Comment by cogman10
1 day ago
I think the fact that the kids are alone and unsupervised basically all the time is what makes it so unsettling. You never see adults in the show. It's always just the same small group of kids. About the only adult interaction with the kids is through sticky notes.
I think that need and loneliness is also expressed in the show. Which is different from other kids shows which are more cartoony (Dexter's Laboratory, for example, though the adults do make appearances)
Now this is making me wonder if there was a shift at some point… as far as I remember, kids shows in the past were mostly about the kids. Ed Ed and Eddy and the Peanuts might have taken this to an extreme as part of the joke. These shows were for kids, and so the kids were the focus.
I wonder if kids shows nowadays feel a need to include more adults because adults are more likely to be watching.
There's a difference between peanuts and the eds. In peanuts, adults were definitely around but the words they said weren't understandable. As a result they basically were just background noise. It wasn't the case that the kids felt unsupervised. They still went to school, rode the bus, talked with their teachers and parents (even if you never saw them.) And they never expressed a feeling like the adults were missing.
In the eds, if you'd said "their parents have long been dead and the kids are clinging on to what was left", it'd fit right into the story. Eds had dark and serious moments around the lack of adults.
Huge difference in tone between the shows, 100% agree. I just think they are both sort of lampshading the fact that they don’t have any focus on adult characters (in completely different ways).
Oh yeah, this is absolutely a thing, though I think it's more to include a potentially additional audience rather than a way to make it fun for the kids. As a parent, I've loved it because it allows me to be able to stand and even get a joke here and there while watching shows with my kids.
No doubt that contributes but there’s also something about the way they interact with each other and how they physically exist in space/the Looney Tunes style physical gags that really stands out to me. It’s often a little… grotesque? Feels like a strong term but it’s the word that comes to mind