TV shows you wish would come back

[mupcollector1]

Spitting Image
Dinosaurs (Kind of hard to bring back with a solid ending episode)
Invader Zim
SuperNews!
2DTV
Headcases
Contra Informaco
The Ren & Stimpy Show
Hey Arnold
Kenan & Kel
All That
Basicly all the 90s Nickelodeon Shows and early 2000s Cartoon Network shows
I really miss Ed Edd N Eddy, that was a great show!
There's so many shows I'd love for them to come back and of course a New Muppet show, though I think I would just keep editing and posting more updates on my post if I tried to list them all. lol I'm a TV DVD collector so that would probably explain it.

 

[CaseytheMuppet]

Sorry to bump, but lately I've been watching Ren and Stimpy. Boy, what a great show! Most of the stuff on it would never fly on today's TV. Which is another reason I love the show, they dared to be risky and different.

 

[Drtooth]

Sorry to bump, but lately I've been watching Ren and Stimpy. Boy, what a great show! Most of the stuff on it would never fly on today's TV. Which is another reason I love the show, they dared to be risky and different.

Let's not forget what happened the last time they brought Ren and Stimpy back. Do we really want that to happen again?

 

[BobThePizzaBoy]

Let's not forget what happened the last time they brought Ren and Stimpy back. Do we really want that to happen again?

Yeah, what he said. I don't think anyone wants a 20-minute episode about who's the pitcher and who's the catcher again.

 

[beatnikchick300]

I think that's the case with a lot of shows '90s kids like me used to watch. I'm watching old episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark? on YouTube as we speak, and I'm thinking, if they were to bring that show back (again), they'd be certain to botch it up somehow.

 

[Drtooth]

Yeah, what he said. I don't think anyone wants a 20-minute episode about who's the pitcher and who's the catcher again.

The case of Ren and Stimpy Adult cartoon party is a strange one. It's not so much bringing back the show that was the problem. They brought it back for the right audience the wrong way. What made Ren and Stimpy so clever was how adult it was without being obvious about it. You don't need to make a Bugs Bunny short R rated to get adult attention, you just have to keep throwing in vague references that only adults get. In fact, it's more clever that way. Ren and Stimpy were always a couple, they just were very very subtle about it. Well.. arguably more subtle than the Catcher pitcher bit.

But a good amount of that was Spike's meddling. They wanted them not just to push the envelope, but to throw it the heck off the table to match the other poorly overdone adult cartoons Spike had at the time, Stripperella (blech) and Gary the Rat. The pitcher Cather thing was supposed to go completely different and actually be them playing baseball. Nope. Spike wanted sex. And here's the thing... the Ren and Stimpy classics did better in the ratings. All they really needed to do was just make More Ren and Stimpy shorts the original way, maybe based off of unproduced scripts Nick had lying around, and it would've gotten the audience it should have. Heck, they should have run Ripping Friends run on Spike. That was waaaay to esoteric for Fox Kids anyway (and it wasn't Power Rangers or Digimon... plus Fox Kids expired by the end of that season anyway).

But my problem was Ren went from being a lovable jerk to outright abusive. Stimpy's Pregnant was pretty painful to watch. Still.. not as bad as Aloha Hoek.

 

[Drtooth]

Double post for some reason.

One show I was wanting to come back, actually did.

Unfortunately, the dub isn't half as much fun as the 4Kids one (and considering 4Kids, that's saying something... it's one of the few shows, if any, that actually was better). Sigh.. that was waaaaay too esoteric for American kids.

 

[CaseytheMuppet]

I honestly didn't realize they brought it back like that. Amazon has "Best of" episodes, so I still really haven't seen a ton. The subtle humor of the show is what I love. I'll have to check out the newer ones, (not that they're new anymore), just to see how bad they are.

Personally, I like the episode with Space Madness. Ren is just so hilarious about his ice cream bar.

 

[ncchuck]

i liked the norm show and spin city( mjf eps)

 

[Drtooth]

Personally, I like the episode with Space Madness. Ren is just so hilarious about his ice cream bar.

Space Madness is great. Not only does Ren's sanity slippage have a brilliant structure to it (Games animation episodes try too hard to make Ren go insane), but his entire "You like the same things I do" speech references some crazy obscure movie from the 50's, adding to the natural 1950's cartoon nostalgia the series has. There's nothing quite as good as the original Spumco episodes of the classic series. There are some good Games ones, but most of them try too hard and miss the point. You end up with a Xerox of a Xerox.

I think that's the case with a lot of shows '90s kids like me used to watch. I'm watching old episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark? on YouTube as we speak, and I'm thinking, if they were to bring that show back (again), they'd be certain to botch it up somehow.

The reason most of these things don't work? Lightening in a bottle. You can't emulate something without looking like you tried too hard. You either end up with something that's almost there, or something that soullessly retreads and rehashes what was once great.

I'd love to see new cartoons with Freakazoid, but they wouldn't be the same. The show was the way it was because no one knew what the heck they were doing. The second season, while funny, was too structured and lost that "What the heck was that?!" feel to it. Trying to copy that amazing lightning in a bottle that could only come with not giving a crap and going completely crazy would only lead to insincere, scripted insanity.