Yes, it is a one joke show - as is Tom and Jerry, Popeye, Elmer Fudd and Bugsbunny/Daffy and many of the old cartoons. They all depend on reusing a simple premise with simple roles and simple characters. That's formula for you. The funny comes from how imaginative they can make thier retelling of the joke, often whilst only slightly varying the situations or props. You know it is going to go wrong for Wiley, every time he sets out the basic ingredients for what is doomed to be another disaster, but you don't know how exactly it is going to go wrong. The fun is waiting for it to happen, and seeing how it goes.
Anyway, that isn't my attempt to make you like it, that's just my explanation of why I find it funny.
Book me today! I also review weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs.
As a kid, I much preferred these cartoons to Tom and Jerry due to being far more fantastic and varied, in my eye. It also helps that I never once felt sorry for the Coyote, but I often felt sorry for Tom.
"What's out there? What's waiting for me?"
I see your points, but I still find the jokes pretty stale and predictable.
Here, they take no time to actually set up the humor, and as I stated before, they have little to no personality. With Tom and Jerry, even though they don't talk often, you can tell they have personalities, and each cartoon of theirs has some sort of setup in it. But with Coyote and Roadrunner not only having none of that, but you can literally tell how the joke will go at the first glance it isn't as funny.
I think the shorts are good, but I agree on formula. Chuck Jones was a genius, but he was also very formulaic, creating very limited series that worked well when watched for one or two shorts, but ran stale quick as a long running series (Road Runner, Pepe Le Pew). He even streamlined some of the other more versatile main characters to have more repetitive roles (eg. Daffy Duck).
Jones actually did some Tom And Jerry shorts, though many admit they are of mixed variety, since he admitted he had trouble understanding the dynamic of the two, that was less restricted than his own creations (Tom and Jerry had a less predictable format, and allowed both characters to be sympathetic and fallible at different times, Road Runner and other Jones cartoons were usually deliberately made to anticipate the gag, and ran on a strict 'winners vs losers' format where the useless villain was the drawing point of sympathy).
Thing is, this isn't really a character based series. The entire point of it is the slapstick: how ridiculous can we make Wile E. Coyote's traps and subsequent backfires? The comedy doesn't really have anything to do with the punchline; it's all about how it's told. In this case, with lots of explosions. It's not for everyone, obviously, but the lack of personality is because it's irrelevant; as long as Wile E. goes "splat" in an amusing fashion, his relationship with the roadrunner isn't really important.
Reaction Image Repository
its still better then my little pony shit
__________________________________________________
Out of curiosity, what was your thoughts on Wile in the Bugs Bunny series (ie. the highly arrogant 'Super Genius' who concocts his own devices and engages in pompous banter with Bugs)?
@ babaniggardo
I think MLP FIM is better than Coyote and Roadrunner, and I'm not even a brony.
@Psi001
I think they're pretty good actually. The jokes stay fresh, I don't think either of them are one dimensional, and the slapstick is of course hilarious.
"This was funny the first few times, but when it's done over and over for about 7 minutes each, it gets old pretty fast."
Within the Looeny Toons cast, there are no less than 3 character relationships that involve "hilarious" failures of one character to capture (or kill or eat, for that matter) the other: Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny, this one that you're complaining about, and Tweety and Sylvester.
It is formulatic on a very heavy level, but I guess entertainment is very subjective.
Don't forget Sylvester vs Speedy, Sylvester vs Hippety Hopper, Sylvester vs random generic mouse, Daffy vs Speedy...
I guess since they were designed to be theatrical side attractions, the directors didn't expect us to be watching them in marathons like we do on TV and DV Ds these days. I do know a few directors got sick of doing Bugs and Elmer however (and tended to do a lot of Deconstructions).
As I said before though, those cartoons did take time to set up the jokes and the slapstick before it happened. And most of the time, at least one of those characters had personality. When both characters are about as bland as bread though, it's not too entertaining to see. The ones with Coyote talking and being an arrogant genius I find entertaining, but again, that's only in a handful of them.
Your assesment of the cartoons is actually spot-on. Every single cartoon revolves around variations on the same joke: "Coyote tries a new way to catch roadrunner, it backfires on him in a humiliating/painful way." You could literally take a gag from one of the cartons and insert it into any of the others, and nobody would even notice.
And that's the joke. You see — and Chuck Jones admitted this; it's even on the Tropes page — the Coyote/Roadrunner cartoons are an Affectionate Parody of Tom And Jerry and similar predator/prey cartoons, taken Up To Eleven.
In Tom And Jerry, most of the comedy comes from Tom's Amusing Injuries, so here you'll notice it's all about the Coyote and how he sets up his own failures with Amusing Injuries. The Roadrunner, meanwhile, is an exaggeration of the role Jerry sometimes takes on; the "nominal" hero who never actually does anything heroic. In truth, the Roadrunner is barely even a character, he has almost no personality, and apart from some very rare displays of self defence, all he ever does is run along the road and occasionally go "meep-meep." That's intentional as well.
The entire point of the series is that it's samey and that it functions solely on the chase, and the predator's failures, to the exclusion of everything else. That's the joke. Whether you think it's a good joke or not is up to you. ^_^
It's kind of ironic, since later Jones would end up working on the Tom And Jerry series himself and admitting it was a lot harder to get to grips with than he expected. There was a lot more extra depths and elements to the formula to perfect than just being a standard chase cartoon. Of course by that time the Road Runner series was iconic and considered a good cartoon in it's own right.
Well, the predictability may be true and strongly on point. But at least the fanmade videos relating to either letting Wile E. Coyote actually winning for once or making the existing gags a whole lot more entertaining while being faithful to the source material can be a better reward to watch for free on YouTube.
Joseph D. Sanford IVLeave a Comment:
Ugh
I really, really don't like these cartoons. It's always one joke. Coyote gets or builds something, trys to use it on Road Runner, it backfires on him. This was funny the first few times, but when it's done over and over for about 7 minutes each, it gets old pretty fast.
And as characters, I don't even like them. They are completley one-dimensional(except for Coyote in the episodes where he talks, and is portrayed as a genius, but that's in only a handful of them). It's not just because they hardly talk, they literally do nothing but run, and try to catch each other. Now, you might say that Tom and Jerry has the same premise, and I love those cartoons to no end. But Tom and Jerry, even though they rarely talk, have clear personalities, and they do actually take time to set up the cartoon before the slapstick comes in. But Coyote and Roadrunner show no signs of wit, no signs of naivety, little signs of smug, and to me, no signs of funny. The just throw the viewers into the slapstick, taking to no time to set-up the humor, which is really important in a cartoon.
And there are nearly 50 cartoons of this. Eventually, I've been predicting how the joke would work out. And I was right nearly all the time. Honestly, I found the ones where the Coyote look alike Wolf trying to steal the Sheep from the guard dog was better. The jokes sometimes have a twist that I wouldn't expect, and in some of their cartoons, there's depth to it. Two buddies, who are out work. And it stopped after only a few cartoons, so it wouldn't get completley repetitive. Here, there's almost no set up, unlike what makes most other cartoons funny. To me the jokes are stale, the characters aren't likeable, it's a waste of running time, and there's no point in making so many cartoons of it.
If you like this show, good for you. Just don't try to get me to like it.