On the topic of animated fat men...

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Jingles
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On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Jingles »

So, as I casually peruse the internet, I see loads of talk about prime-time, "adult", cartoons. What's this forums take on Family Guy, South Park, The Simpsons and other cartoons of the like?

I myself love comedies with emotional depth. Futurama, possibly my favourite cartoon of all time, is amazing at doing that. But does every comedy have to make you think? Maybe sometimes it's nice to have a break. To just laugh without there being a heartwarming story or deep characterization behind the jokes. It's becoming more and more difficult to find that these days.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by gr4yJ4Y »

I don't really care for Futurama and I'm apparently the only human with an internet connection to feel that way. South Park can be awesome, but some episodes are complete misses. Family Guy is just okay. The Simpsons is a continually beaten dead horse carcass spraying blood and guts. They need to accept that its dead and bury it already.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Wombatwarlord777 »

The three shows I follow nowadays are South Park, Family Guy, and American Dad. My opinions of each are pretty different.

I've always liked South Park, but it does seem like the writing has suffered a bit in the last three seasons or so. It seems like each episode relies not so much on consistently funny writing (like The Simpsons and Family Guy did back in their respective primes, or even South Park early on) but some weird or gross overall theme that is then inevitably milked at least three times. It sometimes gets a chuckle the first time but afterwards gets tedious. But in each season there's inevitably 3 or 4 episodes that are solid gold, being really funny or somehow enjoyable, like The Last of the Meheecans, 1% or The Poor Kid in this last season.

Family Guy went from being my favorite show after The Simpsons to being something that I usually avoid altogether. I don't believe this is necessarily because the show's edge is getting dull, but rather that it's lost its edge altogether. The show just doesn't seem that funny anymore, and I wonder what the hell happened. There's little of the fast-paced shock humor that used to be generated by Peter, and it just seems that he's little more than a sometimes-funny-sometimes-not mean spirited douche that isn't willing to sink to the hilarious depths that Cartman is. It doesn't help that for some reason the show now seems to overexert itself in making painfully obvious, always forced "sentimental" conclusions that succeed only in making the last three or four minutes of the show unbearable to watch. The only episode from this season that I really liked was "Back to the Pilot", which had a decent premise and pretty good writing. I haven't been following the show closely at all, but the last episode I do remember liking was the special "And Then There Were Fewer", which was over a season ago.

So it's ironic that my favorite animated series on the air now is one of MacFarlane's other series, American Dad. The show is every bit as funny as Family Guy was in its stride and it helps that the writing feels just a little bit smarter. Roger and Stan are two of the most enjoyable characters I've seen in years and nobody in the show is as one-dimensional as the bit characters of Family Guy. When the show does want to have a tender moment, comedy still takes priority over sentimentality and therefore the developments seem more natural with the rest of the story. And I get the feeling that there's still a lot of creative spark remaining in the show's producers, leading them to create something that feels colorful, lively, funny and always a labor of love.

I'll be quick with the rest... I watched the first two episodes of The Cleveland Show near its premier and then decided to abandon it. I did watch the recent-ish episode centering on Waderman and a comic book convention, and thought it wasn't too bad. I've heard that general opinion of the Simpsons is that the show has gotten better in recent seasons, but based on what little I've seen I wouldn't jump to that conclusion. I hoped that Bob's Burgers would've been a bit funnier than it's first season turned out to be, but it's not that bad.

I've always thought that Home Moves was the most clever and funny of the animated dom-coms I've seen. Perhaps by extension I've always liked catching unseen episodes of Dr. Katz. King of the Hill was also pretty good.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Tsuyoshi-kun »

I love all of Futurama except the direct to DVD movies and the first half of season 6. I love the characters, the jokes, the outer-space setting; even the cameos are done pretty well. Plus there's actual continuity, a thing unheard of in most American animation, much less prime-rime animation. It's the only reason I watch Comedy Central at all.

I also really like the first three seasons of Family Guy. The show has been of very inconsistent quality since then, though the cut-away gags the series is known for are still as funny as ever, in my opinion. Actual jokes with the characters themselves have since run dry, with the possible exception of Mayor Adam West. (Brian and Stewie becoming legitimate friends was a bad idea.)

Like Wombatwarlord777, I find myself liking American Dad a lot more than Family Guy. For one, it doesn't have cutaway gags, meaning episodes have actual plots. Two, the characters gel a hell of a lot more than Family Guy's cast ever did. Whereas most of the secondary cast in Family Guy feel like glorified cameos, American Dad's feel like actual characters who add to stories, or at the weakest a nice, quick joke. Stan's also a hell of a lot more interesting and entertaining than Peter, and although Roger's disguise sub-plots get annoying at times, they typically connect to the episode or at least add something to it.

I like the first two seasons of The Simspons, love seasons 3-6, like 7 and 8, find 9-11 okay, 12 and 13 bad, and everything since has been mediocre to good. I watch it more out of obligation than anything else at this point, though I still find it better than any of Seth's shows' recent episodes. I also enjoyed the movie.

I've never really cared for South Park. Once in a while an episode makes me laugh, and the movie was pretty decent, but by the time we got cable at my house and I was old enough to watch the show willingly, I realized I didn't miss much.

The Cleavland Show was alright in its first season, and after that it fell straight to Hell. I don't think I bothered watching more than a couple of episodes of season 3.

I stopped watching King of the Hill soon after it aired when my mom blocked it. Since its revival on syndication/adult swim, I've warmed up to it quite a bit.

I dig The Critic because I really like Jon Lovitz, though I've barely seen the show in recent years. Home Movies is good, though I don't remember much of the show even as I watch it. Nearly everyone I know likes Venture Bros. I liked it enough in the first season, but I feel the series has long since run its course. I'll also admit to being probably the only person on this forum who actually likes The PJs. I don't like Bob's Burgers all that much, and I really don't like Allen Gregory.

If we're going to go old-school, I like the early seasons of The Flinstones, as well as Top Cat.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by G.Silver »

Why on earth did your mom block King of the Hill? Out of all these shows, it's the last one I would have expected!

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Tsuyoshi-kun »

G.Silver wrote:Why on earth did your mom block King of the Hill? Out of all these shows, it's the last one I would have expected!
She was not a fan of Hank's father, Cotton Hill. (His debut episode is the reason we were not allowed to watch the show anymore.) I don't think I saw another full episode after that for 5-7 years. She also blocked Family Guy for awhile, though since Fox fucked up the schedule so much in seasons 2 and 3, I couldn't watch that series even if I wanted to, because I never was there when it was on.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Delphine »

gr4yJ4Y wrote:I don't really care for Futurama and I'm apparently the only human with an internet connection to feel that way.
Wow, there's two of us! I don't dislike it, I just don't feel any particular need to seek it out.

Honestly, I've lost interest in TV in general. I'm not saying that to make myself out to be superior, I just... don't care for it. I watch Fringe religiously, basically hoping that season 2 happens again, I watch the Big Bang Theory because it's the one show that I genuinely find funny nearly every episode, and I watch Lost Girl because it's unapologetically gay without being camp. Aaaand none of those are cartoons, so I'm going to bow out before I throw us any further off topic.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Gaz »

The Simpsons - The first 2 seasons of this show are a bit weak but from season 3 to about season 9 this show is great. From season 10 the quality starts to decline with 13 and 14 probably being the weakest seasons overall. After that it starts to improve slightly but the shows glory days are way past it. The 2 most recent seasons have been pretty good but still not up to the shows classic standard and there are still some pretty terrible episodes with this years Treehouse of Horror being one of the all time worst(it features a segment where Homer becomes a farting paraplegic Spider-Man and yeah, it's pretty much as stupid as it sounds).

Futurama - The first 4 seasons of this show were generally brilliant. Then it got cancelled and then revived. The DVD movies were pretty mediocre and I had very low expectations for season 6. Season 6 started pretty badly but improved as it went along. Like the Simpsons I think this show is past it's prime but it's still enjoyable.

South Park - The first few seasons aren't really that great in retrospect. The episodes are little more than weird plots with shock value. Around season 4 the show starts to become a bit more satirical and more interesting. When it's at it's best South Park is awesome but episodes are pretty hit and miss and they do have a habit of overdoing jokes until they become stale.

Family Guy - I like Family Guy but I've always felt it was overrated. I think seasons 2-3 were probably when the series was at it's best. It's been pretty hit and miss since they revived it. I think the stories are generally quite weak but you at least tend to get a few decent jokes in each episode.

American Dad - I'm another one who prefers this to Family Guy. Generally, it just has more focused stories and better writing and jokes.

Cleveland Show - It's OK. It really ends up being little more than a Family Guy rip-off with a different family. It's definitely the weakest of the Seth Mcfarlane shows.

Beavis and Butt-Head - When they announced the revival of this I was expecting it to be terrible. I loved Beavis and Butt-Head when I was younger but it was a product of it's time and I couldn't see a new version working. I can't believe how wrong I was. The new series of this has been excellent so far. It's still pretty similar to how it was before but with the pop culture references updated and they now rip on MTVs reality shows as well as music videos(they even did a movie review in the latest episode). I think the current season of this show has been has been far better than the current/most recent seasons of the other shows mentioned.

On this sort of subject what do people think about the South Park RPG game announcement? It sounds interesting and a better fit for a game of the show than past efforts.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Crisis »

I don't own a TV and I live in the UK where there's no Hulu equivalent (to my knowledge). I haven't seen an episode of Family Guy or Futurama or even The Simpsons in over a year. In fact pretty much all I watch outside of Doctor Who seasons are comedies on BBC iPlayer.

I did, however, recently import the Daria box set (because it isn't available over here either!) and I watched through all five seasons over about four weeks. It's shockingly good. I can't believe I'd never heard of it a couple of months ago. It's probably the best teen-girl-oriented cartoon I've ever seen, although I'm somewhat biased as I'm basically a male Daria in real life, right down to the softly-spoken monotone (but minus the trenchant wit). The show has some great messages that I could have afforded to learn earlier in my life, like "being introverted doesn't preclude being confident or likeable", "always be cynical of authority", and maybe "'well-roundedness' is widely considered more valuable than raw intellect or original thought". Yeah, the show can be a bit of a bummer sometimes, despite being a comedy.

It's kind of cute to think about how out of place the show would seem on MTV today.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by gr4yJ4Y »

Delphine wrote:
gr4yJ4Y wrote:I don't really care for Futurama and I'm apparently the only human with an internet connection to feel that way.
Wow, there's two of us! I don't dislike it, I just don't feel any particular need to seek it out.
I'm not alone!

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by cjmcray »

Gaz wrote:The Simpsons - The first 2 seasons of this show are a bit weak.
:shock: Season 2 has a bunch of classics. Itchy and Scratchy Vs. Marge, Bart the daredevil, Homer and Lisa and The 8th Commandment, the first Treehouse of Horror (The Raven is among my all-time favorite Halloween segments)

Family Guy used to be a good show, and it still is entertaining on occasion, but the quality of the show dips with every new episode. The political/Religious commentary on the show is really annoying. Yeah, we get it Seth, you're an atheist and a liberal. We don't care. Just make with the funny. I hated all of last season. The murder mystery episode was boring and dragged on for an hour.

(Speaking of which, Stewie always wanted to kill Lois. At the end of the episode, Stewie killed Diane Simmons with a sniper rifle. Lois was standing right next to her, why didn't he try to take her out too? I don't understand why the writers wanted to kill off Diane. It was completely pointless. What made the news segments with Tom and Diane so funny was their constant bickering. Diane's replacement, an unfunny, flat character, gets along well with Tom, so those scenes aren't all that funny anymore. Oh well, at least they still have the Black-U-Weather forecast guy.)

Now that they did parodies of all the Star Wars films, I'd like them to keep going with more movie parody episodes. A Dark Knight special with Stewie as The Joker, Brian as Harvey Dent, Adam West as Alfred, Peter as Bruce Wayne, Meg as Rachel, and Joe as Gordon.

As already mentioned, The Simpsons is a dead horse. I haven't watched South Park in 11 years.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Majestic Joey »

I know it is not animated but Always sunny is my favorite comedy show right now and this is coming from somebody that watched all those cartoons like simpsons, south park and etc as well. Honestly I think it might be the only show that is consistently funny right now.

as far as cartoons go, do not watch Allen Gregory, that is the worst cartoon I ever saw.

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Post by Senbei »

cjmcray wrote:Adam West as Alfred
Heh.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by M.C.Dillinger »

I always hated Family Guy. Even in his prime I think it's poorly written, badly drawn and has a cast with limited comedic talent.

Personally I think the Cleveland show has no right to exist. Cleveland was the single most boring character from Family Guy.

American dad is also poorly written, badly drawn, poorly animated and has a sense of humor that is far too predictable. His cast is also even weaker than Family Guy's

I honestly don't find Futurama very funny.

King of the Hill's sense of humor is nonexistent.

South Park is hit and miss. Most new episodes are about attacking random viewpoints than backpedaling by attacking the posing opinion or saying “it's just comedy." The best episodes have always been the ones independent of any politics. (Like any episode about Satan and his abusive relationship with Saddam Hussein)

It baffles me that anyone still cares about the Simpsons.

I'm actually a fan of the Boondocks. It's has the kind of intelligent political commentary that the writers of South Park are too timid to achieve. (Yes, I went there.) Unfortunately I don't think it's a very well drawn cartoon. It tries to capture the look of Japanese animation but the art and animation can't hold up to the source material. Compare this show to FLCL and see what I mean.

Obviously, I don't watch a lot of primetime television.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Frieza2000 »

Adventure Time. I haven't seen too much of it yet, but it's pretty brilliant at times. It's one of those shows that's supposed to be for kids but tries to sneak things in that you probably wouldn't want your kids watching. I like its sense of humor so far (though I've been told episodes are hit-and-miss), and its characters are actually kind of endearing. Maybe it's just because I haven't seen a noble hero-wannabe kid with a sword that's not obnoxiously annoying or embarrassingly incompetent outside of Japan in forever, but I really relate to Finn. Not for everyone, but worth checking out.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Majestic Joey »

Regular show is pretty terrific. I've been watching that a lot lately. It's also a cartoon for adults disguised for kids.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by cjmcray »

I love Regular show. Jinx, Party Pete and Prank Callers are my favorites. (There's probably more I'm forgetting. They need to get this show on DVD asap.)

Not a big fan of Adventure Time. It's an alright show I guess, but some episodes are just plain awful. "Her Parents" is almost unbearable to watch. I really like "Go With Me" and "Evicted" though. Any episode with Marceline in it is automatically good.

The way Jake's eyes are drawn really annoys me.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by gr4yJ4Y »

Adventure Time and Regular Show are absolutely fantastic.

When King of the Hill was on Fox, I tried watching it a couple of times and found it really boring. Then they started airing it on Adult Swim and I somehow learned to love it. The humor isn't whack-you-in-the-head funny. It's more subtle, almost to the point that the characters make fun of themselves by being themselves.

I picked up the first 4 seasons of It's Always Sunny and have been watching an episode each night. When I first started watching, I wasn't finding it as funny as I remembered. Then they introduced Frank at the beginning of season 2 and it became hilarious again.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Wombatwarlord777 »

I don't really care for Adventure Time that much, but I do like the Regular Show.

I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but I instantly took to Arrested Development when I snagged the first season in the bargain bin. Apparently a new season and movie are coming out and that is just fine with me.

I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I also like the Sarah Silverman Program, Tim and Eric, Drawn Together, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Speaking of embarrassing shows, do any of you guys have any affinity for My Little Pony; Friendship is Magic? I don't, and quite frankly I don't understand how it can possibly appeal to anybody over the age of ten*. And it's slightly unsettling that everybody at the Sonic Robo Blast 2 forums seems to simultaneously fallen in love with it. It feels like being the last survivor trapped in a shopping mall filled with flesh-eating, pony-worshiping zombies.

*Well I suppose you could say the same thing about Sonic the Hedgehog... It is too late for me...

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by MiraiTails »

Shoot. You had to bring up FiM. Now everyone is going to talk about how much they hate it and that is going to make me sad. Oh, well. w/e. :-|

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Crisis »

My sister is crazy into FiM. It's seriously put me off. That, and it being a show for preteen girls and stuff.

I mean, I've seen bits of it, and it looks OK. And I've mentioned before that I'm interested in animation aimed at women. But I haven't been that impressed and I don't get the sudden fan following. The writing isn't great, the animation looks cheap and I can't shake the unsettling awareness of the target audience.

It will never be as funny or as interesting as, say, Daria, because it's a kids show designed to sell toys to people too young to read.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by G.Silver »

I've never seen FiM, but I can tell you that as a young child the first time I laid eyes on the My Little Pony display at the local store, I knew I absolutely HAD to have one. I don't remember her name, but the one I ended up picking (after much deliberation) was the pink one with wings and a blue mane. I loved that pony, but being a sharp kid, I knew it was a toy for girls (my dad was not keen on it!) and had to be careful who I shared this interest with, and being a kid, I of course did it in the most callous ways possible--suggesting to friends that it belonged to my younger brother (I didn't have a sister to pin it on), or making unkind remarks about ponies seen at the homes of other friends. "Hah! Girls, right?" But then a friend confessed to me later that the pony I'd seen in his bathroom (a Sea Pony, in fact!) was actually his, and suddenly it was ok to let my pony flag fly! When I told my other friends at school, the relief that washed over us all was palpable--we were ALL closet pony fans, it turned out. Somehow we were never bullied for this, and in retrospect I find that kind of amazing!

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Tsuyoshi-kun »

I've sat through six episodes of FiM by force on my siblings' part and I don't get the hype at all for it. I mean, it's an okay kids' show, and the art design is kind of nice, but it's making Samurai Jack and Avatar: The Last Airbender at their most popular look under-appreciated.

The only thing I watch regularly on The Hub is Dan Vs., which sounds like a one-joke premise (angry guy named Dan gets revenge on things that piss him off), but is saved by entertaining, fun characters. I also really like Regular Show.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Radrappy »

The only thing I'll say about FiM is that I sat down with the first episode totally ready to make fun of it. But instead I watched the whole thing and was kind of impressed by the quality of the writing and animation.

Love Adventure time and Regular show, although as others mentioned there are some really shitty episodes. And when these shows bomb, they bomb hard.

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Re: On the topic of animated fat men...

Post by Popcorn »

Golden age Simpsons is one of the all-time best things anyone ever did. I loved South Park I was a kid, and there's no denying its comic timing (or the appeal of that voice acting), but I came to resent its weirdly conservative slant and its reduction of incredibly complex issues to dismissive, bullying punchlines. ("Dude, you have sex with children.") And Family Guy is an ugly, hateful, derivative piece of shit and I get cross with people who like it. (I also get cross with myself for finding a few of its gags pretty funny.)

King of the Hill is intelligent, sympathetic television, and oddly underrated. (And Beavis and Butthead rules.)
G.Silver wrote:Why on earth did your mom block King of the Hill? Out of all these shows, it's the last one I would have expected!
I have a friend whose mom did this too! She said she didn't want him watching that "redneck" show. (He's from New Jersey, in case this adds some kind of context somehow.)

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