Cartoons in Prime Time

Cartoons in Prime Time

Not Just for Kids

At the end of the decade, what was the longest-running situation comedy in prime time? The Simpsons. With the success of this show, television executives learned that cartoons were not just for kids on Saturday morning. By the end of the 1990s, FOX, MTV, and WB were all running prime-time cartoons. While The Simpsons was by far the most consistently excellent animated series, several other shows provided prime-time laughs and acquired devoted followings.

The Simpsons

Cartoonist Matt Groening introduced The Simpsons in 1987 on The Tracey Ullman Show (1987-1990). Before creating The Simpsons, Groening was best known for his Life in Hell comic strip that first appeared in 1977 and became syndicated in more than 250 newspapers worldwide. Following their stint on The Tracey Ullman Show, The Simpsons got their own Christmas special in 1989, and a prime-time series was launched 14 January 1990 with "Bart the Genius." In this episode Bart learned his lesson when he cheated on an aptitude test and then ended up in a school for exceptional children. The Simpson family—Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie—fast became cultural icons and the instruments of hilarious and surprising social satire. Perhaps one testimony to the success of The Simpsons is the long list of stars who have lent their voices, and sometimes their images, to the show, including Elizabeth Taylor, Winona Ryder, Michael Jackson, Gillian Anderson, and David Duchovny. In 1994, The Simpsons became the first regular prime-time series to be simulcast in Spanish, and in February 1997 it became the longest-running cartoon on prime time, surpassing the record set by The Flintstones (1960-1966).

Beavis & Butt-head

Mike Judge made his first cartoon in 1991 and, not knowing what to do with it, mailed it to addresses he found in the phone book. Comedy Central called, and then the Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation, and within a year Judge had produced four animated shorts. In 1992 his "Frog Baseball," which featured two dumb, ugly teens playing the game of the title, aired on MTV, and the channel commissioned the Beavis & Butt-head series, which debuted in 1993. The first season featured the two unbelievably stupid male adolescents who sat on their couch reviewing music videos (which were either "cool" or "sucked") while making crass and idiotic remarks, which on occasion hit home with their piercing insight into 1990s American culture. The show was an immediate success, although some media commentators took it too seriously as an example of the "dumbing down' of America. "Just because you do a show about dumb guys doesn't make it a dumb show," Judge responded. "I think that's a dumb way to look at it. Like if you did a show about straight-A students, that would be a smart show." Judge animated the series and did most of the male voices for seven seasons, ending his work on the series to devote more time to his new animated show, King of the Hill.

King of the Hill

Following his success with Beavis & Butt-head, Judge teamed up with Greg Daniels, who had written for The Simpsons, to create King of the Hill for FOX. The series debuted 12 January 1997, following the televised broadcast of Super Bowl XXXI. King of the Hill centered on the Hill family of Arlen, Texas—Hank, who sold propane and propane accessories; Peggy, a substitute school-teacher and champion Boggle player; Bobby, their middle-school-aged son; Luanne, the ditzy niece who lived with them; and their neighbors—Dale, Boomhauer, and Bill. Unlike The Simpsons, King of the Hill presented a family based in the reality of working-class suburbs, the world of Wal-Mart and pickup trucks with gun racks. While the show often explored some of the misfits of Texas storytelling tradition, on the whole it relied on Hank's sense of values and populist notions to create its understated humor.

South Park

It was called "Peanuts on acid," and it won a place on the New York Times and Newsday ten-best lists for 1997 television. Created by Randolph Trey Parker III and Matt Stone, South Park focused on the adventures and mis-adventures of four third-graders living in the fictional Rocky Mountain town of South Park. Parker caught the attention of FoxLab executive Brian Graden who commissioned Parker and Stone to create a video Christmas card to send his friends. The duo came up with a five-minute short, Spirit of Christmas, which featured Jesus and Santa Claus battling over who would own the holiday, while the South Park gang looked on. The short was a success, and the series was born. South Park debuted on Comedy Central on 13 August 1997 and became the highest rated original series in Comedy Central history. It won a Cable ACE award for Best Animated Series.

Futurama

Groening followed his success with The Simpsons by launching another prime-time cartoon on FOX—Futurama, which debuted 3 March 1999. This show was set in New York City a thousand years in the future. Fry, the show's protagonist, was a twenty-five-year-old pizza-delivery boy who made a delivery to a cryogenics lab and accidentally froze himself on 31 December 1999, When he woke up, it was the year 3000 and he had a chance to make a new start. So he went to work for the Planet Express Corporation, a delivery service that transported packages to all five quadrants of the universe. His spaceship companions included the captain, Leela, a beautiful one-eyed alien, and Bender, a robot with very human flaws and emotions.

Family Guy.

Twenty-five-year-old Seth MacFarlane created a short animation entitled "The Life of Larry" while he was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. That effort brought his talent to the attention of FOX executives, who gave him the opportunity to create an animated prime-time series. MacFarlane came up with Family Guy, which presented the everyday trials and tribulations of family life with its own special spin. The show premiered 6 April 1999, with Peter Griffin, the protagonist, accidentally destroying the satellite dish that provided television service to his town and then pinning the catastrophe on his teenage daughter. The show then focused on his attempts to live without his beloved tube. A subplot featured Stewie, Peter's evil genius toddler son, who had been forced to eat broccoli, creating a weather machine to destroy broccoli while it was still on the farm.

Daria

A spinoff of Beavis & Butt-head, Daria was MTV's clever and consistently sarcastic portrayal of teenage life. Daria Morgendorffer was an above-average-intelligence adolescent who struggled to hold on to her individuality in the world of high school. Judge, who created Beavis & Butt-head, did not create Daria, however. Rather, she was developed by Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis, who worked on Beavis & Butt-head. After that show ended, Eichler and Lewis pitched the idea for Daria to MTV Animation, and Daria got her own show, which premiered 3 March 1997.

The PJ's

Diversity in prime-time cartoons was represented by The PJs, a show about a grumpy African American building supervisor, Thurgood Stubbs, his family, and neighbors in the Hilton-Jacobs Projects. The brainchild of comedian Eddie Murphy, who envisioned a show loosely based on puppetry set in an urban environment, the concept was pitched to FOX executives in 1998. The PJs, produced by Will Vinton Studios using a "foamation" technique and with Murphy providing the voice of Stubbs, debuted in January 1999.

Sources:

Comedy Centra), Internet website.

FOX Network, Internet website

MTV, Internet website.