03.01
Get it? Get it?! We’ll sing the song again if you don’t get it!
Lately, an episode of OK KO has been making the rounds for bringing back the almost dead very special episode trope to make a show about gun control, one so blatant that it ended with the show telling you to call your congresswoman. And because of all the school shootings over the years, this was a hot button issue. People against guns were praising this episode for touching on such a delicate message. Those for guns were angry that a Cartoon Network show was pushing politics. For me though, I just thought it was silly. I’m in favor of gun control and all that, but I didn’t OK KO handled the message well at all.
First off, OK KO’s an inherently absurd show about a kid protecting his mall from robots, with said kid being able to purchase laser swords and fire gauntlets without much fuss. It’s like that scene in Pokemon the First Movie where the cast were horrified at seeing Pokemon fight each other, even though that’s something the show regularly does. Sure, you have people arguing that the message in that film was valid because the Pokemon was basically mauling each other instead of using moves, but that’s just semantics to say breathing fire on your opponent is somehow more ethical than biting them. And that’s the problem with OK KO’s message, especially when the guns in this episode don’t even kill people. They just turn their targets into skeletons. Skeletons, but alive skeletons with fully intact consciousness. The show wraps its message in so much allegory that it forgot why gun violence is bad in the first place, instead unintentionally dishing the aesop of “Kids, if you shoot your friend with a remote, they’ll turn into a skeleton but they’re still alive anyway so you haven’t really done anything that wrong.”
Very special episodes have always been interesting to me ever since I was a kid. Not because they taught me anything, but because of how they failed to. I have never met a kid who watched a very special episode and learned anything from it. They either thought the episode was boring, or didn’t even know there was a message to begin with. Not a single person who watched that Cartoon All-Stars special learned that drugs were bad, they only learned that hearing chipmunks sing about marijuana was stupid. People who saw that episode of Arthur where he punched his sister either sympathized with Arthur, or made memes out of it. Occasionally, there will be a preachy episode that works, like that episode of Gargoyles where Broadway shot Eliza, or Avatar’s overarching look at how war takes away from everybody. But for the most part, when a cartoon does a message episode, it’s not going to convey its message with tact. Often, it will be written by people who haven’t done any research, like that episode of Captain Planet about the Troubles in Ireland. Or that episode of Captain Planet where they fought Hitler. Or that episode of Captain Planet about gang violence. And that’s what this episode of OK KO felt like, an episode about gun control by people who have no idea what gun control even is, and have mishandled their message so much that kids will roll their eyes instead of go amen at what they’re watching.
I think that’s why preachy episodes in cartoons haven’t been as prevalent as they used to be back in the 90s, because kids have grown more aware of TV and its inner workings. They’re more savvy of what makes a story than we were as kids. They’ve got the internet, and more connections than we ever had. Kids might be little shits, but for the most part, they aren’t dumbasses. So when a cartoon that normally plays stuff for laughs suddenly teaches a message, they know that something’s up and call bullshit. The age of cartoon characters directly looking at the screen and telling children to go see an adult if somebody bad touched them is dead because of that. Each succeeding generation is more skeptical than the last, and hearing that kind of shit only make them roll their eyes instead of confront an uncomfortable truth.
The other problem is that very special episodes often teach messages that kids are already going to learn at school. They already know that drugs are bad, that guns kill, that eating junk food makes them fat, and so on. Their cartoons telling them the same thing isn’t going to make the point more valid. If anything, it just disillusions a kid if every facet of their life is hammering the point home until they just want everybody to shut up. But you seldom get VSEs with complicated, uncommon messages. You just get the basics, instead of something that can help build on those facts and teach people further, most VSEs only end up giving them one step and leaving them at that.
Like half of South Park’s episodes. South Park’s been heavily criticized over the years for being centrist or preaching apathy, but I argue that the show instead teaches people to be skeptical rather than blindly following traditional aesops. How drugs might be bad, but scaring kids away from drugs instead of telling them the truth only blurs their view and makes them more susceptible to addiction. How a friend you know can be following an obviously corrupt person, but constantly mocking your friend or demonizing their views only makes them double down on their positions. Occasionally, the show fucks up its messages, like the Al Gore episodes, but for the most part, Trey and Matt have points to make. It’s not a show that goes “both sides are bad, so don’t bother caring”, but a show that portrays everything in moral grays and how people should figure out another solution of their own rather than adhering to the extremes of others.
And I think that’s what very special episodes need to learn in the future, instead of abiding by the old Captain Planet cliches. Because for as much as Captain Planet has been a figure in pop culture, environmental rights haven’t gotten much better in the decades since its airing. If anything, I’d argue the show hurt the cause by making people think the environmentalists were lame and annoying to listen to. Captain Planet did to eco-rights what Michael Moore did to modern liberalism. Unfortunately, the OK KO writers are massive Captain Planet fans. So much they made a crossover episode. Instead of looking forward and figuring out how to tell messages in new ways, they go with having KO sing his feelings about skeleton remotes in the same way the Chipmunks sung about marijuana. And honestly, I don’t think this will stop the next Nicolas Cruz, the next Adam Lanza, or the next Cho Seung-Hui. Instead, it might make kids take gun violence less seriously, that it’s all a big farce rather than something with horrible consequences.