PixlBit

My favorite is Kill of the Hill.  It's great because I can relate to the stories and they're not too far out there in ridiculousness.  The other shows can be a too bit vulgar.  I don't watch it on Adult Swim, because the commercials for other shows are too bad to watch with my kids.  I use to watch it a lot when it was on NetFlix.  My whole family loves it.  I should just start getting the dvds.

Yeah that's what seperates King of the HIll from other cartoons is that it is very grounded and realistic.  Way more intelligent than Mike Judge's other cartoon: Beavis and Butthead. 

You know what' s cool is that the fictional town they live in the show King of the Hill, Arlen, is a cross between two towns that Mike Judge grew up in: Allen and Garland, TX.  And both towns are very close to where I live!

Yeah Adult Swim is pretty vulgar.  I wouldn't let kids watch it.  It would be cool to have the King of the Hill series on DVD.

I think Beavis and Butthead is intelligent at times. Most of it is just the two of them talking about trying to score I'll admit, but at least half the episodes are about how people and laws/societal norms can be so backwards that these two are allowed to exist and ruin both their own lives and everyone else's.

Sometimes Beavis and Butthead can be intelligent.  But you have to wade through a bunch of brain cell-killing shennanigans to get to the nuggets of truth.  I do have to admit that the Cornholio episodes always made me laugh.

Yep, Christmas specials were the best as a kid.  Peanuts, Rudolph, and Garfield were my favorites too.  Disney Channel had lots of good holiday movies too.  Mickey's Christmas Carol was the best!

Mickey's Christmas Carol was great, but it doesn't hold a candle to A Muppet Christmas Carol.  That's one of my favorite movies of all time!

I always loved the annual holidays specials, the Charlie Brown ones were some of my favorites, as well as Rudolph and Santa Claus is Coming to Town. I can't watch them on Network TV anymore, though, because when I moved overseas and lived in a country that didn't have ads on TV, I discovered how much they had cut out of the original shows to make more room for advertising. I'm working on getting my favorites on DVD. I already have Rudolph.

I have all my favorite Christmas shows on DVD except for Charlie Brown.  I don't think TV is as bad as they used to be about cutting out content for ads.  I'm pretty sure that last night's showing of Charlie Brown Christmas on ABC was shown in its entirety.  Except for the parts where they ate Dolly Madison snack cakes. :)

But I do know what you mean about network TV cutting out the show for ads.  One time I was watching an episode of Futurama that I already had on DVD, and I could tell that they cut out TONS of snippets to make the show shorter!

Saturday morning cartoons and shows were the best back in the day when the Jetsons, highschool Rock, pink panther, Land of the Lost the Flintstones were awesome im not into todays prime time cartoon there very adult and I dont allow my kids to watch Family Guy the Simpsons etc but the Christmas specials like Charlie Brown, Rudolph the Red nose Reindeer,  frosty etc I make sure we all watch as a family I remember watching it as a kid and I want my little ones to do the same.

Yeah you really can't let kids watch prime time TV anymore.  Even the sitcoms are vulgar.

Yeah I've seen that already.  People had a way different idea about smoking back then than they do now.

I kinda figured. I couldn't come up with anything at work this morning, but wanted to comment somehow. 

Usually any time someone brings up anything "old school" it doesn't surprise me and I think "meh, I could live in that time," but when you mentioned VHS not being a thing back then and having to wait a year for NBC specials, that actually made me go "holy crap, that's right!" Now I still think I'd be ok living in those circumstances, but that's one of the first "old school" things I've seen that is genuinely hard for me to imagine. I've known how big a deal VHS was when it came out for a while, what with my radio/TV classes and general media knowledge, but it's one of those things I take for granted until someone reminds me how screwed you were before that time if you missed a show. And I also now remember that being one of the first things to freak advertisers out. I'm actually impressed the advertising industry is still as strong as it is with DVRs, Netflix and Adblock. To some extent I'm glad it is, because I like having access to TV for free (love Sunday football for instance). 

I've seen some recent Simpsons that are not as bad as everyone makes them out to be. Having said that, I'm not sure how they're still on the air, cause I don't think their ratings are that good ... Speaking of their Halloween specials, I liked the newest one and understood all the Kubrick references, but referential humor just doesn't do it for me any more so it fell a bit flat in that segment. 

I prefer Family Guy and South Park to Futurama, so we differ there. The main Futurama episode I recall is the one with the woman-dominated planet. King of the Hill never seemed representative of where I live in Texas, but when I went to Garland to sell door-to-door, I thought "holy crap, that show nailed this area!" Pretty sure I met a variation of Cohn in fact! lol By the way, my friend Wes has claimed his dad was the inspiration for the hippie teacher from Beavis and Butthead who I think shows up in a couple King of the Hill episodes. 

I used to love Dexter's Lab and like the Powerpuff Girls ok as well. Watched both recently on Netflix, seem to hold up. Watched a couple Samurai Jack episodes there as well (never saw those as a kid), but I wasn't digging the more serious tone. Never heard of Foster's Home. 

Disney XD had a Tron cartoon I thought looked cool. Nostalgia Critic and his brother are currently doing reviews of Gravity Falls episodes. 

Oh, Nickelodeon put Legend of Korra back on the air for its final few episodes (it's still streaming online as well), but I think it's on Nick Toons or something. Their oddball handling of that amazing show aside, Nick did provide me some cool orange VHS tapes (we didn't have cable, though next door neighbors did) of Rugrats and Aahhh! Real Monsters! in my childhood. Never really watched Keenan and Kel, but had a book inspired by the show. Weird. Know I read it but have completely forgotten it.

P.S. I think while all these shows aired in prime time, I only remember watching them in mid-afternoon on VHS or as re-runs unless we're talking about the adult cartoons like Simpsons etc. 

Only family cartoons I ever watched in prime time were the holiday specials. 

If you saw where I live in Texas, you'd think it looks like King of the Hill-Land, too.

You'd be surprised. The Simpsons still has good ratings and is still far and away one of the most profitable TV shows in existence. That's why it still gets renewed despite the voice actors being some of the highest-paid talent on TV.

I guess they've just consistently fallen from a much higher place then. I saw the creators on a roundtable with Conan discussing how it was a "lost leader" in prime time, and then there's this article: http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/04/28/the-simpsons-ratings-low/

but 3.4 million viewers isn't half bad for "lowest rated episode ever," so you got me there ... assuming those Nielsen numbers are correct after that system error fiasco.

One important thing to remember is that in 1989, TV was a triopoly of CBS, ABC, and NBC. Other than one or two Super Bowls, the highest-rated TV broadcast in American history was the 1983 series finale of M*A*S*H (106 million viewers).  No American TV show, save for a hotly-contested Super Bowl, will ever come close to that kind of viewership ever again, and that's because we now have hundreds of cable channels, not to mention Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu. So these days, 3.4 million is considered a pretty decent number, and it's better than a lot of shows on NBC, ABC, and CBS that are still getting renewed. And the Simpsons marathon on FXX kicked that network up to #3 from #49 in the ratings the week it aired.

While I do think the voice actors are very talented, I think they can be a bit too big for their britches sometimes.

Prime time? Boy, I haven't watched anything in "prime time" since I was in High School. I can't think of any animated shows I watched in that time slot either.

So what do you do instead?

Prime time for me is usually work time and on "weekends" (Sun-Mon) I'm gaming, so that leaves no time for TV in that slot. I occasionally run into parts of Big Bang Theory that other people are watching though. That's about it.

I actually really don't watch a lot of prime time TV anymore either.  I can't stand that Big Bang Theory show.  My friend and I call it the 'Smart Show.'  I just don't really like sitcoms all that much.

I mostly watch YouTube now or anime. I might catch adult swim here or there but other then that I don't watch much tv. Stuff gets canceled to easily now a days over here. However Danger Mouse is being revived thru the BBC so I'm gonna try to find a way to watch it next year. My dad grew me up with Danger Mouse. I still love it to this day.

When you say they're reviving Danger Mouse, are they showing old episodes or making new ones?  I used to watch Danger Mouse all the time on Nickelodeon.   Other British cartoons I watched on Nick as a kid were Bananaman and Count Duckula.  Did you ever watch those?  And feel free to pick out a Guilty Gear character you think I would like, too.  I'm lazy. :)

It should be all new episodes! Im quite excited!

I got to see a lil bit of both of those but their fuzzy in memory since I havent watched them in years. I have continued to watch Danger mouse while a bunch of my old cartoons not so much.

Ill pick you out another Guilty Gear character,lol Let me go thru the ones that are gonna be in the new game and Ill get back to ya!

Pick out a good one!

The Simpsons is my favorite too, my favorite show ever. Avatar: The Last Airbender, South Park, Rick and Morty, Futurama, and Invader Zim come to mind also when thinking of my favorites.

I've never heard of Rick and Morty.

I love the Simpsons.  I don't care if it's not good anymore, it's still the best.  

Good blog, Cary.  Just mentioning those Charlie Brown cartoons makes me feel good.  

Remember when Charlie Brown and Snoopy were super popular in the 70's and 80's?  Did you know there will be a Peanuts movie next year?

I did hear about the new Peanuts movie.  I used to read books of peanuts cartoons when I was a kid, and I can still remember some of them.  

I think I liked the Peanuts cartoons more than the comic strip.  The movie looks neat.  Even though it's computer animated, they still gave it that flat, limited animation style.

Man. I miss the prime time shows of Cartoon Network from the 90's.  Heck, I still remember back when CN was a brand new channel in 1992 and it was in the newpaper that day sitting on the table.  We didn't have cable at that time, but years later I would spend some summer weekends at a friend's house and we'd stay up watching all greats like Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls, and Space Ghost Coast to Coast.  Hey, do you rember this late night show called O Canada (aired around 12:30am)?  It was a little wierd, but cool to see back then because the humor was a little more adult, but not vulgar. And remember the Cartoon, Cartoon blocks of programming?  Man...I miss the old Cartoon Network.

I really enjoyed the older Simpsons episodes.  Funny fact-- mom and dad didn't let us watch the Simpsons back in the 90's because of Bart's smart mouth and disrespect to his parents. But I remember this one time in the mid 90's we watched a couple of episodes after another program had gone off just to see what my mom would do.  She actually laughed at some of the jokes on the show (plus, Bart wasn't being too bad, interesingly enough).

But yeah, we used to have to sneek and watch the simpsons once they went into syndication on Fox during the weekdays, but man...I loved that show.  I haven't really watched it in recent years, and I don't expect much from it anymore.  It feels like the Simpson has to "try" to stay relevant and "hip", but I think they're trying too hard.  I did catch the Simpsons/Family Guy crossover they did about a month ago, and it just felt like they forced the Simpsons to stoop to Family Guy's level of low brow shock humor.

And speaking of Family Guy, I did like the early stuff. The first 3 seasons where fairly tame compared to what it's turned into now. I mean yes, the show has always been built around somewhat crass humor and Peter's stupidity, but I loved the movie and popculture references that were pretty well executed throughout the early life of the show.  And yeah, the show always tried to push the envelope with mentioning poetntially unconfortable subjects, but at least the earler seasons it was tastefully done and Seth McFarlane didn't take it too far.

But nowadays, I just can't watch Family Guy anymore, especially not with my wife (she hates the newer episodes as well). The show tried it's very best to be vulgar, crassier than crass, and blank out swearing (something I find to be pointless if your show primarily airs on a TV station that doesn't allow for swearing anyway).

However, I must say I do enjoy watching Bob's Burgers on Fox.  It's a prime time show with adult enough humor where it's funny, but not offensive to my tastse.  Plus it still manages to be PG show (mostly) and it's actually funny. I also like Regular Show, though I'm not as interested in it as I was when it first came out back in 2010.

Annnnnd finally, I went to see the latest Hunger Games movie on a date night with the wife last night (great movie BTW). As we came out of the theater, I noticed a movie poster for Paddington Bear. Paddington freaking Bear.  Man, Hollywood is digging deep these days.

Sorry for the long-winded comments!

Yeah I used to watch all that stuff on Cartoon Network like O Canada and Toon Heads.  We didn't get Cartoon Network until I was already in college, so I missed a lot of the early stuff.

A couple of things I've noticed about The Simpsons.  Even though Bart is an awful kid, I've noticed that nearly every time he does something wrong, he DOES get punished for it.  And The Simpsons is a surprisingly religous family.  They all go to church, and most other sitcom families don't do that.

I just can't stand Family Guy.  I saw the crossover a while back and it was just awful.  Shows like Family Guy and South Park just cross the line for me.  I don't like Bob's Burgers, but the main character always makes me think of the coach from Home Movies (same voice actor).

I'm mildly interested in the Paddington Bear movie because I have an interest in children's books, and I used to watch the stop motion Paddington shorts as a kid.  But I'll just wait until the movie comes on Netflix.  Going to see that in the theater as an adult without a kid would be weird.

And don't apologize for the long comments!  I really appreciate everyone's comments and feedback.  --Cary

The Simpsons will probably always be my favorite TV show of all time. I remember the first Butterfinger commercials and couldn't believe it when they announced the show. I didn't have cable back in the 1980s so I missed the Simpsons shorts on Tracey Ullman that were the genesis of the show. I think the big downfall of the Simpsons is that it got so popular that everyone and their brother wants to guest star on it (quite a change from the early seasons when Dustin Hoffman and Michael Jackson guest-starred under fake names!) and it's gotten hopelessly away from the Simpsons as the working-class Everyfamily that Groening envisioned when the show first launched. It's kind of hard to depict them as Everyfamily when they're on a first-name basis with almost every celebrity in Hollywood. But then I doubt that they expected it would go on to be the most successful TV show in history, and so I think that was out of the control of Groening and company. Regardless, most of the episodes are still funny.

Futurama is right after The Simpsons on my list, and in some ways, it's remained fresher and edgier than its parent show. The Simpsons is up-and-down at times (still has plenty of brilliance), but Futurama is more consistently out there. Katey Sagal (the voice of Leela, who played Peggy in Married With Children and now plays Gemma on Sons of Anarchy) is my favorite TV actress, and it's mind-blowing that she's pretty much been on TV nonstop for over 30 years now. That's quite an impressive career!

After that is King of the Hill, which also remained consistently good for the most part over its 13-odd-year run. It kind of got screwed by getting preempted by the NFL a lot. It's too bad they didn't give it a better time slot instead of letting Seth McFarlane take over Sunday nights by cloning Family Guy over and over again.

The Flintstones were actually a pretty brilliant sendup of 1960s suburban life and popular TV shows of its time, with the Flintstones and the Rubbles basically being cartoon expies of the Cramdens and the Nortons from "The Honeymooners". I'd argue that the Flintstones actually went on to completely eclipse its original inspiration. It was pretty edgy in the 1960s to see Wilma pregnant with Pebbles (on most live-action sitcoms of the time, the parents slept in separate beds and parenthood was depicted as a very sterile process).

The Jetsons also started off as a prime-time spinoff of The Flintstones in the 1960s before they were revived in the 1980s as a kids' show. They were a Raygun Gothic (similar to the aesthetic shown in the Fallout games) look at the future and actually look more dated than the Flintstones, which has stood the test of time nicely.

I also like the Garfield specials, and Garfield and Friends on Saturday morning was doing Simpsons-style humor before the Simpsons got their own TV show.

I don't watch South Park faithfully, but I do watch it sometimes. It's kind of dumb at times, but I think it's cool that the way Trey and Matt produce the series that they can come out with episodes that make fun of whatever is going on in the news at the time they air.

And that brings me to Family Guy. Jamie nailed it. I liked the early seasons, which were kind of like dumbed-down Simpsons episodes. Since the show got brought back it's just not really funny except for a few episodes like the one with Rush Limbaugh on it. It's pretty much nothing but mean-spirited snideness anymore, and the humor is nonexistent. Even Quagmire has turned into a grating insufferable ass. But somehow, it got popular enough that Fox let Seth McFarlane make two other animated shows that are more or less straight-up clones of Family Guy: dumbass dad, neurotic mom, dumb kid, supergenius kid, and the talking animal best friend. After Family Guy got cancelled and then brought back, they went from aping The Simpsons to aping South Park, but they're no better at that than they were at aping The Simpsons. But I digress...

Instead of posting your own blogs, you can just post comments on mine!  :)  Nah, I'm just joking with you.  I really appreciate your feedback and comments.  Great stuff!

Have you ever watched Top Cat?  I always thought that show was sophisticated, too.

Yeah Garfield and Friends was doing humor you wouldn't see until Animaniacs came out years later.  But I already talked about how much I liked that show.

I guess I grew up with The Flintstones and Jetsons and much later on The Simpsons, South Park in the early seasons and a bit of Family Guy. The last two I stopped watching when the shows stopped making me laugh and started making me not want to finish watching an episode.

The Flintstones I can still watch the old episodes today and also The Jetsons but to a lesser extent.

I loved The Jetsons as a kid, but now I can't stand it.  I think Top Cat was really sophisticated, though.

I forgot about Top Cat. I used to watch that show a lot too.

It was on prime time, too, but it actually got more popular when it was shown in syndication.

Odly enough, I think Cartonn Network is on public television here on Colombia...

Anyway, my favorite of all is The Simpsons by a large margin. They may have ran out of ideas, but the golden age of the 90s and any odd brilliant moment of the newer seasons still make this as my favorite of all. It even better when you revisit the episodes as you get older and discover any joke you missed or apreciate more.

Other of the "adult" variety, would be Futurama and South Park. Both of these have managed to be consistenly good than The Simpsons. I also used to like Family Guy, but like others here, that one jumped the shark (though I heard that American Dad is much more like early Family Guy and better received).

On Cartoon Network, I pretty much grew up with those you mentioned, and also others like Ed, Edd and Eddy, Courage, KND, Teen Titans (I know Cary, but I LOVED THAT SHOW) and many others I can't seem to remember. However, Samurai Jack I didn't "get" that much as a kid, but I think I would like it more if I repeat it now.

Nick I also had those of the 90s, including the golden age of Sponge Bob (pre-movie mind you), Hey Arnold, Rugrats, CatDog, etc, and of course, Avatar which is my second favorite show only behind The Simpsons.

On the Disney side of things, i'd include Kim Possible, Jake Long, Phineas and Ferb and some I can't remember that well. Oh well, those are the more iconic.

As for modern toons, i've been very distracted to follow most of them, but I love Adventure Time, Regular Show, The Legend of Korra and Gravity Falls. I would also like to start Steven's Universe and Over the Garden Wall one of these days.

I will say that American Dad seems to rely more on storytelling and writing rather than Family Guy's random pop culture references, but I still don't like either show.

On Cartoon Network, I did have respect for Ed, Edd, & Eddy, Courage, and KND, but I still didn't like them as much.  But no matter what, i can't stand Teen Titans.  Not even the new one.

My brother Jeff watched a lot of those Nick shows you mentioned, so I'm familiar with them.  Hey Arnold has a longer history than what you might think, and is related to The Simpsons.  I'm not a big fan of SpongeBob, but there are a couple of episodes I like (such as the one where they sell candy bars).

Kim Possible and Phineas and Ferb are good shows on Disney, I'll admit.  I just didn't get into them as much.  But i do have respect for them.

Steven Universe is just another variation of Adventure Time, really.

Thanks for reading and commenting!  --Cary

Okay, we'll have to agree to disagree on Teen Titans. However, yeah, i've already seen some of Teen Titant Go (the newer one) and it is awful. Not even fans of Teen Titans or those who grew up with it like that show.

Well, somebody must like Teen Titans Go, because it originally started out as shorts during Cartoon Network's DC Comics block of cartoons.  And now there is a cartoon series on it.

Aardman Animation, makers of Wallace & Gromit, made some clay animated shorts during this segment starring kid versions of popular DC heroes.  I wish that would've gotten its own show instead.  Look them up, they're hilarious.

Point taken, as i've seen kids liking the show.

Yeah kids don't know any better. :)

I'm surprised by the lack of Gravity Falls merch as well. At least some kind of code de-coder thing styled after one of the journals, or something.

A guide that reveals all the hidden secrets in each episode would be a neat idea.

I remember awhile back when CBS tried a short lived Cartoon block during wednesday evenings. I was so excited at first when I heard about it but when I actually watched it, it was just what you'd expect on Saturday monrings. Turneds out it was just CBS's test to see if they could move Saturday morning cartoons to Wednesday night so they could free up Saturday monrings for more "adult content" like news and sports!

Sacraligious! Blastphemors!

You can guess how long that lasted!

Wednesday nights?  I don't even remember that!