How come Eddy and Jimmy never became Scrappies (Ed Edd n Eddy)

@ maxwellelvis okay maybe I was too harsh on the kids. I meant to say that Sarah, Kevin, and Lee Kanker annoyed me the most. Jimmy sometimes annoyed me when he would go along with whatever Sarah did.

As much as I dislike how things ended for the main characters (unless deserved, of course), a majority of the bad endings/defeats the Eds suffered greatly were either deserved at worst, or legitimately funny enough to laugh them off at best, most because the mean-spiritedness of it all was at least kept in control and the writers knew what they were doing - teach a lesson without forcing, but the keep things effectively comedic and slapsticky enough that the mean-spiritedness of the show otherwise could be taken with a grain of salt.

I'm not really a fan of this show, overall - period - but I would happily revisit it anyday if forced to make a choice between this and Eliot Kid, which gets what this show does well ALL FUCKING WRONG!

I kind of agree. I admit, that as a kid, I laughed when Jimmy had the Eds raped by the Kankers (I didn't understand the concept of Black Comedy).

To me, the newer episodes were mean-spirited, but I usually laugh harder when the ending is well deserved (A Case of Ed, anyone?)

Most of the Ed's fates were deserved or funny, but I think it was those odd uncalled for ones that put some off since it skewed how their abuse was placed onto them.

Maybe this is another reason the middle name episode was hated, not only was it mean spirited, the manner Kevin had his Karma Houdini moment was almost played seriously and cruelly, with him laughing evilly in Eddy's face as he was left completely broken. No slapstick. No gags. Almost dramatic even. It very much seemed to be trying to paint Kevin as a hateable winner and punctuated that Eddy is doomed to humiliation, even when he doesn't deserve it.

edited 19th Jun '13 8:23:11 PM by Psi001

Which is why I hate the Halloween special and Christmas special so much. Personally, I loved the Valentine's Day special because it showed a soft side of May and it was one of the few episodes when the Eds didn't get beaten up, humiliated, or raped.

edited 21st Jun '13 7:31:36 AM by MsCC93

And as much as I like seeing characters who deserve to suffer, this is why I feel so negatively about this show.

A medal for pointing out what I was too chicken to properly to do for you.

Do you really believe that suffering can be justified for anyone?

Only... ONLY when it is deserved. I'm sure there a lot of people IRL we all want to see suffer when it is deserved. No form of media out there, especially cartoons/anime, are any different, unless aimed at the really young and out to teach an aesop of some kind...

I don't think suffering is something that anyone deserves, in all honesty. I'm one of those people that believes everyone, no matter how despicable they are, deserves at least to be treated with some modicum of dignity, and wanting someone to suffer kinda goes against that. Sure, people might have a passing thought from time to time about wanting someone to suffer, but most of the time that's out of anger and not something they really mean. I hope, at least.

If it's people fucking up my country, from a political or corporate standpoint, or someone who hurt me in the past - I'm afraid there's no mercy for them, especially if it comes from me. Those are my specifics on people who deserve none of our remorse - only their deserved suffering... But that's off - topic.

Also, for the most part, you do have a point... No one deserves to suffer for NO. GOOD. REASON. That's why, despite being the CN classic that it is (for good enough reasons), I don't ever see myself revisiting this show - but in this regard, I'm just repeating myself, now!

...oookay then. Well, have fun with that mindset there.

I can sort of understand that mindset since at the end of it, if a character resorts to just a nasty measures as the villain for the sake of punishing him or the sheer satisfaction of making them squirm, they're maybe more justified, but not heroic. A good person still has scruples to abide by and even if their victim deserves their abuse, they're still being sadistic if they enjoy to see them suffer.

This is why I think there's such a limitation to what manner of Disproportionate Retribution a hero can inflect and still look benevolent, even if their victim is a deserving tool, as well as the methods they use to inflect it (eg. a hero rarely looks good Kicking Them While They Are Down). I think there's more to what defines whose the hero and villain in a story other than "they started it".

edited 22nd Jun '13 4:21:25 AM by Psi001

Eh, maybe I'm just clinging too much to my Catholic sense of ethics when I say no one ever deserves pain, misfortune, or suffering—that it's always an unfortunate thing, no matter what someone did to bring it upon themselves and no matter how horrible the person's actions are—but I suppose I can understand how someone would disagree with that. I don't like at all when it goes too far, though, like how Shop Soldier seems to view it.

0dd1, I don't think you are related to Vash the Stampede, or are you? X)

Karmic punishments, as it has been said before, work better when the character manages to bring their own punishment themselves.

The thing is that punishment is not the same than revenge. Punishment serves to correct a behavior or, in case of a crime of some sorts, to keep the perpetrator away from society to which they have become prejudicial. Revenge is... revenge. It may feel good. Or not.

Characters whose "karmic balance" is negative or slighly-less-than-neutral can allow themselves to act like jerks sometimes and, as long as their karma remains bad, still be forgiven by the audience. Eddy holds a Karma Houdini Warranty and Can't Get Away with Nuthin'; and while Jimmy had a couple of Karma Houdini moments, these were quite rare. At least that's what I think.

It's not really jarring to see the likes of Kevin or Sarah going after the Eds because their characterization is generally that of a mean tempered bully anyway (the problem seemed to be more they always got away with it).

I think the common problem is when others get into it, who often have more clarity than to torment the Eds for fun. The moments they place Ed and Double D into the equation for no reason only emphasize it further.

I think a lot of the time, cartoons try to emulate this sort of Looney Tunes charm, but often leave out key points that made characters such as Bugs Bunny defensive characters. He rarely just brutalized characters with slapstick, he made the means to harm them but they always set off the traps themselves out of spite or arrogant obsession. It rarely came off as sadistic Disproportionate Retribution because they almost always had the choice of walking into each and every trap or to just stop being a jerk, making it clear karma.

I'm pretty sure we already had a thread about the moral ambiguity of heroes taking revenge.

edited 23rd Jun '13 6:16:41 PM by Psi001

Exactly, I mean we already have established that point anyway and the fact that Antonucci had listened those complaints in Big Picture Show was like trying to treat gangrene.

Besides, it's like fearing Asuka and Rei because of Shinji; think about it: they're pilots who fight aliens even though that Shinji kills a lot of them.

They're all just derivatives of the classics; people value so much Schadenfreude that they stop trying to be funny.

Indeed we did.

I'm not sure whether it's writers getting too sadistic, or just them seeing it from a simplistic point of view and expecting the kid audience to just enjoy it for 'boing, pow' slapstick value than see any cruel undertone in it. Admittedly that was the kind of point of view I had as a young kid, only later, when I could actually value greyer characters like villains, did I start to see any plot or characterization defects that made this treatment sometimes seem mean spirited (eg. The Dreamstone, several Sylvester cartoons, certain often complained about episodes of The Simpsons).

I think Tom And Jerry was the only instance I favored the villain from the start, and even then I don't recollect whether it was really because of the odd times Jerry 'bullied' Tom unprovoked or just because of my favoritism for cats.

In general however, I don't like it when writers simplify things to just "this character getting crapped on = funny".

edited 5th Jul '13 9:31:09 AM by Psi001

I've never liked excessive cruelty, myself, and always rooted for Tom unless he was going out of his way to be mean, even when I was little.

It could be, in the case of the Eds, that the writers were just focused upon heaping misfortune upon the Eds. I stated earlier that i viewed the Cankers as more of a force of nature, and its possible that, as far as cruelty went, the writers understood that it didn't quite fit that kids like Johnny or Nazz would beat up or otherwise persecute the Eds, and perhaps in their heads, the dissonance was what made it funny, similar to the humor employed against Meg in Family Guy (although Family Guy played it differently and I never found that aspect of the show to be especially enjoyable, particularly as she went from "average girl of the unpopular clique" to "completely friendless loser.")

The line of thinking could be best understood thus: The Universe is out to get the Eds, and the other children are merely agents of their Cosmic Plaything status.