Recognizable patterns done by certain show creators

Every writer or artist or whatever makes a certain style for themselves and i've just noticed a few patterns in some of the works of the following creators:

Butch Hartman - Stupid and neglectful authority figures that just like to flex their authoritative muscles without giving us any understanding of why they even have their positions in the first place (with few exceptions too).

Greg Weisman - Overarching story arcs that trandscend several episodes via bits and pieces scattered all about. They seem unrelated at first, until they finally all come together due to someone putting the puzzle together for the audience. Friendships and romantic relationships end up falling apart somehow and happen in the most depressing and tragic ways possible. n heir of mystery and the unknown, be it either with the unexplained phenomena of science or the Supernatural forces within the story's world.

"Klasky Csupo" - Surprisingly realistic shows that maintain their edge of realism while still having an edge of fantasy to them, if only just a little bit (just regular daydreams and/or hallucinations). Major changes to the shows aren't just tossed aside to preserve the status quo, they actually remain apart of the canon. Examples: Dil and Kimi's introductions and the events of their respective movies in "Rugrats", Ray Rocket's marriage in "Rocket Power", Debbie learning Eliza's secret in "Wild Thornberrys", and the, somewhat, consistent maturing of appearances and personalities in the characters of "As Told by Ginger".

edited 20th Jun '14 1:47:04 AM by srebak

Stephen Hillenburg and Doug Lawrence's writing/directing history on Rocko's Modern Life shows in Sponge Bob Squarepants, since they're both funny animal sitcoms with surreal elements, focusing on a Nice Guy protagonist, his dumb best friend, and his Cranky Neighbor.

Well, for Klasky-Csupo, Aaahh Real Monsters would be the exception.

The two cartoons David Feiss created, Cow And Chicken and I Am Weasel, both feature surrealistic, Monty Python-esque humor, a constant fixation on butts, and characters who are either crazy or stupid with one Straight Man in the cast.

edited 20th Jun '14 10:16:04 AM by Aldo930

Butch Hartman also likes to drill the racist-esque notion that all rich kids, girls, etc. are evil.

Racist-esque...

You know, there's always been a cliché in popular culture to have rich people be the villains. I don't see why this is so awful.

edited 20th Jun '14 11:21:31 AM by Aldo930

[1]◊

The reason it's not okay to always have rich people as villains is because it's not only pandering to cliches, but it also implies that all rich people are bad. It is inane to think that. They give people opportunities to work in their companies. In fact, some rich people are very humble. For example, Warren Buffet is a very humble man, living in an average house.

Uh-huh...

I'm just going to accept "pandering to cliches" here. And since I don't see anything wrong with cliches...

Besides... the rich kids in the show, as much as I remember, were portrayed as just jerks. Does Mr. Crocker imply all schoolteachers are evil? Or Vicky imply all babysitters are evil?

edited 20th Jun '14 11:44:16 AM by Aldo930

Not really. I was quite surprised not to see any Seth Mac Farlane bashing.

Somebody bringing up Seth's cartoons is inevitable. However, there's a bit of a subversion when it comes to Family Guy and American Dad. People with only a very basic understanding of AD automatically cite Hayley as Meg's counterpart, Klaus as Stewie's, and Roger as Brian's, but a more accurate comparison is Meg/Klaus, Brian/Hayley, and Stewie/Roger. Not to mention the difference in personalities among all of the characters.

Sorry for that tangent, I just had to get that in here, before somebody comes along with that obnoxious "I love Seth's shows! There's Family Guy, Family Guy, and... oh yeah, Family Guy!" that I've seen on this board in the past.

edited 20th Jun '14 1:31:13 PM by redhed311

Seth McFarlane◊

Often I feel that people claiming that some show is a ripoff of some other show just do not get the differences - subtle though they may be.

Somebody already beat you to the punch.

edited 20th Jun '14 2:47:32 PM by AfroWarrior27

Don't forget Weisman shows always having some recognizable V As from his previous works, the joke about "beating up a beach", and jailbreak episodes. I wonder how many of these will make it to Rebels?

It's just that Hartman targets every group that picked on him as a kid. It's kinda like being racist against some group because you fought them in some war.

You forgot to mention how stupid that shit is, too.And can you believe people like copying this shit writing style in Canada / Australia as well?

The only way for that analogy to make sense is if you replaced "fought in a war" with "captured, imprisoned in a POW camp and tortured".

Hartman hating on rich people in his cartoons isn't nearly as disturbing as his hating on pretty girls. The rich don't need us to like them, but when dudes decide that pretty girls are committing evil by not giving them the time of day, you get things like Elliot Rodger.

I don't get the "hatred of pretty girls" thing. How much is this his personal prejudices and how much is just speculation derived from hatred of him?

I never saw Hartman making pretty girls or the rich jerks because of hatred of them in real life,more of just him using basic cliches.

Same with me.

Painting the rich as cruel threats or annoyances to the leads tends to take advantage of wealth as a quick way to give an antagonist power to exert and an edge over the leads. It's a convenient narrative shortcut to make the leads seem more like underdogs to root for. You'll never see a cartoon, barring maybe something like Duck Tales, where the good guy is rich and powerful and most of his adversaries are nasty poor-or-not-as-rich people out to give them a bad time. Not only that gives some disturbing Unfortunate Implications on wealth being its own moral license (Scrooge avoids it by being constantly portrayed as a hard worker who pulled himself up from poverty), but it also beats the standard procedure of making the antagonists more formidable than the protagonists.

Scrooge's antagonists were also rich themselves, right?…

I still don't get why you'd call this cliche "racist-esque"...

A few of them, yes, but they always were less rich than Scrooge. And the Beagle Boys and others were definitely in the 'poor, even if resourceful' side of the scale.

I just realized that i left out one in my list:

Jay Stephens:

From what i gathered from watching two of the shows that he created, the pattern Jay seems to use is basing his work around things that already exist (Egyptian history/mythology and Cryptozoology) and telling a semi-original story about them without changing the source material by much (if at all). The series "Tutenstein" was about Egyptian history and Egyptian mythology, and in spite of a few minor tweaks, the show stayed true to the source material. The same could be said about "The Secret Saturdays": the Cryptids shown in that series were all actual cryptids believed to exist, the non-cryptid stuff was legitimate as well (at least they were a part of real legends and folklore), and even the main threat, Kur, was a real creature of legend. They never made anything up in that show.