(no subject)
Television is an interesting world. Today there is very little television that I faithfully watch. The only shows that I think are marketed towards me that I actually watch are The Simpsons, PTI, and Adult Swim. Other than that my favorite shows consist of a cartoon about a house full of imaginary friends and a cooking show with a wonderfully eccentric host. (That's Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends and Good Eats; in case you wondered) But as for the shows that are tremendously popular with my age group right now, The O.C., Grey's Anatomy, House, Laguna etc I've just never really been into that kind of show. I've watched an episode of Grey's which was pretty good but the whole drama thing just never really hooked me in a way that I faithfully find my way to a television once a week. But while watching Adult Swim tonight one of my favorite shows that has ever been run came on; Mission Hill. Its not the best show ever by any means but for some reason I really really like it. And it made me wonder, what ever happened to the trendy teenage/20-something animated show? Now by all means cartoons like Family Guy, Aqua Teen, and Venture Bros. have become extremely popular with the college crowd, but these shows are what I would consider cartoons. I'm talking about the animated shows that were in every right as good as those without any kind of animation. Mission Hill, Clone High, and the grandaddy(mommy?) of them all Daria. These were shows that were cool, well written and had everything you could want in a show. The characters were not extreme in any sense, instead they were often just normal teens (OK, so Clone high was extreme in every sense, but their situations were at least realistic... Ok, so nothing about Clone High was realistic at all, it still falls in this category) There was drama, there was humor, there were intriguing characters , but most of all, there was music. These were shows that among being cool in terms of story also were amazing when it came to their soundtracks. Music wasn't composed for these shows, it was licensed. The opening theme to Mission Hill was by Cake for God's sake! Daria introduced the world to not just the world of the outcast, but also to a hell of a lot of sweet music. Much in the same way that the OC plays solid indie pop today (It sickens me to admit that they are doing something right over there) Daria could be laced with anything from Beck to Daft Punk. As I watched I wondered what happened to that art form. Daria was by all means the only successful one I could remember, going on for I think 5 seasons. The other two shows I mentioned only lasted for the 13 episodes of their first seasons (though Clone High was pulled off the air for legal reasons instead of being canceled). Was America only in love with Daria because MTV made it cool? (you'll have to remember that MTV WAS still cool back then, this is 1997 after all) I guess I'll never know why the trendy teen animated show died out, but I'm glad that places like Cartoon Network still keep em around.