Early Installment Weirdness in Western Animations

You know when you look at an early episode of a cartoon series and some things are...different. The drawing style is cruder, the characterizations are altered, the voices sound like different people, even big plot points have been retconned or developed on since later episodes.

This is a thread to talk about them. What were some of the most notable or jarring cases of Early-Installment Weirdness for you? Are there some you actually would have enjoyed over the later definitive concepts, or some you were glad to see the last of?

The Simpsons is a standout case, due to the more oddball animation and slightly more mundane characters. Almost everyone who worked on the show looks at the first episodes (and Tracey Ullman shorts) with utter disdain. They actually had the pilot revised since they couldn't stand how it turned out.

It's a shame really, I actually thought it was kind of expressive and surreal and befit how I pictured The Simpsons when it was still grappled away from terrestrial TV out of my sight.

edited 25th Apr '13 6:00:26 PM by Psi001

I definitely liked The Flintstones better in their very early episodes, where Fred was more of a Jerkass, but the girls also were definitely bitchier. It gave the show a real edge without feeling overboard like some current sitcom cartoons I won't name to try and prevent flame wars.

I admit I kinda preferred The Flintstones early on, due to fitting more how an actual sitcom works rather than the idealized form it imitated later on with more cutesy, cheesy stories and one liners.

Codename: Kids Next Door will always stand out for me due to how limited the world building was at the start compared to later seasons, particularly in how Sector V seemed to be the only KND unit out there, as well as the teenagers being apparently neutral ground.

The Redwall animated series was also kind of weird in its first season, cutting the multiple running plot threads of the book into bite-sized, episodic chunks that could be played in linear order. Season 2 and 3, despite still making changes, went with a more serialized approach that kept the multiple plot threads.

And on one point that I find a little hard to pin down, there's Adventure Time. Watching the first episodes, it feels a lot...different than later on, and not just Finn's voice. For lack of a better term, it feels more like a regular, somewhat mean-spirited comedy that just happens to be set in a weird fantasy world.

I remember being instantly reminded of Pepper Ann when I saw the initial KND episodes. The pilot seemed very similar to how Kenny and The Chimp was animated, and also had more of an Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist vibe where the kids don't really go anywhere with their plans but make a nuisance of themselves.

edited 25th Apr '13 6:34:22 PM by Psi001

Arthur was very weird in some ways in its first season with Muffy and her buckteeth and Binky being more of a bully.

KND was created by the same guy who did Kenny and the Chimp ("Chimps are just not careful!"). The scientist from Kenny and the Chimp even showed up in an episode of KND.

edited 25th Apr '13 9:11:32 PM by Robbery

Professor Triple Extra Large!

Yeah, I saw the Kenny and the Chimp pilot when it was repackaged with early episodes of Kids Next Door. Didn't Kenny sound a lot like Doug Funnie?

Binky was made to be a bully, though. It always seems a little weird to me now when he's just a schoolyard friend.

He sounds like one of those "Bully we realized was more interesting as a friendly buffoon" characters.

Is it just me, or do shows that focus more on off the wall, crazy Better than a Bare Bulb humor tend to be a lot more scatterbrained but insane in earlier seasons than they do in later seasons?

Animaniacs might be an exception, I think, but I noticed this in Earthworm Jim, Cow And Chicken and especially The Twisted Tales Of Felix The Cat (wherein in the first set of episodes if you were expecting coherence you were a chump). The later cartoons, though still crazy and tongue in cheek, end up more straightforward than earlier ones.

Comedy shows in general might be said to run into this too, either because of the writers taking it more seriously, or formula kicking in, or having to repeat certain kinds of humor. The earlier seasons of The Fairly Oddparents were a little more all over the place in the kinds of gags they would do, for instance.

edited 26th Apr '13 12:24:44 AM by KnownUnknown

Phineas And Ferb definitely went through this. The first few episodes are a hell of a lot more reserved in their writing than the Denser and Wackier writing the show has tended to embrace since around the second season. Sure, it had its share of intentionally silly moments in the beginning, but the characters themselves were far less, well, flanderized. Or even just completely different, e.g. Phineas being a snarky, relatively reserved child early on vs. Phineas being the very definition of an energetic, social person later on.

Those characterizations lasted about one show, Phineas became incredibly chipper in like the space of, it can't have been more than six episodes.

@Robbery: I know, but it still had a somewhat different style from how KND was usually animated, likely because it was meant to be a different show altogether.

@Known Unknown: The Simpsons plays with this. The animation and feel of the show early on feels more crude and has something of a more surreal offbeat atmosphere to it. Overall however, it's humor is more conventional and laid back than the later seasons, which have more conventional animation, but more over the top, self aware humor and characterizations.

The first few Tom And Jerry shorts resembled more something from the Disney series. Tom is semi anthropomorphic (for some reason I like his older design here), the slapstick is more tame and they overall have a more light hearted tone. This counts less for characterizations, which were surprisingly fully developed at an early rate, the third episode had Tom and Jerry's first Friendly Enemy moment, the sixth had their first Enemy Mine, while the thirteenth first displayed Jerry's over zeal costing him a victory.

The pilot and to an extent the whole first season of The Dreamstone has a rather different feel, due to a cruder animation studio and following Mike Jupp's original concepts slightly more closely (they still seemed to have some teething problems with his character designs though, eg. one episode Urpgor has purple sclera, then another he has Eyes Always Shut). The pilot also seems to give the heroes more focus and development, and constructs the plot more genuinely as a tense action adventure, compared to afterwards where it is clearly becoming a gloss over for a Golden Age style 'Born Winner Hero Antagonist vs Cosmic Plaything Villain Protagonist' comedy with the Urpneys.

edited 26th Apr '13 11:09:42 AM by Psi001

Wasn't Tom a lot fluffier-looking in the early Tom and Jerry shorts?

He was all around more 'cat-like' in the first ones, plumper, less anthropomorphic, with a Cheshire Cat Grin. His trademark yelps were also absent instead having realistic cat hisses (Trivia: These were in fact provided by Clarence Nash, Donald Duck's voice over).

edited 26th Apr '13 7:04:57 AM by Psi001

that is the creepiest possible picture you could find and I thank you for that

Not as much as this one:

http://www.listal.com/viewimage/1006732

Nah, the first picture looks more he's just finishing up the last victim and knows you're a witness.

The first season of Spongebob seems to have worse video quality than any other season. Also, Spongebob looks... puffier.

That's because the first season was hand drawn, while the second season onwards is digitally animated.

It seems like the early episodes of The Penguins Of Madagascar were a lot less science-y. Also, some of them had a more Saturday morning cartoon feel that I can't really put my finger on. In short, it just felt Lighter and Softer.

I've cited "Happy King Julien Day" as the weakest episode, and I just now noticed that it was the only one written by Laura Gutin — whose only other cartoon credits are Sit Down Shut Up.

I remember the drawing style of Kim Possible looked kind of different(some of the characters looked a bit wide eyed, and the cliches weren't quite as lampshaded. Also, Ron's voice was deeper(as much as I liked him, his voice got grating in later seasons).

Cattish! Tom is super cute, how could anyone say otherwise? Should have kept him that way.

I liked his design around the second half-dozen or so shorts (eg. "The Lonesome Mouse"), where he'd gained more anthropomorphic traits and was more expressive, but still had that sort of cuter proportioning to him. For some reason I liked him with the Cheshire Cat Grin, made him seem more devious and cute at the same time.

If I remember correctly one of the episodes of Tom And Jerry Tales utilized this design as a homage to the older cartoons.

edited 26th Apr '13 8:39:54 PM by Psi001