YMMV / Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain

• Audience-Alienating Premise: The big reason for why this retool failed to catch on, as many fans of Pinky and the Brain, as well as the majority of the original creative staff were against the idea of promoting Elmyra to a main character alongside the titular duo. The fact that the theme song flat-out states that the creative team didn't want to do this certainly didn't help. Ultimately, most fans of the original series found Elmyra's antics even more annoying as they distracted from those of the much-beloved duo, and after its quick cancellation most were content to ignore this spinoff.
• Bizarro Episode: "How I Spent My Weekend" is told from Elmyra's perspective and animated through her drawings on lined paper. Bizarro just doesn't begin to describe how weird the episode is.
• Broken Base: While nobody denies the show being a terrible idea that should have never left the drawing board, a lot of people question how bad the end product turned out to be. As seen in Took the Bad Film Seriously, they still gave it their all despite how doomed the concept was which led to a substantial amount of genuinely funny moments (the fairly lengthy Funny Moments subpage attests to that). The writing is also very self-aware and routinely mocks the idiocy of the concept. As a result, people seem divided as to whether the show was still doomed anyway in spite of all of this or if these qualities give the show a genuine level of unexpected watchability.
• Creator's Pet: Elmyra, who is basically the reason the show was created.
• Critical Dissonance: In contrast to the hatred the fans and creators have toward the show, it actually got critical acclaim and won various awards, including an Emmy.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: For all the problems with this show, its antagonist Wally Faust left quite an impression in some viewers' eyes. He does look and talk like an evil Christopher Walken, after all.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Brain isn't the only one who deeply resents this show. Made official in Animaniacs (2020), which makes no mention of the events of the series.
• Fridge Horror:
  • Elmyra goes to a different school. Did she get expelled from Acme Looniversity? (In the TTA episodes that were centered around Elmyra's family, she went to Harvey Korman Elementary school, another all-human facility).
  • In "The Ravin!" we see that Elmyra has a pet cemetery. Perhaps this is the fate of Furrball and Byron Basset; maybe she squeezed them to death.
• Harsher in Hindsight: "A Walk in the Park" has a Running Gag where Brain gets trampled by an oncoming parade at a Disneyland knock-off. Five years after the episode aired, a cast member dressed as Pluto died when he was run over by a parade float in the Magic Kingdom.
• Ho Yay:
  • Occurs in "Pinky's Dream House," where Pinky acts like a housewife to Brain and even sings a song about how happy they'll be together before Elmyra makes his dream come true.
  • Also Elmyra and Vanity White, one-sided on Elmyra's part (Vanity, like most people, can hardly stand her).
• Misblamed: For years many viewers believed Kids' WB! executive Jamie Kellner to be at fault for the creation of this series. However, during one episode of Talkin' Toons' with Peter Hastings, it was revealed that the network, despite what the theme song says, did not meddle with the series — it was, in fact, entirely Steven Spielberg's idea!
• Narm Charm: In "Pinky's Dream House," Pinky sings a deliberately cheesy and cutesy song about how happy he would be if he and Brain lived in a tiny house together. Like most of Pinky's flights of fancy, it's not meant to be taken seriously; but for some viewers, it's just so darn cute and sincere that you can't help but crack a little smile.
• Replacement Scrappy: Rudy Mookich for Montana Max. Elmyra's most frequently seen pets were now Mr. Pussy-Wussy and Mr. Shellbutt, taking the places of Furrball and Byron Basset.
• The Scrappy: While Elmyra was already plenty unpopular for getting way too much attention over the more beloved characters from her original show, this one pretty much finished the job that Tiny Toons started by forcing other more-beloved characters (one of whom was already "the dumb one") to share screen time with her and ensuring she'd go down in history as one of the most loathed cartoon characters ever. In fact, with this show having killed off what remaining positive reception she had left, she was initially reported to be excluded from the upcoming Tiny Toons Looniversity series due to her unpopularity (but ultimately she did still appear in the show anyway).
• Signature Line: The line from the opening theme, "It's what the network wants, why bother to complain?" aptly summarizes the feelings both the writers and fans had for this spinoff.
• So Okay, It's Average: A minority of viewers have said that, while the setup and characters were doomed from the start, this is still written by the same writers who had created all of the best episodes of Pinky and the Brain and, therefore, had plenty of clever gags and stories sandwiched between everything else that brought the show down. It helps that the show does in fact self deprecate its own ridiculous premise routinely, even if it does little to prevent it still occurring.
• Sweetness Aversion: Elmyra's behavior of a five-year-old in a teenager's skin was clearly meant to be taken only in small doses when she was first created, so having her promoted as a main character opened all sorts of floodgates for this to happen. Having to listen her cutesy childish talk for a half hour at a time very quickly grated on viewers' nerves, and is a good example of why some supporting characters are better left in that role.
• Take That, Scrappy!: One of the show's biggest redeeming factors is that it spends half the time being self aware and mocking what a third wheel Elmyra is.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Rob Paulsen won an Emmy for his performance as Pinky in this series. In fact, the whole series can be described as this in probably the most confusing way — there's a clear number of Biting-the-Hand Humor and Take That! moments aimed at expressing the whole resentment the staff had towards this concept, but in spite of that, the show still has the same quality of animation as the original cartoon and the acting is still just as good as it ever was, even if the writing wasn't always up to snuff. For those reasons, the show does get its defenders, and even The Nostalgia Critic admitted that the show could be funny in spite of how much the concept was doomed to fail from the start.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The show made references to several pieces of late 90s pop culture, including Bill Nye the Science Guy, Teletubbies, and Hanson.

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