"Thu" I miss good Cartoons

If you couldn’t tell, I feel especially strong about cartoons. 66% of kids watch more than 2 hours of TV a day, and I imagine a good chunk of that is cartoons. And today that means possibly 14 hours a week of Ed, Edd, and Eddy, Codename Kids Next Door, Fairly Odd Parents, or at best Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. What are these shows? How could they possibly be helping kids grow as people? The cartoons I grew up not only were so entertaining that adults usually watched, but they also taught kids something. For example:

Name:Ducktales
Idea:Scrooge McDuck is the richest Duck in the world and he travels the world with his nephews Huey, Dewey, ,and Louie looking for ancient artifacts, new technology and other ways to keep his giant money bin full. Along the way they had to avoid traps from the Beagle Boys who wanted his money, Magica De Spell who wanted his lucky dime, and Flintheart Glomgold who was basically the exact opposite of Scrooge and #2 on the world’s richest ducks list.
And it taught kids…:I would say it taught kids about the importance of family. In a couple episodes I can remember Scrooge having to trade all his money or his lucky dime for the safety of his Nephews. It also taught kids that if they were misers they would one day have a giant bin of money they could swim in. That lesson didn’t really seem to take.

Name: Darkwing Duck
Idea: Darkwing was a spinoff from Duck Tales. It was basically a junior version of Batman for younger kids. He didn’t have any powers, just a gas gun, a sidekick named Launchpad, a high IQ, and a super long intro (it always started with “I am the terror that flaps in the night…” then kind of digressed from there.) Darkwing had to battle a bunch of decent villains including Taurus Bulba (who was a giant bull and had henchmen named Hoof and Mouth), Steel Beak, and Negaduck.
And it taught kids…:About justice, bravery, and that brains is better than brawn.


Name:Animaniacs
Idea: A cartoon sketch show for kids, with a ton of pop culture references and hosted by the puppy/cat looking things that lived in a water tower.
And it taught kids…:Everything. They sang songs about Geography, and Astronomy, they had mice that dabbled in politics and science, they had pigeons that explained street smarts, the show was a 12 year old’s guide to life.

Name:Doug
Idea: Doug Funny is an awkward school kid who journals about his mediocre life. Many kids really connected with this premise
And it taught kids…: Along with the usual shows that taught about being yourself, importance of good friends rather than popularity, and that good family is not to be taken for granted, Doug also taught kids to be “color-blind”. Doug was white, his best friend was blue, his girlfriend Patty Mayonaise was orange, and the mis-understood bully Roger was green.

Name:Bonkers
Idea: Bonkers was a police officer in a world where cartoons and humans co-exist. He had a human partner named Lucky Piquel (They had a “one of us, one of them” policy way before Heroes) who found him annoying yet ultimately through many adventures tracking down cartoons that were breaking cartoon laws, grew to like him.
And it taught kids…: Hating people that aren’t like you is wrong. There was always a kind of racist tone about how the humans treated the cartoons, some of them hated cartoons for no good reason. The show explained that different is good and we should celebrate our differences.

Name:X-Men
Idea: It was the comic books, except it was a cartoon. Probably one of my favorite cartoons ever, it had some really elaborate and complicated stories usually based on a comic book arc.
And it taught kids…: Another racism is bad show (racism must have been really rampant in the early 90’s), but also the importance of integrity. X-men only fought when they had to, in defense of someone who couldn’t fight. They worked as a team to accomplish something together that none of them could accomplish alone. It also touched on consequences of time travel, privacy issues (Professor X reading minds), Sacrifice (the Phoenix Saga), and the evils of big government (Sentinals and evil senators).

Name:Environmental cartoons (Capt Planet, Widget, Denver the Last Dinosaur)
Idea: The planet is dying, kids can save it, but only with the help of a green guy in a belly shirt, a purple alien that could shapeshift, or a dinosaur that skateboards and ime travels.
And it taught kids…: Adults are killing the world, you are going to have to clean it up when you get older, and global warming is imminent. I’m not really thrilled with that message exactly but the shows were entertaining and I’m not wholly against recycling.

These were just some of the amazing cartoons I grew up with. Back when cartoons were good, they taught you something; they entertained you and challenged you, they blew today’s cartoons out of the water.

So my favorite class so far 5 weeks into the semester has been my pop culture communications class. The teacher takes it really seriously, in a good way though. I kind of thought we would just end up talking about how movies and music affect people, that sort of thing. And it’s possible we’ll still go there, but the professor so far has approached it like an anthropology or maybe sociology class. It's been really interesting.

One of the things he pointed out last week was that the pop culture you grew up with will always be way better than whatever follows it or came before it. He couldn’t explain why that is exactly, but it seems about right. 40 year old women chase down Bon Jovi, 30-somethings always talking about how awesome movies in the 80’s were, and kids today actually sit down and watch whatever garbage cartoons that are popular. So even though I feel that this list contains some of the pinnacles of cartooning goodness, there's a good chance I'm more than a little biased.

Tue: I would change the "Feed the Pig" ads

I’m a Marketing major, so when I watch TV one of my favorite parts are the commercials. Maybe it’s cause I have a short attention span, or a primitive sense of humor or something but they just fascinate me. Actually I think they fascinate a lot of people. A good commercial can get more people excited and thinking than a 90 minute movie. And at the worst a bad commercial is like a car accident that you’re driving by, it’s painful to look at but will be gone soon. So when I see these commercial I kind of internally rate them. The Rhapsody commercial where that girl is floating in bubbles = Great, the Whataburger commercial where….well actually every single Whataburger commercial = Terrible. There is a series of commercials I’ve seen lately that just has me absolutely mystified. They’re called “Feed the Pig” ads, and are created by the Ad Council. The Ad Council according to people in the know (AKA Wikipedia) is a non-profit organization that makes Public Service Announcements about…well…everything. Look it up online if you’re bored you’ve probably seen a bunch of them like the fish out of water that’s supposed to educate about Asthma, or the “Buzz driving is Drunk driving” commercials. Generally they put out some pretty good stuff. The “Pig” ads however are just surreally bad and definitely send the wrong message. Well here see for youself:


Financial Literacy- Feed the Pig - The most popular videos are here

I know it’s kind of hard to tell, but the idea is to get people to revive the long lost art of saving money, or at least maybe stop spending money they don’t have. Did you get that? No? I didn’t think so. Here’s why I think that is:

First of all, MAN, THAT PIG IS CREEPY! He’s exactly what I always pictured Napoleon looking like at the end of Animal Farm. If that thing comes up to me asking for money I’m giving it to him. Then I’m running and praying I never run into another cloven hoofed nightmare again.

Not only is he absolutely terrifying, he doesn’t really seem like he’s helping people save money so much as extorting protection money from them. Like some muscle for a farmyard mafia who also runs moonshine and insurance scams. It doesn’t feel right to give him money. There’s no way his intentions are good. And the look on the people’s faces when they see him coming just absolutely cements it. Also the piggy bank should be their friend not the local bully forcing you to “feed” him, especially since he’s already borderline obese. I mean I know he’s a pig but we have an analogy we're trying to create. People aren't saving ergo people aren’t feeding him! That’s why we’re doing the ads, he should be Ethiopian skinny! Also, he’s dressed in a cheesy but expensive looking suit. The pig is poor, he should be dragging himself around in a hollowed out barrel like something out of Bugs Bunny. In this commercial he endears himself further by physically abusing some guy.



I’m thinking they realized the fact that the Pig was wildly creepy because lately they changed him to something a little less creepy, but still rivals the Burger King “King” for top spot of advertising characters who could mentally scar small children . Have a look:


Financial Literacy - Royal Family - Watch the best video clips here

So here’s the change: We keep the Piggy bank idea, it’s nostalgic, universal, relatable etc. We change that freaky pig to something more like HAM from Toy Story, except skinnier.
And follow one character as me makes some wise money saving decisions throughout his day. He eats a brown bag lunch instead of going out with his co-workers then throws some money to the tiny famished pig. He rents a movie instead of going to a movie and throws more money to the slightly less thin Pig. He cancels his magazine subscriptions and throws more money to the normal sized Pig. He consolidates his credit cards and lowers his interest and throws more money to the Pig who is now RIPPED. Then he gets in a car crash, but it’s OK cause the Pig hops out of the back of his car, focuses on the car and magically the car is good as new. The pig is then slightly smaller but the guy can drive off with no worries.

You could do this type of thing over and over, incorporating different tips and using different rewards. Woman forgoes Starbucks, and the pig gives her new shoes. Guy starts biking places and shutting off lights when he’s not home and the pig makes his tiny TV into Big screen TV. A family takes a smaller vacation like camping or hiking, start getting movies from the library and the pig magically turns their apartment into a house. And on and on.

So less creepy pig, more interesting story and even (gasp) education and then I think the Pig Ads will be cool. What’d you think?

Wed: I don't like The Evening News

40-ish years ago, people would go about their day to day lives with very little idea of what else was going on in the world. Sure they probably checked out the newspaper with their breakfast, but that would just tell them what had happened yesterday, not what was going on today. Enter the wonderful Evening News.

Suddenly people had an amazing re-cap of the day, delivered by people who really sounded like they knew what they were talking about. To top it off, sometimes they even included some video to go along with the news stories. It basically blew that morning newspaper away. After sometime however; that Evening News slowly morphed into comically bad parody of its previous self, to the point where a lot of people -myself obviously included- just find it unwatchable.

I have to start with the anchors. As near as I can tell, the anchor used to be a person that came off as a seasoned, wise, almost professor like figure, who would take the events of the world and talk about them in an educated way. They also seemed to assume that the people watching had been following the news at least somewhat (usually a fair assumption cause THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE ON) and could talk as such. The Anchor was someone that you felt always knew what to do in any situation. That standard seems to fallen quite a bit. The Anchors today really just seem to be above average looking people with a clean delivery.

Can you read?
Yes.
Are you ugly?
mm No.
Do you have any idea what the European Union is about?
That’s a railroad in monopoly right?
You’re perfect.

I know that’s being pretty harsh, but that’s how they come off most of the time. At there best they appear to be slowly working on stand up comedy material, at worst they seem just as surprised about the news as they read as we do (really this is the first time you read that story, shouldn’t you have given a quick once over earlier so you could speak intelligently about it?). I wish they wouldn’t rely so heavily on the teleprompter, but they have to. When they try and wing a line or comment without it; best case usually some awkward unintentional comedy ensues, or worst case they try and make a joke-y segue to sports that has everyone fake laughing uncomfortably hard. Either way, it’s usually cringe inducing. Like this:



The news is also inconvenient. I’m not really ready to end my day at 10pm; I don’t want to wrap it up. That 10pm cemented slot really can’t compete with the 24 hour news channels or internet news which is updated all the time and available whenever. It’s almost like they’re blind to the existence of these other competitors and just plugging away with a losing formula. Change something, focus heavily on local news, spend more time and get more in depth on the stories, follow up with them in the following days, do anything to separate the local 10pm news from a bad 1 hour version of the news I can already watch all day long.

There is one thing they do try and do differently; they sensationalize small things to scare you into watching the news. For example there was the flesh eating bacteria that 3 people contracted a couple years ago. The news crews were all down at the local gyms showing how many germs there are and freaking people out about “Superbugs”. There may have been some validity to the story, but why not take the power of media and use it to explain the reality of the chances of them acquiring that flesh eating bacteria (which isn’t 100% fatal like they let you believe) are microscopically small, then calmly explain how to make them smaller. There’s no need to create un-educated panic. Those kind of out of proportion stories drive me nuts.

Interestingly the nightly news seems to be dying away, something that is attributed to the rise of the internet. For all its current faults I still feel like it has its place, if they would just have interesting, wise, maybe even ugly people tell a more complete story without adding craziness just to get a rise out of folks. In essence get back to basics.

Tuesday: I would change Heroes

I only watch a few TV shows, and most of them I just catch up with online after a couple weeks. Shows like House, The Office, Lost, and lately Fringe. Out of the shows I follow though, Heroes is definitely my favorite. Or at least it used to be. It used to be that immediately after watching you would want to go back and re-watch some detail that you missed. It used to be that naming all the characters and their powers was pretty simple. But now immediately after watching the show most of the time if you watched it again you’d just get frustrated by the new holes in the story you didn’t notice the first time. And trying to remember the characters is tough, remembering how they’re all related is tougher, and figuring out their powers is hopeless. Yea, it’s kinda become a big clusterhooey. So being the problem solver that ASU has taught me to be, I diagnosed some of the problems (to me anyways), and gave some solutions (cause problems without solutions is just griping, and that’s for Wednesdays). So here’s a brief list of what I would change about Heroes, if you know I was in charge of the world.

Get rid of Nicky/Tracy/Jessica

Initially this said kill off, but that sounded a little violent, so I settled with “get rid of”, maybe with some heavy winking. Why would I get rid of her? So many reasons, the actress is bad, the evil twin thing kind of reeks of bad soap opera, and the missing triplet storyline is even worse. In the beginning she was a single Mom trying to raise a kid in a bad situation, with a power that they never really explained (was she really strong? Why was she only strong when she was crazy? Would she lose her power if she talked with a therapist?). Now she’s a completely different character (but she still kind of has that exhausted single mom look going on) and she has a new well defined power (freezing things) but really nothing to do. None of the other characters have any investment in her, and she isn’t really critical to any part of the story, the only thing she’s involved in is trying to get the Nathan character to obey his father, something he decides to do anyway when He’s 4000 miles away from her. I think maybe the character was supposed to be some kind of conniving, powerful woman, but she always just looks kind of confused, and is usually getting yelled at or taking orders, so maybe it’s time that Nathan realized we’re in a recession and trimmed his staff, starting with the girl who does nothing.

Use Mohinder as the non-power having observer we can all relate to

In the beginning and even now every so often, the Mohinder character narrates the episodes. Why? I think it has a lot to do with his accent, less to do with the actual storytelling of the show. But it really should. See the thing is, I don’t have super powers, you probably don’t have super powers and you know who else doesn’t have super powers? That’s right Mohinder. That should make him easier to relate to, and he can guide people through this fictional world using that silky accent. Maybe being a psudo scientist he could also explain some of the characters actual powers also so we’re not just guessing and surprised all the time.

Change Hiro to a harbinger of past and future

Hiro is everyone’s favorite character. And why not? He’s funny, has a cool power, and generally really likeable. The only problem is that to use his power pretty much always screws things up. Plus he’s always using it for trivial things like stopping time to create 1000 origami cranes, or teleporting to the waffle store (seriously?). He should just be a nomad in time, traveling back and forth slowly taking notes and trying to gently shape the world into a better place by gently encouraging the other characters to do this thing or that thing. Basically everytime you see Hiro, you should be thinking “O something awful is about to happen in the future, and here comes Hiro to tell us what”, keep it that simple. Because as anyone who saw “Primer” knows explaining time travel is way too confusing.

Forget about all this giant conspiracy stuff with the “older heroes”

They keep introducing these old people, or parents of the characters and alluding to some old organization they had where they talked about how best to use their powers or something. But no one really cares. All these old people have had powers for upwards of 40 years and they still haven’t accomplished anything? I’m thinking if you can’t accomplish something in that time span, you might not be smart enough to pull off some crazy giant conspiracy later on in life. Let’s move on from the senior citizen generation and just pretend like this is the first generation of people that are “special”.

Give HRG his own show, where he discovers and tracks down heroes

My favorite character on this show is Noah Bennett. I think it’s because he has the most identifiable priorities, family and work. He just wants to be good at both of them. He also has no powers yet a lot of the other characters are afraid of him, based solely it would seem on past experiences. So do me a favor, give him his own show. Have him and his quiet and wise Haitian partner track down people with powers and either stop them, or help them get help. That way if there were any really good ideas for characters they could just use this show as a natural introduction. Also the underlying ongoing problem of the show could be Noah and his partners chasing after but never quite catching Syler. I’d watch it.

Go back to having the Heroes do normal day to day stuff while dealing with being different

I hate to use a comic book as an example of where the show should go, but I’m going to anyway. So in all the best stories ever told through comic book, the best characters always struggled with trying to do normal stuff that you and I do, while trying to still fulfill their duties as superpeople. For example Spiderman always felt like he was neglecting his Aunt and had trouble keeping a paycheck, most of the X-men wanted to be normal people and lead normal lives, Stupendous man always had trouble finding his cape and getting stuck in the closet or locker (don’t worry if you don’t remember that last one). The point is, the story feels more real when we see signs of our reality in it, like when Claire was going to school and dealing with being the outcast, when Peter was becoming a nurse and dealing with losing patients, when Micah was using his power to get money to help out his struggling single mom (whatever happened to that kid anyway?). These were all examples of regular everyday things you and I understand, and enjoyed watching them be effected by the extraordinary, which really should be the whole point of the show.

So there’s a couple suggestions about what I would change if I was in charge of the world, or at least NBC. There was so much potential there, I hate to see this thing go down in flames and the only thing left to watch is one of the 9 CSI’s, 5 American Idol-esqe shows, and sitcoms about stupid husbands that don’t understand their much smarter wives (what is that about anyway, this is going to come up again I promise). I guess only time will tell, though recently it has been looking up, that last couple episodes were much better, and the guy who used to write for “Pushing Daisies” is taking over so there is a light at the end of this super confusing tunnel.