Aging Characters: Good or Bad?

[D'Snowth]

As far as comic strips go, Baldo seems to allowing the character to age, but really REALLY slowly... I remember way back when Baldo was still a high schooler, then he eventually got himself a part-time job at an auto shop considering his love for cars... and he seems to still be working there.

 

[newsmanfan]

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Doonesbury has done so effectively; characters who started as college kids now have kids and grandkids, characters have gone through life-altering times, etc... Trudeau has made them real, living in an only slightly off-color version of our world. I respect that. This is in fact the reason I find sitcoms utterly pointless: NO character development in the vast majority of them.

I understand the need for the Muppet characters on SST to remain "children" (though some of them display a sensibility which, though gentle, is definitely adult) because they're the ones the viewers most identify with. Most little kids have no real conception of their own aging until they're well into their school years, though they can perceive others aging slowly around them after a while. It makes sense for the nonhumans to remain basically the same, to enchant whole new audiences EVERY year as babies become old enough to start learning to read. I'm all for that. But preserve us from the ageless, never-developed characters on most shows and in many comics/graphic novel series. It's unrealistic and becomes grating.
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[CensoredAlso]

Doonesbury has done so effectively; characters who started as college kids now have kids and grandkids, characters have gone through life-altering times, etc

I was so amazed when I came across their '70s comics for the first time. These characters literally grew up before our eyes. No small feat for a three to four panel strip we only see every Sunday!

 

[D'Snowth]

This is in fact the reason I find sitcoms utterly pointless: NO character development in the vast majority of them.

That's one of the reasons why I love M*A*S*H so much, because that series broke all kinds of sitcom conventions, including character development: most of those characters grew in some way or form over the course of eleven seasons.

 

[newsmanfan]

I was so amazed when I came across their '70s comics for the first time. These characters literally grew up before our eyes. No small feat for a three to four panel strip we only see every Sunday!

Used to be a daily strip. Didn't know he'd cut back to only Sundays. I know a lot of papers ran the daily on the Editorial page of all places...wusses.
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[CensoredAlso]

Used to be a daily strip. Didn't know he'd cut back to only Sundays. I know a lot of papers ran the daily on the Editorial page of all places...wusses.
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Oh it probably is still daily. I was just opining about comics in general.

 

[Drtooth]

If there's one thing I'll give Family Guy credit for, it's that they actually aged their characters... slowly over time, and mainly in the post-cancellation base breaking seasons, but Bonnie finally had the baby, I think they said Stewie was 2 somewhere (I can't remember), Chris moved on to High School, and Meg's 18. That last one actually brought about one for the few good episodes in recent history, where Quagmire was able to act on his creepy feelings for her, and those are the ONLY good ones she ever gets.

And the sad thing is, the kids (well, maybe not so much Stewie) get more mature than the freaking adults in that show, who constantly degrade into very nasty, immature jerks.

Meanwhile, as I said, Bart keeps going on summer vacation only to go back to 4th grade every year... ditto Arthur.

 

[Dominicboo1]

It can be great like Andy in Toy Story 3, but annoying like Dora the Expolorer (clearly meant to appeal to older girls only)

 

[Drtooth]

I don't get the Dora thing. Still don't. In fact, I swear I only saw like 2 dolls before they discontinued it. It seems like a jaded attempt to get kids that are growing far too old to care about the character to keep buying videos and merchandise.

 

[D'Snowth]

Again, there's usually one of two motives behind a "teen revamp": either they're trying to market the same characters to an older demographic, or they're trying to reintroduce the characters to a new generation of fans.