Era of Mediocrity Continues
© Enoch Allen
Last time, I completed an article about Mediocrity in animation, and I promised to elaborate.
Here comes the elaboration.
The Fairly Odd-Parents, airing on Nickelodeon, is as inventive a series as can be allowed to air on the idea-starved network. Many animation enthusiasts may debate the aforementioned with me; if so, I welcome the debate. Nickelodeon airs unoriginal programming passed off as fresh and innovative. The programming makes shows like The Fairly Odd-Parents and Invader Zim out to be the cream of the crop. Unfortunately, the latter program was the best show the Nick Head Honchos weren't backing, and as a result Zim floundered. The SLAM block is nowhere to be seen.
And The Fairly Odd-Parents is all by its lonesome to help the Nick channel retain its street cred.
Klasky-Csupo does good work. I know that I will lose many friends for saying this, but if you're going to hang for a sheep, you might as well hang for a horse. Rugrats is not Nickelodeon's shining beacon of light. And neither is The Wild Thornberrys. Both of these programs contain content barely stimulating or intriguing enough to keep the adult viewer awake with his/her child. The Nick channel has become the channel of choice (next to the Fox Box) in regards to babysitting children, in households that are run by parents who can't seem to tell the diff between good animated programs and dishwasher-safe detergent. In other words, it all looks the same to them.
I wish that Max Steel would be resurrected and sent back to Foundation Imaging, the studio responsible for creating and compositing one of the finest animated programs ever aired-Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles. They are comprised of an immaculate team of CG animators, compositors, and motion-capture specialists. Storywise, Max Steel was sorely lacking. But the intense, engaging action sequences and the episodic scores by Nathan Furst and Jim Latham more than compensated for its shortcomings. Good animated programs keep on being cancelled on me, and the viewers who give half of a crap.
I keep on thinking, who's really at fault here? The networks, or the viewers? Are the viewers placing their young children further away from the remote control and in front of craptainment misconstrued as legitimate children's programming? Or are the networks themselves rejecting one good idea after another, in favor of the bottom line and giving the greenlight to concepts that look funny, are cheap to produce and/or acquire, and can help them fill some FCC obligations? Perhaps I will never understand what goes through the mind of a typical development executive.
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