10.12
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So I was seeing all the hype for that Crossover Nexus short on Cartoon Network, and saw an interesting amount of fan attention to the titular character from Whatever Happened to Robot Jones pop up. And it was weird, because compared to the other Cartoon Network shows that aired in the early 00s, Robot Jones was like the stepchild. Only airing 13 half-hour episodes before disappearing into the void, as any fans the show could find desperately scrounged through their tape recordings to see if they can find one where he has his original synthetic voice or the Bobby Block version. Unlike other short-lived shows like Time Squad or Sheep in the Big City, fans had to find the ones with the original voice or overlay the original voice on copies with the altered one. Like a much tinier equivalent to what occurred with the Star Wars Despecialized Editions. It’s a cult fandom within a cult fandom, one too tiny for Cartoon Network to acknowledge but big enough for Ian Jones-Quartey to use the original voice all these years later. And after watching some of these episodes for the first time in over a decade, it’s not hard to see why.
I find it funny to compare Robot Jones with the other Cartoon Network show that came out in 2002: Kids Next Door. KND was a show where kids could build weapons, go on adventures, and fight back against their adults. That show portrays a universe where any child can become a spy who goes on fun missions and larger-than-life thrillers. Robot Jones was a show where the kid has an intelligence and abilities that no other human in their prime could ever possess, yet Robot’s treated like a second-class citizen. He doesn’t live an extraordinary life. He doesn’t even live an equal life. For all his talents, Robot Jones is a misfit in his society. Even when he tried to show off, he failed either due to lack of tact or outside elements like his bullies the Yogmans.
And there’s a cynicism to that which other Cartoon Network shows lacked. As much as Johnny Bravo or the Ed boys were attacked, they often started the trouble. The Ed boys were schemers. Johnny was a hopeless flirt. But Robot Jones didn’t have that. He was just a robot who wanted to go to school and make friends. He only wanted to do well and be seen as good. And for that, he was often dealt the short side of the rod. Imagine if Rolf were the main character of Ed, Edd, n’ Eddy, and he was treated as badly as the Eds were even though his personality, behavior, and actions were completely unchanged. That’s what Robot Jones is, a first-generation immigrant leaving his sheltered existence only to find out society is nothing like he assumed it would be. Every time he tries to do his best, there are rules or principles he’s never previously heard of getting in his way and throwing him right back into the ground again.
Not only that, but the show itself lacked that polish other CN series had. The Schoolhouse Rock style has been harped on for ages, but the comparison still rings true. The show doesn’t reference the 80s, but embodies the decade to the point where Robot Jones feels like a series out of time. One developed, then forgotten, only to be unearthed by archivists and aired for novelty’s sake. And as a series that got so little attention from its network, that lack of supervision allowed the show to delve into topics like politics, puberty, and even gender fluidity. Not quite to the level of later CN shows, but definitely a building block. A prototype, if you will. With all that unclean artstyle, and a setting where bad things happen to good people, the work almost feels like a G-rated Bakshi movie. And I don’t mean Bakshi’s actual G-rated material, but his grungier work such as Heavy Traffic, with all the nudity and swearing cut out but the bittersweet rumination of life and failure still kept in tact. Take the Finkman episode or the Rubix Cube one. Robot Jones attempts to win his crush over, or tries to show to the kids that he has a talent. But thanks to another robot who has a better ability to befriend and manipulate humans, or two kids who just want to ruin Robot’s life, he fails. And those episodes end with him unable to do anything about the bad hand he’s given.
Yet when you look at the show superficially, it’s all rather by the books. Here’s a boy. Here are his nerd friends. Here are his bullies. Here’s the girl he has a crush on. Here’s his clueless teacher. Here’s his angry principal. Here’s his embarrassing parents. A similar structure that you can apply to so many other cartoons like all the variations of Doug. In fact, during the second season, the series loses grasp of its original voice in more than one way. In the first season, the series creator Greg Miller has a solo writing credit on half the episodes and directed them all with Rob Renzetti helping him on the fifth. But in the second, he doesn’t direct any of the episodes and only has a solo writing credit on one. As a result, the show loses that personal touch and produces typical episodes about Robot Jones playing hookey or having a house party. Typical school plots were also aplenty in the first season, but this lack of development was far from Greg Miller’s original idea of where the show should go. Like his planned ending involving a robot apocalypse.
But while Robot Jones was swept under the rug almost as soon as it started, the series could still be said to be ahead of its time. The smorgasbord of 80s references were later refined in Regular Show. The garage band soundtrack reminds greatly of FLCL’s The Pillows which would swoon the hearts of Adult Swim executives not too long after Robot Jones was cancelled. The Macintalk voices which Cartoon Network despised would eventually be used in Wall-E to great effect. Perhaps if Robot Jones were made years later, the series would have found greater appreciation. A period piece cartoon that paradoxically aired too early. And thanks to this mistiming, you have viewers genuinely asking to themselves “Whatever happened to Robot Jones?”