Cartoon Network in General

It was also around this point that they banned the Dial M for Monkey episode with the gay Silver Surfer parody. ("Judy Garland? Where?!"... classic.)

Yup the Silver Spooner, in the very same episode Crunk gets drunk and Monkey has to drive him home.

The name just means he's a very affectionate man.

I learned that from another show, I really thought it meant something inappropriate...there's only so few words that mean something you can't show on a kids show but can still slip the actual word in.

So just went over the two recently released CN pilots to Apple & Onion and Bottom's Butte...

...oh wow. If there was some concern that CN might be over relying on the formula established by Adventure Time and Regular Show then you haven't seen anything yet.

I just don't see any appeal to these shows that other CN shows don't already address heavily. It's the same Regular Show "two dorks waste their lives bumbling their ways through a weird and wacky world", except this time with slightly different tones.

I like the writing on Apple & Onion better than on Bottom's Butte, but that's probably mainly because it has this absurdly over the top tone of, well, what can't really be described as anything other than the "2016 pastel dorky somewhat self loathing introspective grungy post-Whedon Tumblr" style that shows in every aspect especially the dialogue, to an extent that I just can't deal with. But at the same time the characters on Bottom's Butte seem more distinct and interesting than the ones on Apple & Onion, which feel like literal reskins of the cast of Season 1 Regular Show.

So in both cases, not really feeling it.

edited 3rd May '16 1:22:04 PM by InAnOdderWay

Yeah, after watching a couple minutes of both pilots, I can safely say I don't like either show. The art style for Apple and Onion is off to me, while Bottom's Butte looks better, but feels like a Genderswap of the current trend of "Dude-Bro's doing Dude-Bro things" in Western Animation. I also don't really like shows that make food main characters, something both pilots do.

If I had to pick one show to pick up from those 2, I guess I'd pick Bottom's Butte, simply because of the lack of Women focused cartoons, and the fact that the most important main character is a Llama, but I'd prefer neither show get picked up.

... there were 2 released pilots?? News to me.

I wonder if the reason all these pilots are so samey are because CN's only taking pilots that fit these same ideas or if this is the only kind of pilot getting made by creators these days.

If it's the former, I can only hope CN gets some creative diversity in the future. Maybe look to some indie guys like they did with Danny Antonucci and John Dilworth. If it's the latter... the industry is creatively dry...

The thing that bothers me about Bottom's Butte is that it has this weird Bojack Horseman-y feel to it, like it's the sort of show that could be extremely dark, but it's never really addressed in the show itself. The protagonist gets away with everything in the end. There's no, well, substance to it.

Apple & Onion I feel like is objectively better in the sense that it has better jokes to it, but its premise and characters are shit. There's nothing to do, nowhere to go. It'd just be a more mundane Regular Show with a weaker premise. What works with RS is that it's a show about two lazy assholes wasting their days trying to slack off at their jobs. That's what's at the core of the show, and all the weirdness is built on top of the solid cast that supports that premise.

Apple & Onion, Bottom's Butte, and all the other similarly themed premises that have stumbled out through the CN pilots year after year fail because they don't have a good premise to lay on. There's no formula, no cast, it's all just a blank canvas for whatever wacky shit the writers can come up with next. But there's no hook to draw viewers in.

There have been better pilots in previous years, though a lot have had flaws. We're The Royals was, imo, a legitimately funny show that worked on its weird blend of modern day sitcom dynamics and somewhat dark comedy. Or we had Forever 12, a show with characters that were... alright, exploring a world that, while weird and random, had a fairly consistent theme, and a premise that if not particularly inspired (it's cut from the same Buffy shaped rock that shows like Danny Phantom and Star Vs. drew from) was different from other shows in the lineup. We had Steven Universe and Over the Garden Wall, and Back to Backspace, an interesting premise with a few neat characters that had some structural flaws, and my personal favorite, Lakewood Plaza Turbo, which feels right at home with the rest of the current CN lineup without directly aping any one.

It's a la mode of the time in the same way that the current Disney CGI art style dominates many of the more recent additions to the Disney Animated Canon, but it's not inherently bad. But a lot of these artists came from other, more popular shows, and it shows very clearly in the writing and direction.

edited 3rd May '16 1:39:20 PM by InAnOdderWay

I thought the formulaic problem was in regards to art style and animation similarities.

In terms of writing or tone, CN's shows haven't been all that similar.

Oh, this is just about the Pilots?

edited 3rd May '16 1:36:51 PM by randomness4

Disney's style is a house style, though, the same way house styles used to be common before the 90s.

CN, however, built their reputation on their diverse styles of animation. Cow And Chicken looked nothing like Courage The Cowardly Dog and Ed Edd N Eddy looked nothing like The Powerpuff Girls, but that was what was great about it. These were shows that looked different and had their own different quirks to them.

edited 3rd May '16 1:45:02 PM by Aldo930

Just the most recent pilots.

I feel like it's both a ripple effect of the insane popularity of these shows leading to more shows made by people who worked on them aping the shows that gave them jobs in an attempt to continue on their success (as well as indirectly shaping the style of the original shows to be more akin to their own styles, so any works they make later will then resemble it), as well as a fear of rocking the boat. CN's on a solid streak of success, I can understand being a little worried of moving too hard and sending the network back into 2007 era disarray.

Though by the looks of NuPPG, change might come for them anyways.

edited 3rd May '16 1:47:51 PM by InAnOdderWay

Well there was this little underrated gem called The Powerpuff Girls, it was pretty obscure and didn't last too long.

Oh, and something else called Stehvan Ohiverse? Some new weird shit that I doubt will catch on.

I knew someone was going to mention the Bobblehead Girls, and while it is(or was) popular, it's not an example I was really talking about. It's more aimed at all audiences and not just female-centric(as Craig Mc Cracken wanted). I know The Life and Times of Juniper Lee was short lived.

Disney and Nickelodeon seem to attract and entertain female audiences just fine. Why does CN often fail at this?

In 2006, there aired a show called Ellen's Acres. I know a TON of people who worked on it. They completed a full season. It aired on Cartoon Network. It starred a female protagonist. It was taken off the air midway through the second episode. Cartoon Network's reason was that they had a new CEO who "vowed never ever to aim toward girls or toddlers ever again". So not only do they not aim toward girls, it's something they avoid doing on purpose.

That's sounded like a bad idea. Why was he against it?

edited 3rd May '16 2:30:16 PM by asiacatdogblue

More likely because they only accept pilots from creators who worked on their previous shows.

I'm sort of feeling like you're drawing an arbitrary line between "targeted at girls" and "accepted for all audiences", and you're drawing a second arbitrarily line at "has to be female led to appeal to a female audience". I do see your point with Nickelodeon with some of their classic shows like As Told By Ginger and The Wild Thornberries being female led, but I'm not entirely sure if I'd consider TWT being a female targeted show.

I'm just not seeing how CN has this crisis with attracting a female audience when there's no evidence to the contrary other than a lack of female driven shows. It'd be great if they could do that, and seeing with their post 2007 output they're sure as hell trying to incorporate more female characters into their shows, but you seem to be implying that CN is facing some sort of repercussions for it.

CN never had to have female-targeted shows back in the day because their shows were for everybody. Boys and girls both watched them and liked them.

I don't see why networks can't just target everybody. It has to be boys-only or girls-only.

edited 3rd May '16 4:50:09 PM by Aldo930

Eh, I remember watching that episode years later (oddly, it was available on CN on Demand at one point, long after it had been banned), wasn't too impressed by it. It was honestly really boring, no big loss if you ask me. Had some okay moments, but overall meh.

@pilots: I'm getting rather tired of the wacky surrealism that gained popularity after Adventure Time came out. It's one thing to be Dadaism-like and another to be as weird and random as possible. That stich gets old really quick if you ask me. Weirdness is good in small doses, you shouldn't structure your show around it. This reaches its pinnacle in shows like Uncle Grandpa.

And what's with food protagonists lately? Pickle and Peanut on Disney, the upcoming Pinky Malinky (who stars a hot dog) and now Apple and Onion.

It has been a while since CN's had a cartoon made by someone from outside their stable. Debatably Chowder (since Greenblatt worked on Billy and Mandy as well as Spongebob before Chowder), but indisputably Camp Lazlo.

The guy from Hey Arnold tried pitching a show to CN once, but it only got a pilot film.

Isn't that the reason he left Nickelodeon and refused to sign the contract for the Hey Arnold Jungle movie?

I heard there's going to be a crossover episode of Teen Titans Go and the Powerpuff Girls in July. Is this true?

What contract?

They wanted Craig Bartlett to sign an exclusivity deal preventing him from working with other companies for X amount of time in order to produce the Jungle Movie.

edited 4th May '16 2:12:55 PM by Odd1

Was The Jungle Movie part of that deal? Because it doesn't sound like it was from what I'm reading. It sounds like it was cancelled no matter what he did, but I could be wrong.

x4 The deal was that he could only work for Nickelodeon and I bet with that would come limitations and meddling. He was also working on a pilot for CN and that's why he declined. So yeah you pretty much are right.

edited 4th May '16 2:24:20 PM by diyedas

I thought the movie was supposed to be part of the deal.