they were becoming their own network, they required a killer app program not based on their classic characters nor a video game. They felt Freakazoid had fit the bill.
The other problem was, Dini was signed on for producing the Adventures of Batman & Robin. Much to everyone's surprise and chagrin, B&R wasn't going to be a repackaged series of episodes from Batman TAS. Because of this, Paul only managed to produce and write the few episodes of Freakazoid! Thanks to WB taking over the reigns, as what they did with Cartoon Network, they sort of ruined it. Not completely, mind you, but to a point where you'll note Speilberg hasn't done anything else along the lines of television animation anymore.
Which was sad, because Freakazoid, like Johnny Bravo and Dexter, should've deserved better.
Beyond the animation, however, I do agree with you, there are good shows out there. The problem is locating them nowadays due to networks presuming all we want now are Reality Shows. Just because the island thing worked, doesn't mean other reality shows will. Besides the other shows you've mentioned, I like Doctor Who, Weeds, Battlestar Galactica, Scrubs and Smallville. Yes, I have guilty pleasures. We all do.
The truth is, we really can't criticize any Age of Television because, in retrospect, none of it really is perfect. Only in the way we envision it. Because the way I see, in about thirty years time, we'll have people complaining about the new forms of entertainment, claiming how Spongebob was far better than what's being offered then.
When the bottom line is, rather than complain about what age is better, we should enjoy what we like. Because that's what DVDs and YouTube's for.
'Nuff Said
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