Thursday, November 5, 2009

Rugrats


As we all know, talking babies are unwaveringly adorable. No matter what they're saying or doing, it's pretty much inevitable that it's going to be heart-string tuggingly cute . If you can throw in some subtle humor for the parents then all the better, but we're pretty much good to go on talking babies alone.

Nickelodeon's Rugrats took the simple question "What do babies do and think when parents aren't around?" and turned it into a cleverly crafted series of humorous episodes. It was heavy on imagination and light on realism, opening for kids a world of make-believe fun. With talking babies. Did I mention the talking babies?

The show premiered in 1991 as part of the Nicktoons cartoon programming block. The premise hinged on the notion that the babies could understand one another whereas the adults could not, which in itself is a pretty attractive notion to child viewers. It was essentially the underpinning of 80s and 90s Nickelodeon programming: kids have their own world that adults can't even begin to understand.This theme gave us both an inflated sense of importance and a satisying denigration of adults, making us feel for once as if we were the ones running the show and the adults were simply there to drive us around.

Rugrats from Matt on Vimeo.



Adults were fans of the show, as well, as it featured a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor that undoubtedly went over the heads of juvenile viewers. While the later reworked version of the show relied more on toilet humor and other similarly juvenile gags, the original used cultural references and irony to poke fun at phenomena in the adult world. We laughed at the adults, adults laughed at themselves, and everyone was happy.

As in many children's shows the young characters were largely two dimensional, owing to the fact that children's black and white view of the world left little room for subtelty and character development. While the stereotypes may have gotten a little out of control in later seasons, they were believable enough during the show's golden years. Sure, all of the characters had a "type", but they were good foils for
one another and gave us a spectrum of infant temperaments at which to laugh:



Tommy Pickles, our fearless leader. Tommy was the unofficial chief of the tribe of playpen-dwelling infants, leading his baby pals on all sorts of Muppet Baby-style imaginary adventures. Resplendent in a blue t shirt and diaper ensemble, Tommy looked the picture of baby naivete.




Chuckie Finster, our resident coward. Chuckie has it rough enough with the red hair and square glasses, you'd think they could have gone easy on him personality wise but apparently his loserishness is a package deal. For God's sake, his dad dresses him in a shirt picturing the planet Saturn. You don't get less hip than that. Chuckie's afraid of everything from the potty to The Guy on the Oatmeal Box. To his credit, though, that Quaker guy is a little off.




Phil and Lil Deville, our cutesily rhyming named set of boy/girl twins. Their parents dress them in matching clothes and their personalities verge on deja vu. Lil's got a bow for differentiation purposes, but other than that, they're pretty much the same person.




Angelica Pickles, Tommy's spoiled brat of a first cousin. It's probably wrong to admit that Angelica was my favorite as a child, as she was completely insufferable with a personality akin to nails on a chalkboard. I'm not going to put all of the blame on her, though. Her wealthy parents were less than attentive and even lighter on the discipline front. I'm not going to say I didn't learn a thing or two the remarkably consistent results she got from putting on the waterworks, though.




Susie Carmichael, adorable neighbor. She mainly served to show how awful Angelica was by contrast. She made me want to have a cat named Chowder, too. I mean, seriously. Chowder! How cute is that?


The parents, on the other hand, were a bit better developed as characters. Looking back, they were far more neglectful than I'd initially perceived them to be. Back then it was like, sure, they abandon their children unsupervised for hours at a time, whatever. Now that I'm older and actually know people who have children, it's a tad less believable that any right-minded parent would accidentally leave their children in a cavernous toy store overnight or not notice their 1-year old toting a screwdriver in his diaper. Well, I guess that's why it's just a cartoon.




Stu and Didi Pickles, Tommy's parents, were a well-meaning pair of absentminded grownups. Stu was an idealistic toy inventor, Didi a teacher. Let me just say that Didi should win some sort of best cartoon hair award for that trisected red nest erupting from all sides of her head. That thing is truly awesome.





Betty and Howie Deville, Phil and Lil's parents. Betty was a strong feminist and Howie was well, nothing.




Chas Finster, Chuckie's dad, equally nebbishy to Chuckie. Let's move on.





Drew and Charlotte Pickles, Angelica's yuppie parents. Charlotte had a cell phone permanently glued to her ear before it was the norm, and Drew was basically the anti-Stu. Charlotte is just like Lindsey Nagle from The Simpsons which is convenient because they're both voiced by Tress MacNeille.




Randy and Lucy Carmichael, Susie's parents. She makes jello molds of the Eiffel Tower, he writes for the Dummi Bears. Not too shabby.




Grandpa Lou, Stu and Dru's dad and resident of Didi and Stu's house for the first few seasons. See how all the Pickles' men have rhyming names, too? Is there no end to their cleverness?




And of course, my favorites, Boris and Minka, Didi's parents. For those of us members of the tribe, we didn't find ourselves especially well represented on TV. Okay, behind the scenes, sure, but I'm talking kid's holiday specials. That's what mattered to me as a kid; I didn't care who produced it.

My love affair with these Old Country standbys began when Boris and Minka came to tell the story of Passover and ran well through their Chanukah special. Let's just say it blew Lambchop's Chanukah out of the water.


Like most long-running shows, Rugrats ran out of steam after awhile, running on empty as it shamelessly introduced new characters, released feature films, and then essentially abandoned the premise altogether by aging the kids ten years. As we all know the main draw of Rugrats was that we were dealing with naive babies, so turning them into surly teenagers was probably not a wise move.

We wanted to see these kids eating dog food, participating in beauty contests, staging mini-Westerns at the teeter-totter, or fearing the bathtub drain. We didn't care if they failed algebra or thought that guy from the malt shop was cute. Thus, we can remember them as they were, before the cheap ratings ploys and desperate last-ditch salvage attempts. Back when Reptar reigned the land and Angelica belted out "My Country Tis of Thee" and babies could freely roam about the dangerous adult-free terrain as they pleased.

27 comments:

Lois Christensen said...

Rugrats was on in our house daily, multiple times. My children loved this show. Thanks for the memories.

Badass Geek said...

I didn't really care for the show, but I didn't really mind it, either. I just liked the music, which was written by one of the guys from Devo.

Lauren said...

Not ashamed to admit I thoroughly loved this show growing up!! :)

courtney said...

Rugrats is probably my favorite cartoon of all time...ok it might be tied with Muppet Babies.

courtney said...

PS I had forgotten about Boris and Minka. I remember them making borsht (sp?) once.

Anonymous said...

Love the Rugrats! I had Tommy and Chucky dolls growing up, haha. The theme song still brings back good memories!

Melanie's Randomness said...

Ohhh Love Rugrats. <3. When i saw the title of your post, (your one of the posts I look for every morning), the theme song started playing in my head. I didn't like the Rugrats: Grown Up show that they tried to do. Nothing can beat the original Rugrats. <3

Unknown said...

LOVE RUGRATS!
Me & my brothers grew up with this program, was rather chuff to find that my BT Vision box had rugrats on it.. My son can now enjoy the wonders of those little rugrats! :D

Anonymous said...

One of the best cartoons EVER!! I love this show so much and couldnt what for Nickelodon Saturday nights to come on so I could watch it. Aww this was a great post- thank you! :)

xoxo
Amy

thebargainhunterextraordinaire.blogspot.com

Laila P said...

I LOVED the Rugrats. Tommy was my fave :)

Sadako said...

Hey, don't be dissing Saturn. That's where the sand worms live!

I loved this show. I did hate when they made new episodes and it grew into this huge franchise. I liked it small and kinda off beat, like Doug.

Haute World said...

Oh, I used to love them. I even had a special edition Chuckie figurine my then-boyfriend gave me... haha. And I had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Angelica. Great concept for a blog by the way!

Marci Darling said...

hahaha my mom thought thi sshow was vulgar and I wasn't allowed to watch it. I did anyway.

rsparks said...

I wasn't allowed to watch either because they kids were "disrespectful to their parents." I always snuck in an episode when I went to visit my cousins though.

ali said...

This was one of my favorite shows growing up. I used to have a Rugrats pillowcase and now I want to know what happened to it! I think I still have the watches somewhere.

Amber said...

Aww, me and my brother used to LOVE Rugrats :-)

Unknown said...

Ohmigod how I loved Rugrats and wished I had a friend as cool as Susie.

Melissa Blake said...

I loved that show! Still do. Is it bad I sort of liked Angelica?

Fear Street said...

I was in love with this show...*nostalgia*

Dana said...

Oh man, this is still one of my favorite cartoons - It's even better when you understand all the humor! Great post, though I'm a little disappointed you forgot to mention Spike...

Lisa said...

I was just thinking of Rugrats yesterday! I was at a used cd/dvd shop and they had tons of copies of the Rugrats movie. hahah. Memories.

Ashley Lauren said...

The eating dog food episode was the best. You didn't include Spike in your character summary! :)

I wish they showed Nick Toon reruns...

Opanga-Tay said...

Angelica was one of my favourites, in a "I love to hate her" kinda way. I really loved the show until they introduced Tommy's brother. I was too old for the show by that point anyway, but I personally think Rugrats lost its charm when the new brother rolled around.

Kim said...

I loved Rugrats! Loved it. And yet as much as I'd loved it, I'd completely forgotten about it. Apparently I needed to read this to remember the show and now I need to get my hands on some episodes of it so I can show it to my son!

Freck said...

Omg, I freakin loved Rugrats. Good call. My mom would get so pissed when I'd have this show on back in the day because she couldn't stand their voices. Ohh, I still love Chuckie, and little Tommy and his diaper..so cute!

LWLH said...

I loved the Rugrats...but they did try to pull the throw in the new kid card...i wasnt a big fan of dill!

Unknown said...

angelica pickles was one of my favorites too. right along with tommy, suzie, and phil and lil. chuckie is alright but he kinda scares me a little.

i loved the rugrats growing up but when kimi came into the picture after the movie i kinda outgrew them. i do love dil pickles though.

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