Last Tuesday, my mom decided to ruin my snow day by making me babysit my little brother while she went off to work. Usually, in order to make my life easier, I turn on the TV and let my brother watch some cartoon that’s on, usually being something like “Spongebob Squarepants” or “Phineas and Ferb”. Most of these cartoons and TV shows for kids though just don’t seem as fun as the ones I saw as a kid. It upsets me that, in order to appeal to the new “tween” demographic, a lot of TV networks are making more reality sitcoms that recycle the same kind of characters and plots and are rarely showing anything that blows the minds of kids.
As a kid, I watched an endless amount of TV. Out of all that TV I saw though, the three most memorable TV channels I viewed were Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and Disney Channel. If you were a kid during the late 1990s and early 2000s, then surely you have seen at least one of these channels and know what I mean when I say that these channels have made huge changes in their TV programming. There seems to be an endless number of reality sitcoms that star young adult actresses like Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez that are put through the same issues of cute boyfriends, school, and fights with friends. I am not saying that these sort of topics are necessarily bad per se. But with so many shows that copy this same format, there isn’t much freshness and creativity in these sorts of shows.
Now I don’t have anything wrong with children sitcoms. I remember watching “Drake and Josh” and “Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide”. I will never forget Drake and Josh’s crazy antics (which included babysitting a pregnant sheep for their little sister) nor will I ever forget Ned’s crazy classmates and the even crazier things that went on in Polk Middle School. What made these reality sitcoms stick out compared to ones like “Hannah Montana” and “iCarly” was that the older reality sitcoms tried to mix it up in every episode. Not only were the jokes a lot funnier, the characters were involved in situations that were completely unimaginable and unpredictable.
Another problem I have with the more recent TV sitcoms is the content of these TV shows. As I said earlier, most of these sitcoms talk about how Miley has a new boyfriend, but can’t see him because of her alter ego as Hannah or how Carly has gotten in a fight with her best friend Sam and can’t settle their disagreement. I know this probably seems appealing to pre-teens, who are excited to enter this new world of adolescence, but what about younger kids like my 5-year old brother? They aren’t ready for this world of friends, dating, and social networking. They should be watching cartoons. And I don’t mean computer generated cartoons with lame toilet humor like “Penguins of Madagascar” and “Total Drama Island”. I’m talking old-school cartoons like “Dexter’s Laboratory”, “Doug”, “Fairly Odd Parents”, and “Rugrats”. Not only were most of these cartoons hand drawn by the creators themselves (which gave the show a more natural appeal), their plots and characters were simply memorable. I feel nostalgic thinking of the hours I spent watching all these TV shows, pretending to put myself next to these characters and joining their many adventures. What happened to all of that?
There is much more left to say regarding the TV shows being aired for children nowadays. I want to keep writing about this because not only is it fun to reminisce of the good times I had with these shows, I really do miss all these old TV programs. On a concluding note, I want to say this. TV programs for kids have certainly made major changes compared to the old TV shows I remember. I don’t mean to say that we should completely eradicate these new shows. But, why not go back to the old school shows? It would be nice to babysit my baby brother and watch a cartoon with him that has hand drawn animations, crazy plots and characters, and truly memorable episodes. All I want is to share my experience with TV with the next generation that is to come and to let them have similar memories to the ones I have now as a teenager.
