Aging Characters: Good or Bad?

[D'Snowth]

Another good or bad thread, obviously.

How do you feel about characters being aged?

I know a lot of people out there, like Charles Schulz, tend to dismiss the idea of aging characters, saying it's not a good idea, though others feel the opposite... in fact, Sonia Manzano has said she feels that many people continue to watch SST for so long is because the humans were allowed to age with the show, which reflects real life, and I think we can all agree that Maria (and later Gina, and even later the likes of Gabi and Miles) literally grew up on the shows.

I mean, yeah, I can reluctance to change characters, but there's a difference between changing characters and letting them age, and I think letting them age allows for growth and development within the character. Although we never got it, Craig Bartlett's Hey Arnold! spin-off sounded really great: Helga as a highschooler, dealing with her school life, and her home life (of which her mother actually now attends AA), and even becoming friends with her sworn enemy Lila. And how many times have some of us on this forum alone have said we'd like to see Arthur and his friends move on from third grade already, even if it means promoting Mr. Ratburn in the process? And of course, back in the day when I did a lot of fanfics, myself and a lot of authors liked to age the Chipmunks and Chipettes up to 13, which seems to be a good age to write them as.

So what do you guys feel about aging characters?

 

[Drtooth]

How do you feel about characters being aged?

I know a lot of people out there, like Charles Schulz, tend to dismiss the idea of aging characters, saying it's not a good idea, though others feel the opposite...

I'm going to stop you right there...

Here's the deal with ol' Sparky. He says he didn't want to age characters? He actually did, but in a weird and inconsistent "don't check the earlier installments" kinda way. Lucy was introduced as a precocious toddler. As was Schroeder. Now, these characters did age, while Charlie Brown managed to stay more or less the same age. It would be impossible to think of those two characters as anything but the characters we know today, but that's because Schulz aged them instead of just creating new characters.

So technically he broke his own rule, but it was early enough for people not to notice.

 

[charlietheowl]

I always thought it was insulting to the audience when sitcoms or other shows rapidly aged young children. The biggest example I can think of is Growing Pains, where the youngest girl was seemingly five two episodes after she was introduced. I was seven years old watching reruns and I knew something was up. I know older kids are supposed to be "funnier", but the audience deserves a little more credit than thinking they won't notice the gap in time.

 

[Drtooth]

Are you talking about complete recasts or when the characters inexplicably age 2 years over the summer but are still the same actor? I've seen that last one happen enough.

 

[charlietheowl]

I was talking about complete recasts. To me, it means that the show creators think "the audience isn't paying enough attention to know this doesn't make any sense". I know it does happen a lot on soap operas, because children who are too old to steal but too young to "fool around" aren't good plot-wise, but that creates ickiness because it makes it seem like everyone had their children at seventeen or something.

 

[Drtooth]

I thought you meant those. Though, there are those cases where they have to replace younger actors because of behind the scenes problems. They had to recast Lilly on Modern Family because of problems with the toddler playing her. And the weird thing is, the original baby that played her was extremely quiet. When she cried, it was off screen. And her replacement, not only is she noticeably older, but extremely talkative too.

But as for fictional ones... I always found it a mindscrew that on Sesame Street, Big Bird has been 6 for 40 years, Elmo has been 3 over 20 years. Everyone ages around them.

 

[D'Snowth]

I think once again I didn't make the point clear enough, so let me try it again, from another angle...

Do you feel fictional characters should be allowed to "grow" or "age" gradually overtime, or should they remain exactly the same no matter what? I'm not talking about cast changes or anything.

 

[Mo Frackle]

Well, there's a right way and wrong way to age fictional characters. As D'Snowth mentioned, it may work if the characters gradually age overtime. In the process, the characters are also growing as characters. I have yet to see an example of this.

The wrong way to do it is to pull an "All Grown Up" move.

 

[charlietheowl]

For Better or For Worse aged its characters in real time throughout the course of the strip, which did cause some angst when Lynn Johnston decided to kill off Farley the dog because he was getting up there in years. That worked pretty well in the beginning, though at the end of the strip's run she made a lot of contrivances to keep the core cast linked to each other without adding in any new characters. People don't keep the same social circles as they age, people fall out and fall in.

 

[Mo Frackle]

The only other example that I can think of is Walt Kelly's Our Gang comic series (based on the film series). Just like in the film series, Kelly had the characters grow in real time, and got rid of kids who became 'too old' (by the last time we see Buckwheat is Kelly's series, he's a High School track star).

Jimmy Neutron kind of got there. Towards the end of the series, there were several implications that the kids were growing up/maturing.