Pinky and the Brain

You'd think they would be a thread for this. I thought y'all loved these cartoons!

I'm not a huge fan of the WB 90s cartoons, but this was easily my favorite when I was younger. Very amusing to watch. I'm not sure if it holds up well, but I'm pretty sure it'll hold up better than the others

edited 25th Aug '14 6:38:44 PM by Teddy

Aside from Freakazoid this is probably the most solid out of the WB cartoons of the 90s.

While its loss definitely hurt Animaniacs as it gradually underwent Seasonal Rot, without it we would not have some of the funniest moments in any WB cartoon, as well as some of the most clever.

As for Pinky Elmyra And The Brain, that was a separate show. It had a different title sequence. It is a different show.

Relevant.

Also relevant.

From the Nostalgia Critic review of The Purge.

I remember, back in the day, being described as a fusion of Pinky and the Brain... still not sure how I should have taken that.

I don't blame P&tB for causing the weakening of Animaniacs (though, it should be noted, Animaniacs was still pretty dang funny); it just happened concurrently. I always suspected that they had a ton of pressure from The WB regarding that, though that's just a blind guess on my part.

The episode where Brain raises Pinky's intelligence is several flavors of genius. Particularly the ending. "What are we going to do tonight, Brain?" "The same thing we do every night, Pinky!" "And what's that?" "... I have no idea."

A close second (although this was back in the Animaniacs days) was the episode done entirely from Pinky's POV. Pretty much every episode of P&tB makes so much more sense when you see it.

Finally, there was never any Tiny Toons Adventures character teaming with Pinky and the Brain. I mean, that would have been an awful idea spawned by Executive Meddling, but what exec could be that stupid? And even if it did happen, we'd never want to acknowledge it, right?

In one Tiny Toons Halloween special, Elmyra and Dizzy Devil reenact Frankenstein with Elmyra as the mad doctor who asks for the brain to complete the monster. ... Dizzy gives her pretty much exactly who you'd expect.

I wouldn't describe what happened to Animaniacs as a weakening. It was more like Seasonal Rot. Like, you watch some of the episodes from the last two seasons and you wonder how the hell anyone thought this was funny.

"The Pinky POV" was an episode from the show.

And yes, we should be grateful that the staff of Pinky And The Brain mostly escaped to do other projects, like Johnny Bravo, before the executives could have gotten such a stupid idea in their heads. Who would ever think Elmyra, who only worked as a villain, could ever work in any other context?

What in the world? That was messed up. Amusing, but messed up.

I think my favorite part of this show is Maurice Lamarche's absolutely hilarious Orson Welles impression.

i have trouble remembering specific episodes, but on the whole this was a really solid show.

I remember the Tiny Toons folks doing a backdoor pilot for a potential Elmyra show, fleshing out her family; her dad was an inventor, her mom a homemaker, her older sister a proto-goth teenager, and her little brother a surprisingly effective wannabe superhero (called himself Ninja Boy). They used 'em twice, that I remember, so they had been thinking of spinning Elmyra off into her own show for some time.

Interestingly, the same guy who created Pinky and the Brain, one of the most inspired cartoons of the last 20 years, also created Chicken Boo, which was just...not.

At least it wasn't Katie Kaboom...

Chicken Boo was a great oneshot joke that became a lame recurring joke.

Ironically, I always thought he worked great when he was a random ocurrence in someone else's cartoon, like when Plotz had him as his assistant during that cartoon spotlighting the Warners' career, or when he was interviewed in TV as a specialist on the subject of why the chicken crossed the road.

edited 29th Aug '14 7:51:52 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

A lot of the secondary characters on Animaniacs worked better as supporting characters to the Warners, rather than as stars of their own shorts. Favio and Maurita The Hip Hippos, for instance.

I think Pinky and the Brain was probably the best choice for a breakout show out of Animaniacs, most of the others didn't seem as expandable in formula (it tends to be the skit least panned for repetition). Add to that the writers were willing to try for legitimate Character Development, and even a few legitimately poignant episodes (anyone not left somewhat drained by the end of the Christmas Special?).

edited 30th Aug '14 1:27:07 PM by Psi001

It also was, I think, the most popular part of the show at the time, so a spinoff was inevitable.