Yea Forums properties that have no right being as good as they are
Shows with the premise of "friends hanging out and doing things" is so overdone and tired, but The Weekenders seems to make it work because the characters feel like actual rounded children and not one-note cliches. Tino isn't just the main character, Carver isn't just the cool black guy, Tish isn't just the smart one, and Lor isn't just the tomboy.
Also the animation is consistently good.
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>Pitched without a pilot
>Creator was previously known for shocking or gross-out adult animation
>Premise is basically just a bunch of bored kids trying to make money for candy
>Main form of humor was slapstick and fast-paced dialogue, which without good writing can easily fall short on both counts
If you were looking at it from the perspective of somebody in 1999, you'd think this show had "mediocre" or "failure" written all over it. Instead it's CN's longest running series and is one of the most beloved cartoons of the last two decades
I think it's very much helped along by the premise, too. Since it only ever focuses on what happens between the time they get out of school on Friday afternoon and when they have to call it quits Sunday night, you cut out a huge swath of Boring School Bullshit that's been done to death in other shows, and it forces everything to have a sort of three-act narrative, with the setup on Friday, the meat of it on Saturday, and the conclusion and wind-down on Sunday.
I think it's a bit disingenuous to call it the longest-running series. It did TECHNICALLY run from 1999 to 2009, but the fifth season was spread out across 17 months because of large gaps between episodes, and then "Season 6" was a single episode released over a year later, and it was capped off with the movie a year and half after that.
It is amazing, though.
I remember at least one episode ended on a Monday, didn't it?
Maybe, but if so it was an exception. My main point was that the "takes place across 3 days" schtick that the majority of the episodes stuck to helped break it up reasonably, and made them come up with plots that made sense to happen across 3 days. That, and it let them do some school-is-an-issue episodes (like with Lor having to study) without ever focusing on the school and getting bogged down there.
There were a couple that ended on the Monday morning before school, IIRC they were episodes where a character really fucked up in particular.
It may have been an eleven minute action-comedy, but it had proper continuity and character development, with ongoing narrative arcs and storylines. Season two had 39 episodes with four storylines that weaved everything together in its conclusion. And whenever they wanted to tell a longer story? They simply made some episodes 22 minutes long instead. They weren't specials, or holiday themed. They just felt like focusing more on the story.
It was made by Bob Boyle, with significant help from Steve Marmel. They were the brains behind Butch Hartman's success with FOP and Danny Phantom, and it's no surprise both of those shows went into significant decline after they left to make Yin Yang Yo.
Yea Forums hates it, though, and never gives it the credit that it deserves.
Motherfucking Jackie Chan Adventures
It's a fucking celebrity cartoon in an era when celebrity cartoons were synonymous with being shitty. And it was an action cartoon, so you could expect an episodic comedy-driven series with cheap as shit animation and toned down action scenes, right? Nope, it's actually fun as fuck with great fight scenes, animation, and story lines with genuine character development and overarching narratives.