captain_slinky | Cartoons, as God and Nature intended them to be!

I don't like the way Cartoons are born these days, debuting on some basic cable channel or (Lord forbid) some internet web site. It's just not natural!

Everybody knows that new Cartoons need to be born on the first Saturday in September, right after a Thursday or Friday night "Sneak Preview" of the new Saturday Morning Line-Up hosted by one of the networks prime-time "Stars" (usually a co-star or member of the supporting cast from a popular sit-com... somebody like the kid from Mr. Belvedere or Dwight "Howlin' Mad Murdock" Schultz).

Once the new baby cartoons have "hatched" on Saturday Morning, it's a Darwinian Survival-Of-The-Fittest Battle Royale at it's best!

Four competitors enter the arena every half-hour... ABC, NBC, CBS and "Syndicated" (which was replaced by "FOX" in the early 90's). Smurfs versus Monchichi! Ghostbusters versus Turbo Teen! Bugs Bunny versus Bravestarr! The victors came back next season to become a part of our shared Pop Culture Heritage, the losers were banished to to limbo till the next century when technology would allow them to be reborn via DVD and obsessive downloading, THE WAY THAT THE CARTOON GAWDS MEANT IT TO BE!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I have this conversation with Crystal A LOT. A very huge part of our social interaction for everybody over the age of 27 was our shared pop-culture experience. For the most part, we all grew up with the same 4 or 5 channels on TV. When you went to school on Monday you knew that everybody else on the playground had watched the same cartoons you watched, they had all watched the Disney Sunday Movie, they had all watched Battlestar Galactica, they had all watched Greatest American Hero. OUr social circles were based around what shows we watched; this swingset is the bridge of The Enterprise. You didn't watch Star Trek on Sunday afternoon? Go play with the some other kids, we're playing Star Trek.

Would a show like Star Trek have survived without it being the ONLY THING to watch on Sunday afternoon? Would it thrive in an environment like today's world where every bit of entertainment that was ever made in all of forever is available at your fingertips?

If not for boredom in the 1980's, I never would have watched and developed an addiction to about 90% of the stuff I know and obsess over today. Cheesy sci-fi movies, Star Trek, The Love Boat, Happy Days... is any of this stuff actually any good, or is it just good because I had no other choices?

Eddie Murphy used to have a comedy bit that applied, I forget the whole thing but it ends with a guy who's been starving in the desert for a week being given a glass of water and a stale saltine cracker. "DAMN that's a fine cracker! What is this? Is this gourmet or something? I have NEVER had such a FINE cracker in all my life! And this water! There's something special in this water, right?"

Kids born within the past 15 years or so (give or take a few years) will be the first generation of kids who can pick and choose what they grow up watching, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. If they decide that all they like is Science Fiction and so that's all they ever watch, how will they ever accidentally figure out that they also like John Wayne westerns because they had to sit through the ending to True Grit while waiting for Battle Beyond The Stars to come on at 4:30?

It's going to be interesting to see how this develops...

Yes! That's so true! I wouldn't have watched about 1/4 of the stuff I did if it wasn't for boredom. If I had a bunch of cable channels or the internet to watch just about anything I wanted, I would have skipped PBS for TNT or SciFi or CN. People try to talk about TV at work, but everybody seems to watch something different. It's rare to find someone who watches something I do, unless they're a total geek, and then certain things are just a given. But 20 years ago, we all watched the same episodes of Full House, Star Trek or DuckTales and we knew at least half our class did, too. It was so easy to find something in common to talk about. Nowadays with the myriad choices we encounter, we also don't appreciate it as much because it's so easy to get to. And we rarely encounter anything we weren't trying to find already unless we get bored and seek out something new. (Except for music. It's so easy to find different music, with sites like Pandora.) I get almost all my new stuff from friends anymore. Except anime. I do check out some new fansubs occasionally without any recommendations.

I think I'm babbling now. I have stuff to get done, so I better go do it. ^^;;

I'll work on compiling files this weekend and look for a way to rip from YouTube to my hard drive to get stuff I can't find elsewhere. I need to dig up some of my old IRC cartoon sharing hangouts, too.

Even if we DO watch the same TV shows as our co-workers, we're not watching it on the same schedule. How many times have I tried to strike up a conversation about a current show only to be shot down with a "OOOH don't say too much I still have 4 episodes of that sitting on my DVR at home!"

We live in an era of "Spoilers" :)

If you're not opposed to torrents, I have invites to tv-vault.me (a private tracker) that could help immensely...

Ooooh, definitely not opposed to the occasional torrent.

Cartoons, as God and Nature intended them to be!

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