TV shows get old after a while. Characters grow up along with their egos, storylines are the same diluted crap we’ve seen before, and if it weren’t for the mechanical laugh track, nobody would laugh at their jokes anymore. A solution is on the rise: cartoons.
Unlike TV, cartoon characters never get old unless the studio deems it necessary. All characters get the same pay and you never have to worry about someone leaving the show for a movie offer. Indeed, cartoons not only bring that adventure of reality TV, they kick it in the groin. How many people can get hit by car and then get back up and start walking?
We all grew up watching cartoons, and it served as our version of the news. I would always tune in to see if Batman was cleaning up Gotham City. Looking at cartoons from an adult perspective, it is easy to see that they are more for adults than children. Adults write the storylines, do the voices and animation, and shift which way they want the show to go.
Now, there are cartoons aimed at adults such as “Family Guy” and “Sea Lab 2021.” It usually comes on late at night so you can put the kids to sleep and watch in peace or keep the kids up, who cares? It’s a cartoon, everyone will enjoy it. It’s for the whole family. How many parents out there would let their kids watch “Desperate Housewives”? I don’t know about everyone else, but watching Stewie try to kill Lois is much more entertaining than watching some over-the-hill woman so sex-deprived that she sleeps with an underage gardener.
If some of these “adult cartoons” don’t appeal to you, then try watching “South Park.” Yes, it’s about little kids in a hick town, but they deal with contemporary situations that are big in the media, such as music downloading and how big of a slut Paris Hilton really is.
I’m not saying that the average TV sitcom has lost its touch but let’s face it, since the birth of reality TV everything has just gone downhill. I love watching some average yahoo eat as much bull testicles as he can for a cash prize, but you see it two or three times and it just doesn’t hold the attraction it once did. Studio executives just went a little crazy after “Survivor” came out, and now we even have an MTV version with a bunch of winos we’ve already seen.
After looking at all sitcoms I’ve watched over the years, they all meet the same inevitable doom. They do the same crap every other show has done, and then they cancel. Good ones go into syndication, and the others just end up on an archive shelf. Luckily, adult cartoons survive on Cartoon Network and are, sometimes, even brought back from the dead. I’d continue this with a final thought, but “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” is going to start, and it’s a new episode.