Early Installment Weirdness in Western Animations

Depending on the series, you could make a drinking game of how often Spidey's webshooters jam.

If I recall, the Rugrats also went through this. In the early episodes, Tommy was the major focus and he rarely spoke or showed his smarts. Also, the music and animation were fairly minimalistic.

Looney Tunes definitely. Look at a short from 1933 than one in 1943. Huge difference. And character wise, Daffy went from a screwball to an egomaniac.

Almost all classic cartoons went through this. Bugs, Daffy, Elmer, Donald, Bimbo, etc. They evolved physically into what we love today.

edited 1st Aug '14 6:00:23 PM by teddy

The early episodes seemed to focus more on the 'this is what your kids do while your back is turned' aspect, the cosmetics seemed to fit well with the baby perspective. After that I suppose it got old so the writers made things more sophisticated.

I think after the first season, they started to do more episodes focusing on the characters.

One thing I've noticed is that the first season of Cow And Chicken looks kind of...well, scratchy in comparison to the later seasons.

And of course, we know how I Am Weasel turned Baboon from a villain who was doomed to never be as good as Weasel to Weasel's still-jealous partner. This was, of course, after they brought in the Red Guy.

True, the first episodes had Tommy more as the blank slate baby of the cartoon. Afterwards they seemed to make more personality focused stories and thus it became more an Ensemble Cast series, Chuckie and Angelica got more and more Character Development and the adults got more POV. Most of the semi recurrers started to appear as well (par the two dopey teens who sadly disappeared).

Weasel was more a one dimentional Always Someone Better type in the first season. Afterwards he became more a Broken Ace, having a more pretentious side or ending up the unappreciated Only Sane Man. Some later episodes almost seemed like a role reversal, with Baboon now cheery and satisfied being among other idiots while Weasel was the bitter glory seeking Butt-Monkey.

edited 1st Aug '14 7:56:35 PM by Psi001

Larry and Steve?...

I think they were trying to play with the formula of the show as early as "I, Architect," the last episode of the first season.

In Beast Wars's first few episodes, any time a fight scene was about to break out, you'd have to wait 15-30 seconds for every individual Maximal and Predacon to transform and announce their name for the kids at home to know who to bug their parents for.

The Simpsons episode "One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish" was an excellent example of Characterization Marches On for Smithers as well as Eddie and Lou. Smithers not getting jealous of Mr. Burns' target of attraction and even encouraging him, and Eddie and Lou acting as incompetent as Chief Wiggum both seem very strange in hindsight.

Goof Troop's "Axed by Addition" is interesting because what PJ wants to do on the last day of freedom, aside from eating 200 burgers, seems wildly out of character in hindsight.

Rocko's Modern Life taking a while to make Rocko and Filburt friends, but they don't become friends in the show, making it like Remember the New Guy? but with a previous Recurring Extra.

He had teeth? Wow, I actually didn't even notice that until now.

I'm tossing in my hat for Codename: Kids Next Door, but more specifically for the first episode. "Operation: No P in the OOL" had some animation that was, to put it nicely, not the best. Also, the typing and beeping sounds that were played with the episode cards during season 1 came out kinda weird (I dunno if it was the speed or pitch or what, but that never happened after season 1). To me, I think the series really got better once there was more worldbuilding and expansion on the KND.

Professor Triple-Extra-Large also developed between his first appearance in Kenny and the Chimp and when he became a character in KND proper, I think.

I might be misremembering.

You'd be correct.

I'm not saying the episode was bad in the least. I'm just saying it was a bit disjointed. Nothing wrong with that.

The one thing I remember about him in Kenny and the Chimp was that he was trying to take revenge on the PTA...

His schemes were slightly higher-stakes in the series, I believe.

Not really. He mostly spent his time trying to create the world's best sno-cone, so he kinda regressed after the KND declared war on him.

They were even lower-stakes than I remembered...

edited 3rd Aug '14 8:01:30 PM by Aldo930

He did keep accidentally mutating himself in the course of his goals.

SWAT Kats, interestingly for such a short series. The first few episodes, especially "The Pastmaster Always Rings Twice" have a fierce amount of Off-Model. Part of it could be that the Pastmaster episode had directoral input from the animation director at the overseas Japanese studio where the series was being animated, but the animation in some places also had a much more fluid style, whereas the rest of the series was very hard and fixed, like 90s anime or a real comic-book feel.

The KND were also more incompetent brats in the first season, generally attacking things that normal kids would find 'oppressive' (e.g. said first episode involved them trying to take down a pool merely for having an adult swim time). There were still shades of Serious Business in later episodes, but most of the enemies were exaggerated to look genuinely evil.

Some more Early-Installment Weirdness:

Hey Arnold originally had Arnold regularly slip into daydreams as part of his personality. This was a holdover from the original claymation shorts. I think by the second season this was dropped.

Arnold all around felt like a much more spacey and fallible character in the first season, having more shortcomings and insecurities or even cases he had outbursts or acted like a Jerkass. Even the preachy side that took over his personality later on had a much more spacey and matter of fact disposition.

Similar to Tommy he was much more the central character in early episodes (par Helga at times) while he was basically a supporting character for the majority of later episodes due to his Only Sane Man personality.

edited 4th Aug '14 6:14:03 AM by Psi001

Hey Arnold was one of those rare shows that became more about the world the main character lived in than the main character himself.

Most Nicktoons, I think, were pretty good at character development. Except for Ren And Stimpy, which in the tradition of theatrical cartoons, had no proper setting and thus never had a lot of character development.

edited 4th Aug '14 6:18:36 AM by Aldo930

Ren and Stimpy admittedly suffered a little in characterization. While I still defend the Games episodes as being decent, I agree with John K that they didn't quite get the chemistry (well maybe Stimpy, but Ren was simplified into a full on jerk), ironically just prior the Spumco episodes seemed to be adding more sentiment between the two.

Arnold I think was ironically the one character who degraded in a show with heavy Character Development, simplified solely to his preachy side (something even his earlier version could do and make it more dynamic).

edited 4th Aug '14 7:16:19 AM by Psi001

Both Ren and Stimpy got good character development. The rest of the characters, in theatrical cartoon tradition... well, didn't get much character development at all.

John K. wanted to make a show in the tradition of old theatrical cartoons, and he got that aspect down pat.

Well they did have the odd rare Day In The Limelight (eg. the Mac Haggis episode).

Like the old theatrical cartoons, some of them got their days in the sun ("Powdered Toastman," "Hard Times for Haggis"), but it was still mostly gag-focused stuff, with little focus on character development.

The only other cartoon like this that I've seen from after 1970 is, weirdly enough, I Am Weasel.

edited 4th Aug '14 7:37:54 AM by Aldo930