The Greatest Television Ever: A Millennial History of Cartoons

As a child of the late 80's and the early 90's, cartoons have played a pretty pivotal role in my life. Everyone watches, and for the most part, loves at least one cartoon. They're impossible not to like and there is something for everyone. I'm not alone in this, I love cartoons, be they old or new. When I was growing up, I didn't watch too much TV. It's not that my parents forbade us from watching TV, it just wasn't really a viable option. They would send us outside when the weather was nice to play with friends and to play sports, and when it was cold outside, they always had some kind of activity for us to do, be it art, inside play, or when they would get crafty, we'd play "games" that involved cleaning the house. But, I did have friends that were allowed a lot of TV time, and when my folks would let us watch TV, I found plenty of cartoons that I thoroughly enjoyed. I was a big time Nickelodeon fan as a young child. I watched stuff like "Doug", "Rugrats", "Animaniacs" and "Pinky and the Brain". Those were my shows. They were wild and zany and goofy and just plain fun to watch. That was the type of cartoon I went for as a young child. The goofier, the better.

I know, I haven't brought up the "Simpsons" yet, but I feel like that would be unfair to the other cartoons and animated shows I watch. I've written plenty about the "Simpsons", and will write more, and I've talked about it on the podcast almost regularly. It's not only my favorite animated/cartoon show, it's my favorite show. There will be more "Simpsons" talk at later dates, I promise.

During my teen years I looked for more "grown up" cartoons. I was growing weary of the zany and the goofy things that I watched as a young child. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed these shows, especially "Rugrats", but I needed some older, more grown up humor. I was a teenager and the kids shows weren't doing it for me anymore. Then, when I was either 13 or 14, I was over at a friends house watching MTV and one of the greatest animated shows I laid my eyes on appeared on his TV. That show was "Beavis and Butthead". This show was AMAZING. I absolutely loved everything about this show. Beavis and Butthead were the ultimate slackers and ultimate troublemakers. They hated school and they hated pretty much everyone that they came into contact with, unless they were old enough to drink. I'm not a drinker, but when I was a teen, people that were old enough to drink, no matter how douchey they were, were cool as hell to me. Also, what teen truly likes school? Me and my friends all despised school and "Beavis and Butthead" portrayed this perfectly. This show was also bizarre and kind of started to shape my love for absurdist humor. They would do weird things during the episodes, things like playing frog baseball or helping a burnout steal things or cause some kind of trouble at school and with their elderly neighbor, basically things that teens were told not to do, they did and they did it with supreme hilarity. What made Beavis and Butthead truly excellent, they would break two or three times in the middle of the episodes and they would critique music videos. Yes, MTV used to play music videos and yes, I'm old enough to remember when they still did. This was the best part because they would absolutely rip apart boring, slow music and crappy pop songs. But, when they played a hard rocking video, Beavis and Butthead loved it and would head bang and it was glorious. "Beavis and Butthead" was a great show and it was my first true entryway to more adult humor that animated shows could pull off. I'm forever indebted to "Beavis and Butthead" for starting to shape my comedy taste.

Watching a ton of "Beavis and Butthead" made me search for more adult themed cartoons. I found things like "The Critic" and "The Tick", but Cartoon Network started showing cartoons late at night on a platform they called Adult Swim. This was a life changer for me. I discovered shows like "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" and "Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law" and "Tom Goes to the Mayor". These shows were weird and absurd and like nothing I'd ever seen before and it was magnificent. They were so weird and so funny. I was immediately hooked on pretty much everything Adult Swim put on TV. Then, one night I stumbled across what may be my second or third all time favorite cartoon. That glorious little show was called "Aqua Teen Hunger Force".

You want to talk about absurdist humor, "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" epitomized it. The premise of the very first episode was about three "things" that were detectives. The three "things" I speak of are a life size shake called Master Shake, a hovering humongous carton of fries that was called Frylock and a childish, goopy meatball they called Meatwad. This show was so perfect for my newfound taste of comedy. The cherry on top of this great show was their neighbor, a balding, yet super hairy on the shoulders and back, gold chain wearing, always angry Carl. Carl was always mad at the Aqua Teen Hunger Force and he always loudly let it be known. Carl is one of the greatest TV characters of all time. Like I said, they were supposed to be detectives, and in the premiere, they did solve a case, but from there on out, they just had wacky adventure after wacky adventure. The show never really followed a true story line. It was basically a platform to do whatever weird and wild thing the writers of this brilliant show wanted to do. The episodes never made sense, but they were always funny. Another great thing about this show, and many others on Adult Swim, it was a short 11 minute show. They'd get in and get out and pack as many jokes as they could in 11 short minutes. "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" would always start off kind of slow for about the first 5 or 6 minutes, but that last 5 minutes was absolute gold. They always had their best jokes in that last 5 minutes and it always delivered. The thing that made this last minutes so great, Carl was usually involved in some capacity. He was always there with his anger and he would always take it out on the Aqua Teen, mainly Master Shake.

"Aqua Teen Hunger Force" is one of the greatest animated/cartoon shows to ever appear on TV. This, much like "Beavis and Butthead", one hundred percent shaped my love for comedy TV and comedy cartoons. I love the bizarre and the absurd, and "Aqua Teen" did this to perfection. If you haven't seen an episode of "Aqua Teen", do yourself a favor and binge the entire series. There's a ton of episodes, but they are only 11 minutes long, as I said before, and they are great. If you enjoy absurdist humor, you will love "Aqua Teen". It was such a great and bizarre show and they pulled it off excellently. I will forever love and thank "Aqua Teen" for showing me how far you can really take animated comedy cartoons. It's a masterpiece.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man podcast. Do you like reading about Ty's love of cartoons, well tomorrow you can hear him tell the tales on the X Millennial Man podcast. If you want more great Ty thoughts, follow him on twitter @tykulik.