Rugrats

[Avaitor]

Seasons 2 and 3 are easily the best things Klasky-Csupo ever did.

Duckman?

[Lord Dalek]

Seasons 2 and 3 are easily the best things Klasky-Csupo ever did.

Duckman?

Oh and that.

[Kiddington]

The way it turned out is pretty much akin to Spongebob; successful series had a great couple of seasons, until Nick decided to throw appreciation to quality out the door, and turned said series into a soulless, merchandising giant. Rugrats wasn't quite as big as the Sponge in that department (from what I remember, anyway; I was still just a kid in the 90's, so I'm probably forgetting some stuff), but it still got three movies (the less said about that last one, the better), and numerous video games. I do distinctly remember having a bunch of other Rugrats stuff as a kid, so the general merchandise probably was just as plentiful, but it's been too long for me to remember for sure.

...and yeah, pretty much everything post-Movie 1 is dreadful. I wouldn't have cared so much about Dil, had the entire series not seemingly shifted all focus towards him. The babies, for me, were never even the best part to begin with (agree with Jake here); even as a kid, I enjoyed the deadpan banter between Stu and Drew a lot more than I ever did watching Tommy and co. run around. And when the series started centering around an almost braindead character, who could hardly think and act for himself, you know it was all downhill from there. Kimi (sp?) was simply the final nail in the coffin; the show had already fallen apart looooong before she was in the picture.

I still want that Complete Series DVD, though (in spite of all the badness of the later years, the early years make it more than worth the money). God damn you, Paramount. If you aren't going to let Shout Factory do it, get off your lazy corporate asses and do it yourself. August marks the show's 20th anniversary; no better time in the world to do this. Don't fucking drop the ball here.

[Eddy]

I'd love a DVD set of the first three seasons but they can keep the remaining seven.

Watching the show now I realize Stu Pickles is obviously the best character on the show.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Watching the early episodes again, and I realize why I liked it so much as a kid. But mostly the early stuff, the writing got dumber and more focused on gross out gags after the original 65. It's a lot like Spongebob in that respect, only on different levels of quality in peaks and drops, IMO.

But the show is very deceptive in what it is. When you're expecting a baby show for pre-schoolers, it throws you a massive curve-ball and you get a cute adventure show and a witty comedy at the same time. Watching the early episodes now, it really isn't surprising why it was so popular.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Everytime I watch Rugrats, it looks like this now. Should probably lay off the pills for a while.

[Avaitor]

I'm going to be writing about why I like Rugrats very shortly, but I've been thinking, and one of the biggest problems of the show after the original 65 is that by that point, they stopped writing for babies, but rather slightly older children.

For example, there's an episode where Chaz has Chuckie learn how to ride a bike, which is really stupid, since he can't even talk(this was before Rugrats in Paris, when he learned how to say "No!")! How can he tell Chaz or Stu to help him if and when he can't gain control. There's another episode where Chuckie has chicken pox, so the parents decide to have all the babies be near him so they can get it too. Which is a good idea, since it's better to have chicken pox as a kid rather than an adult... but these are babies. They have no immune system. It's too soon in their life to get the pox.

There's some more obvious problems with the show at this point, but this is one thing that gets on my nerves.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Yeah, there's a lot of issues with the remainder of the show. Unfortunately once shows get Rugrats or Spongebob big they seem to quickly lose a lot of steam.

[Avaitor]

And I even went with two pre-Dil episodes for examples (at least, I think they're pre-Dil, since I don't remember him there at all). There's still some good ideas at that point, but also a lot of problems.

[Eddy]

At least we still have those first three seasons.

They need to bring those back to Netflix. What's the deal with removing the only GOOD seasons of the show and leaving all the shitty ones?

[Spark Of Spirit]

I still have all of them here. Season 4 already starts to get shaky, so I doubt I'll watch beyond that.

I would prefer DVD releases, however.

[Eddy]

I notice Amazon has season sets of the Rugrats for about $40 each. Kind of pricey and I don't think they come with any special features but I considering getting the first three seasons because they really are worth owning.

Nick, why you gotta release such shitty DVDs?

[Kiddington]

Those Rugrats sets are DVD-R, meaning the quality is pretty half-assed, and IIRC, I believe one of the early seasons (think it's Season 2) is actually missing episodes.

For $40 a pop, it's really not worth it.

[Avaitor]

Season 2 is only a "best of" and merely has half of its 26 episodes, on there and iTunes. They also only showed about half of its episodes on The 90's Are All That.

Nick is really bad with finding copies of episodes. They were missing an episode from Doug's last season too, and didn't put it on iTunes. It did air on the block though.

One of the biggest annoyances though is that they're missing the master of a Hey Dude episode from season 3. It's not on iTunes and didn't air on the block. It went to the point that when Shout released the set, they had to find a bootleg copy of it online and explaining why it's in such poor quality on the DVD.

[Commode]

Don't buy the DVDs, just watch it on Netflix.