I'm with creedog here. If you ask me, cartoons(and almost everything Saturday morning) went to heck when the FCC made all these rules.
Take Saved By the Bell for example. In TOS, Zach got in big situations all the time. Yet somehow, he'd weasle out of it, and make everything right just in time. The characters also had very few arguments, and it was almost never a serious show(very unrealistic, but obviously funny and entertaining never the less). Now, in the new series, every episode is Days Of Our Lives with an educational twist. Should one of the main characters get in trouble, they don't weasle out of it, they get caught, are forced to fess up, and then magically, everyone is happy at the end. On top of that, the characters are constantly fighting, doing good deeds, and everything is taken seriously(also a very unrealistic show, but in the sense that if you get caught, everything will still be alright, yet that isn't made obvious).
Or you can take Beast Wars(Transformers sequal), and Beast Machines(BW sequal). In BW, the plot was descent, and there was plenty of explosions, blasts, lasers, and other fun things. Now, if you talk about BM, that isn't the case. While it has a good plot(lame, but its well put togeher), it doesn't have the fun of BM. Fox
prohibits "realistic" looking weapons, so our favorite characters can't use bullets, rockets, ect(heck, not a single good guy has a laser).
You can also use Doug(and his female counterpart, Pepper Anne) as an example. In Doug's original series, it was semi-realistic(had a school bully) but unrealistic in what happened(to the bully). Doug got himself into realistic situations(stuck at a truck stop trying to get to a Beats concert), but not situations that were realistic for children. Now, he instead meets people online who steal his records, and other music.(that isn't even close to being realistic, or too realistic depending on how you see it). And for Pepper Anne, don't get me started. I think John Ramero has an ex-wife who's a writer, and wrote one of the episodes(in which PA's aunt started to like to play a game, FPS I think). The characters then trash that game(and games similar to it).
Now why is this happening? Rules! The government mandated that each station show 3 hours of educational material for kids, which is about all the amount of time they dedicate to kids in the first place. So, our Saturday mornings have been trashed in order to educate us(when obviously, we don't want to be educated!). So, bye bye Saturday mornings, and say hello to 24/7 school.:|
PS Anyone remember when NBC used to show cartoons(like Zelda)?
