Who lets a twelve or thirteen year old babysit an eleven year old?
It doesn't seem like that much of a stretch, that's around the age most kids are able to be given some responsibility, and it wouldn't so much be babysitting as much as having an older kid keeping an eye on them.
It's a common tactic to prevent the child from feeling like they're being babysat. Get someone around who's closer to their own age and they'll feel a little less immature.
It's also been shown that Susie is very mature for her age, so they probably trust her more.
What is Chuckie's problem with Tommy dating his sister? He knows he's a perfectly nice guy.
Yeah, but the three of them grew up together. The Westermarck Effect would be in full force by this point.
She's trying to be a Girly Girl to fit in at school. Some episodes show that she's still that at heart. Truth in Television as many girls go through a Girliness Upgrade when they hit adolescence.
Rugrats takes place in the year the episodes were made; Stu even mentions it's the Turn of the Millennium in one of the movies. What year does All Grown Up! take place, the early 00s, the 2010s, or is it a Time Skip?
Probably a time skip.
And as for the "millennium" comment, in Scream (1996), Randy says "it's the millennium" when it's four years before 2000. That was just something people said in the 90s, so All Grown Up could be the early 2000s. Several cultural things point to a 2003-2005 setting - Boy Bands are still around, the Java Lava is an internet cafe, no social media at all, the model of Angelica's laptop, the flip phones, Tommy's camcorder recording on VHS.
Doing the math, All Grown Up probably takes place around 2000-2008. That adds more questions, of course, but that's what we can go with.
Why did they decide to have the characters as 12-13 year olds, despite the plots and settings being very older teen-oriented? If they were going to time skip for that, why not make them around 17-18 year olds?
All Grown Up itself was made to celebrate the ten years anniversary since the beginning of Rugrats.
Why did character personalities change so drastically? Tommy pretty much lost his interest in adventures, Kimi is as bratty as Angelica was now, Chuckie is just a nerd, Susie is a control freak along with perfectionist, and so on.
Tommy didn't completely lose his adventurous side. He's now a wannabe filmmaker, which can definitely be seen as a representation of the imagination he had as a baby. Chuckie had a nerdy side in Rugrats, but it was just downplayed. Susie seems pretty identical to how she was in the previous show; she was the well-behaved Foil for the bratty Angelica. Her becoming a straight A student and Miss Perfect seemed like a logical enough development.
The characters' personalities didn't change. They evolved to what they'd naturally or believably be like at tween age. Tommy is still the imaginative leader who's there for his friends. Chuckie is the cautious or anxious best friend who still comes through for those he cares about. Angelica is self absorbed and bossy, but still cares for the others in her own way. Lil always wanted to assert her independence from Phil, who's virtually the same, and Lil always had a mixture of tomboy and girly girl traits (playing in the mud but still having dolls and wanting to be a princess). Susie is the mature foil to Angelica, while arguably being more realistic than she was in Rugrats. The only two whose personalities are different are Dil (who was a newborn and did nothing but cry and hog toys) and Kimi (who has the excuse of being new to the group in Rugrats but clearly came into her own in All Grown Up).
Why did Tommy noticeably and seemingly gain a lot of weight in between series?
There's no explicit explanation for it. Maybe the artists of the show wanted to do it.
Because kids gain weight as they grow?
How did Kimi not know that she was Japanese until the episode "Memoirs of a Finster?" It's hard to believe that Kimi wouldn't know about her culture until she was about twelve. Wouldn't she have found it earlier, or noticed some differences and perhaps asked?
She obviously knew she was Japanese all her life. But she had never properly embraced her culture or been taught too much about it until then. Kimi was already living in Paris when she was a baby and then moved to America not too long afterwards. Growing up around Americans, she had simply been 'westernised' her whole life. In the episode itself she suddenly realises that there's a side of her ancestry she hasn't really explored yet. It's quite similar to Tommy only discovering his Jewish side when he wants to impress Rachel. In both cases their parents just didn't teach them much about their culture. Neither Didi nor Kira seem to be that heavily into that side of themselves.
And if you recall when Kimi says "I'm Japanese", the next response is a snarky "you haven't figured that out yet?" from Chuckie. She started out doing her report on her Finster connections, completely forgetting her mother and biological father's side of the family.
Kira seems to have been westernized for most of her life too. She's introduced working in France, and Kimi is two when she moves to America. So with a white American husband, Kira might not have explored too much of her culture. She's clearly in touch with it, since her and Chaz's wedding is Japanese themed, but might not have put that much effort into raising Kimi to be aware of it.
The club Kimi joins at school also has only three students, so possibly there isn't that big an Asian population in the area. Her friends were mostly all white growing up, and Susie her best friend is African-American. So surrounded by white friends and family for the last nine years, she hadn't given much thought to her Japanese heritage.
Why are they all pre-teens? They act like high schoolers, they're treated like high schoolers, they have high school problems, etc.
The episode of Rugrats that inspired the series was originally a celebration of Rugrats tenth anniversary and was intended to show what the characters would be like if they'd aged ten years. What with the majority of the cast being between one and three they'd have to be preteens. The problem was that the writers apparently had no idea how 11-13 year olds acted in real life and decided to just make them act high school aged. It's a fairly common thing seen in various media featuring kids: Grade schoolers act like middle schoolers, middle schoolers like high schoolers and high schoolers like college students.
Why not age them up?
Actually, this whole "kids act like teenagers in television because they have no clue how kids really are" actually became Truth in Television. Kids see television as a role model for life sometimes, and they see "Oh, so this is how I'm supposed to be." Besides that, kids always want to look and act more adult anyway. And are very mean to anyone who isn't as 'mature' as them. Tommy and the gang could be trying to be more adult, and their parents, being not-as-competent-as-they-think-they-are, would encourage this by humoring them.
It's pretty Fridge Brilliance there - Just hang around any elementary school and they'll start trying to act "older" so they fit in with the "Cool" crowd.
When has any high-school-and-below-themed work EVER accurately represented those years? Sides, if they acted like "actual" eleven year olds, you'd be here talking about how annoying they are and how nobody can identify with the protagonists. We wouldn't actually have an original series if the characters in the original series acted like real babies that were like, one to three - there's that appeal of having the kids act older than they really are in fiction.
Well, they did act twice their age when they were babies. Angelica acted like a six year old.
All Grown Up takes place nine years into the future. That means that they would be aged 9-13 (counting Dil).
Something else to consider is the audience. A portion of the kids who had grown up with the Rugrats were either at, approaching or a little past pre-teenhood when All Grown Up premiered, and so maybe they thought it would go over well with that demographic.
Think about this: In the original Rugrats, the kids are about 1-3 years old, but were much smarter. Maybe they just kept the trend: age them 10 years and make them smarter than their age.
Seems to be a mixture of this and more age appropriate behavior, Depending on the Writer. There are episodes where the kids are geeking out over 'Yu-Gotta-Go' - which seems to be aimed at their demographic - Squeeing over things like first kisses and boy bands. Not to mention they go trick or treating at Halloween - which is still okay at their age.
And in "It's Cupid Stupid", the kids think a dance is ridiculous because of how young they are.
In Season 1, Tommy said he was 10 and by the end of the show, they're about 13ish, so the show probably takes place over the course of a few years.
What exactly happened in All Growed Up? It's implied they went into the future (or at least from their baby Point of View), but it's obviously not that. It seems a bit heavy set on the lampshading of Rugrat things.
It's just supposed to be a look into their future for us, and they didn't really experience it.
Most likely, the time machine worked so that the babies went to the future, but aged into their All Grown Up ages and accepted that they had to act like teens. Or maybe Tommy dreamed the special.
Previous episodes of this show included the babies entering a Reptar movie, acting out both the Passover and Chanukah stories, playing pretend through fairy tales, and imagining themselves as superheroes, right? The whole thing was probably just another Imagine Spot, and it would have stayed that way if the concept hadn't proven to be a successful pilot.
They were imagining what they'd be like when they were older, i.e the title "All GROWED Up".
How come Susie didn't call the police on the con artist Beverly Jones in the episode "Susie Sings The Blues?" Even the man could have assisted her in it, too. While working at the deserted building, he says "not again," which implied that Susie isn't the only person that Jones swindled.
Because Susie is a twelve-year-old girl who was nearly traumatised by the events. When you get a shock like that - realising that not only did someone you trusted lie to you, but also got you to give them $1,000. Susie is feeling many things like shock, shame, and fear over what Alisa or her parents will do when they find out - so calling the police isn't very high on her list of what to worry about. Alisa even calls Susie out for her Skewed Priorities on just worrying about the money.
Tracking Beverly Jones down might be harder than you'd think, considering she could have used a fake name and took the money as cash in an envelope (no bank account or address to track her to).
The episode gives the impression that Susie and Alisa keep it between them, so that their parents don't find out. Maybe off screen they did report it to the police and give a vague description of her to warn others, but we don't see it because it would ruin the flow of the ending.
How did Samantha turn from having pale skin and dark blue hair to being Ambiguously Brown?
Hair dye and tanning?
The woman who scams Susie out of $1,000. When did she hatch her plan to con her to begin with? Did she see Susie and come up with it on the spot?
The man who reveals it as a con says "not again", so 'Beverly' seems to have done this before. She may have gone to school talent shows or other such things to find vulnerable kids.
She's clearly a woman who's done this before and knows how to cover her tracks. The place they meet in appears to be some local community centre with a stage, so she may have scouted the place to see if there was anyone who looked promising.
Spike is on his way out? He's a mutt, which typically live around 13 years, and was already fully grown when Tommy was a 1 year old, putting his age in the original series at about 1 or 2 years old. Tommy is 11 or 12 in this series which puts Spike as solidly 12-13 years old. He has visibly aged so how has he lasted this long?
The oldest dog recorded lived to be almost 30 years old and many people have had dogs live to upwards of 15 years old. He's clearly not in the greatest shape at this time of his life, but he can still easily live out old age for another couple of years.
Tommy says multiple times in the first season that he's ten. So it's only a nine year difference between this show and Rugrats.
Lots of dogs are fully grown at the age of 2, and multiple dogs have made it to almost 20. He's got at least a few more years in him. Plus, cartoons have cartoon logic. He could live to 40 if the creators wish.
