So, as my siblings and I hadn't watched any of the episodes in years, we grabbed a few episodes truly at random, based almost entirely on the titles. It's the Animaniacs, what could go wrong?
Well...
We found an episode titled "One flew over the Cuckoo Clock" which we couldn't resist for the obvious tie-in to the famous film "One flew over the Cuckoo's nest", and were doubly excited as it was a Slappy Squirrel bit. Some characters in the Animaniacs were, simply put, better than others, and Slappy was more classic cartoon violence and Deadpool-esque wall breaking than whatever the hell the Hippos or Pigeons were trying to do. But, onto my point:
This episode isn't just sad, it is outright depressing. The room fell silent. It was like getting hit with a hammer- I felt genuinely bad for the cartoon characters on screen. Wow.
For those interested, there's a fan wiki here about the episode HERE, and you can watch the whole episode in outstanding YouTube PirateVision HERE.
The episode is basically Slappy Squirrel, the funny, typical cartoon character getting some sort of dementia or madness, and though it's played for laughs throughout the episode, they also play it disturbingly straight. Skippy, her school-age nephew suffers as a caregiver for Slappy in the beginning. Then Skippy is doomed to live alone once Slappy is sent away to a retirement home, before finally being taken away by social services. A little while later, they have Skippy making a tearful wish on a star for Slappy to get better. There's no laugh track. There's no slapstick. It's a child watching their life collapse when their guardian becomes too ill to care for them, and even in bright cartoon form, it puts a pit in your stomach.
Now, of course, the episode ends with Slappy getting it back together and everything going back to normal, but... holy hell, who was this for? I mean, it's thoughtful commentary I suppose, but for a show that is best known for mixing adult humor and educational facts in among colorful slapstick and repetitive songs, this seems a departure from the norm, and I'm not sure why exactly.
So, if you want your cartoons to hit you right in the feels from an angle you probably didn't expect, find Animaniacs Episode 83, and buckle up.
