Is golden era spongebob the most influential cartoon of the 90ties?
If yes why does no one acknowledge it in that way, saying it's "just" a good show?
Is golden era spongebob the most influential cartoon of the 90ties?
Nathan Martinez
Joshua Jenkins
Long Gone Gulch is based
Juan Powell
It's the most quotable show in our existence, that's for sure.
It would probably be held in higher regard if post-movie era Spongebob didn't tarnish it.
Nathaniel Gray
>Is golden era spongebob the most influential cartoon of the 90ties?
No. The Simpsons or Ren & Stimpy are.
Christopher Evans
Probably because the most influential anything of the 90s is almost always completely irrelevant.
Charles Fisher
ETA WHEN?
Jonathan Cox
>Ren & Stimpy
Christian Mitchell
>born this millennium
Leo Davis
I agree on the simpsons but ren and stimpy?
Why
Ethan Harris
Its surreal gross-out style has a direct influence on a lot of cartoons after it, much more than Rugrats or Doug. Compare the stiffness of many 80s tv cartoons with R&S and the difference is staggering.
Jayden Roberts
Spongebob was early 2000's more then anything though.
Lincoln Watson
Modern Spongebob is getting better again, in case you were wondering
Jackson Sanchez
Better, but still shit.
Elijah Bennett
>i went over to cousins house for a birthday party
>Spongebob was on
>one of my cousins looked at it and said to change the channel cause he hated spongebob
>I couldn't believe it how could someone hate spongebob?!
>Thinking about it I realized he's only around 6 or 7 and has grown up with only the post movie episodes
>I understand his hate
>
Mason Campbell
>most influential cartoon of the 90ties?
pokemon,
Andrew Hill
I know Spongebob started in 99, but I'd consider it more indicative of the 00's. 2/3rd's of it's best episodes aired then, at least.
Christian Ward
Well actually I’d say golden era Simpsons was a more influential cartoon, mostly because Spongebob came late 90’s early 2000’s, and Spongebob was, undeniably, a show aimed more at kids than anything else, which hurt its mainstream appeal.
But Early Spongebob definitely was a masterpiece in a way Early Simpsons simply could not afford to be, and further more never be, mainly in that Spongebob was more of a cartoon than the Simpsons.
Now, in their prime, both shows were unmatched with their comedy, because they knew how to pace out and tell a joke, but when people talk about the strength of The Simpsons, usually they talk not only about that, but about what the show was in context. They speak of how fresh and genuine the vicious satire of The Simpsons was in the then current era of sitcoms that were pictures of American life that were so sweet that they didn’t exist, they talk about how the show wasn’t held back by the addition of a laugh track, they talk about how even through all the delighting in being countercultural The Simpson’s did, it still had meaningful things to say, and did it better than the shows it mocked, too. They don’t talk about how the show could only really work if it was a cartoon, and how being animated played a lot into everything the show did and could do that other sitcoms of its time could not. Hell, everyone in The Simpsons was both literally and figuratively a caricature by virtue of the show being an animated sitcom instead of a real sitcom.
Cont.
Mason Wilson
And I keep using the word “sitcom” because that’s the critical lense you have to view it through. The Simpsons was a cartoon, yes, but it wasn’t fully committed to it due to it having set out to be a cruel parody of a sitcom. While The Simpsons couldn’t exist in anything but animated form, it was still Matt Groening’s vision of a biting satire of America and how it presented itself in media, and consequentially had to be somewhat rooted in reality for it to work. As a result, The Simpson’s has the bulk of its jokes be character based, situationally based, or dialogue based. There are moments where the Simpsons does delve into very surreal humor, but it’s usually a one-off thing for the episode, and most just boil down to sight gags instead of being very, very off the wall (see pic related, which is still a great gag in of itself). This was because, once again, The Simpsons could not afford to take itself less seriously (even less than it already did) quite that blatantly, because it would shatter the narrative for that episode.
Spongebob, however, was fully committed to being a cartoon, and held no such drawbacks.
Spongebob did not set out to be a satire, a sitcom, or anything really that appealed to a higher audience; it set out solely to be funny, to be Spongebob. This meant that if Spongebob wanted to make a joke, it didn’t have to set up a situation that made too much sense. It didn’t have to be as incredibly devoted to characterization as The Simpsons was, as long as the jokes it made were funny. And since it wasn’t twice grounded in reality, it could be as surreal as it wished. Thus, the jokes flowed far more freely on Spongebob and worked better out of context than in the Simpsons, where context was everything.
Cont.
Lincoln Williams
A good example would be a universally loved episode of Spongebob, hailed as some to be the Magnum Opus of the series; Band Geeks. Everything from premise to execution wouldn’t have worked quite the same, or at all on The Simpsons.
Let’s break down the plot;
>Squidward’s old (and far more successful) rival, Squilliam Fancyson calls him one day to catch up
>Squilliam explains that he’s only done so to inform Squidward that he’s currently living the dream Squidward always wanted to live by having his band perform a large concer next week, but can’t make it, and if he wanted to fill in for them, he could
>Squidward, not wanting to be outdone by Squilliam, lies and says he does have a band
>Squidward now has to assemble a band and teach it to play instruments well enough to not embarrass himself in front of Squilliam
Now, this scenario could concievably work with The Simpsons, if you removed some of the characters around, maybe made some new ones, but we wouldn’t get half of the greatest jokes from Band Geeks if we did transcribe it. The Simpsons just isn’t surreal enough to have something like, say, the Flag Twirling joke in it, in which some Flag Twirlers spin their flags so fast that they both fly into the air and crash into a blimp, killing them both and everyone on the Blimp. You wouldn’t get the gag where Patrick’s mangled body is shoved into a trombone. You wouldnt get the BIG MEATY CLAWS banter, and most of all, you wouldn’t get a rock ballad written solely for that episode, because if it was on the Simpsons, Squidward wouldn’t have won in the end because the show was usually far too cynical to let the best possible future come to fruition, especially not to someone like Squidward.
And it’s all because Spongebob is only really committed to being an enjoyable and funny watch. This is the only rule it truly operates by, and the show has a Lassie-Faire attitude to the rest.
End
Justin Brooks
Also I forgot what I was trying to prove by writing that but whatever the point is that early spongebob was great
Matthew Cook
The winner takes all
Levi Thompson
IT’S THE THRILL OF ONE MORE KILL
John Campbell
Because it’s just good