Even if we ignore the episodes that cover actual political or social issues (like LGBT issues), there are many episodes in cartoons made for kids that cover some serious stuff and thus come with a lesson. So we know that in cartoons, logic doesn’t apply like it does in reality. Examples include breathing outer space, flying penguins, and witches turning people into frogs. But realistic consequences are still present in these. A flying superhero isn’t realistically possible, but the superhero can go to jail for breaking the law to fight crime, which can happen to you in real life too.
And there are some cartoon episodes that really hit hard, especially if you consider the premise of the shows. Even a Dr. Seuss book (or TV special) can have some real horror that kids won’t experience until adulthood. Every cartoon has at least more than a few that hit hard, but I do want to sample five different episodes coming from five different shows, for that I find the most interesting. Today’s blog puts the spotlight on SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly OddParents, The Powerpuff Girls, Avatar, and Total Drama. These are the episodes of focus:
- Avatar: The Last Airbender – “The Puppetmaster”
- The Fairly OddParents – “The Big Problem”
- The Powerpuff Girls – “Bought and Scold”
- SpongeBob SquarePants – “Can You Spare a Dime?”
- Total Drama Island – “After the Dock of Shame”
While they may not be the most important episodes, you can put these episodes in a real life situation and see why they are a big deal.
The Puppetmaster:
The Book Three episode “The Puppetmaster” of the popular Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender is about an old waterbender named Hama. As Aang and his friends arrived at her place, Katara stayed with her for tutoring while Aang, Toph, and Sokka went to look for the person who saw the spirit. Aang discovered that Hama was responsible for the disappearance of the villagers. Katara finds this out too when she was about to learn a much darker waterbending technique – bloodbending.
Why this episode was heavy-handed:
The episode is heavy-handed because it shows how the “good guys” can be more evil than the “bad guys” if they did something more serious than what the bad guys do. In reality, actions are more evil than people. If you do a crime of a greater weight against a criminal, you will come off as worse as the criminal.
As the entire series shown, the Fire Nation has been aggressive in taking over the world. They wiped out the entire Air Nomads, kidnapped members of the Water Tribe, and destroyed the Earth Kingdom. As they imprisoned other benders, they also suppress them so they couldn’t use their bending techniques to escape. And Hama was one of the many waterbenders who got imprisoned by the Fire Nation. But even so, using the power of the moon to control the lives of others (bloodbending) is too extreme, as this is one technique many waterbenders will not use. Katara didn’t want to learn this technique for this reason. And the only reason why she did it was because she was forced to doing it. And that made her upset when Hama was about to be imprisoned for life.
It also shows that not everybody on the bad side are bad, and not everybody on the good side are good. Other Avatar episodes shown that not all of the villains are firebenders, and not all firebenders are bad. If anything, it’s not the Fire Nation itself that is evil. It’s the Fire Lords since Sozin ruled the Fire Nation, with Ozai being the worst. This is kinda like how people from enemy nations in reality aren’t the enemies, but rather the ones in control.
The show did a good job showing how there are good people on all sides, even the Fire Nation (the main antagonists). Even Zuko, an antagonist and firebender, became a good guy.
The Big Problem:
The Fairly OddParents may be about fairies that can grant wishes, but it comes with a premise: be careful what you wish for. Sometimes, the show has gotten more serious, but the way it has gotten serious was unrealistic and fantastic. Teachers as insane like Mr. Crocker and babysitters as evil as Vicky may be completely fictional, and some of the stuff Timmy wished for that began to bite him back doesn’t seem too realistic. However, there was one episode where it went serious that was realistic when portraying the consequences of wishing – “The Big Problem”.
Why this episode was heavy-handed:
The episode is heavy-handed because it goes over the harsh realities of adulthood and how children Timmy’s age aren’t ready to handle them. Timmy’s parents left him behind so they can watch an adult movie, so they sent Vicky, the evil babysitter to watch Timmy. Because he didn’t want to be with Vicky, he wished he was older. Now that he’s over 30, he had to deal with the responsibilities of being an adult, which he was not prepared for. And his fairies can’t grant him wishes because Da Rules states that they can only grant wishes to children.
One lesson is that there are no shortcuts in life. Timmy can’t become an adult and do adult stuff within an instant. He has to go through school and learn about life, and his parents have to watch him. The two that really hit hard were Vicky’s reaction to him and his attacks on Francis. For the first part, even though Timmy knew Vicky well and his house was his house, Vicky was crept out by him and called him a stranger. He even went to jail on his second encounter with her. As for the second part, even if he had the advantage against Francis to defend his friends Chester and AJ since he was an adult, any attacks done by an adult to someone under the age of 18 is considered assault, and doing that can get you sent to jail in real life. Even if you are defending yourself against a rowdy child, hitting the child is against the law.
Everything else he did that he had conflict with, he may have been old enough to do that, but one thing he hasn’t learned is responsibility. That’s why he had struggles. He couldn’t go out to eat without having the money for it, and without a job that pays, he won’t have any money. He couldn’t stand kissing as a kid, so he’s not mature enough to handle romantic relationships. That’s why kids are being educated. It’s so they can learn how to handle reality and understand the responsibilities of an adult.
It also shows Vicky’s fear of losing Timmy. She had the right to be concerned about Timmy going missing now that he’s an adult because a babysitter is supposed to be watching the child. If a child has gone missing under a babysitter, the babysitter will be in big trouble, and nobody would take the babysitter seriously anymore.
Bought and Scold:
Although only two episodes of The Powerpuff Girls went over actual controversial topics (feminism in “Equal Fights”, toxic masculinity in “Members Only”), there were many episodes that went over heavy-handed topics with a brutally honest lesson. Both “Stuck Up, Up, and Away” and “Major Competition” teach lessons about the responsibility of being a hero and what a true hero does, “Collect Her” has a lesson about what true fandom is, “Mojo Jonesin” had a lesson about making deals with a shady person, and “Twas the Fight Before Christmas” shows how extreme Princess Morbucks was willing to go into getting what she wants. But no episode has hit as hard as “Bought and Scold”.
Why this episode was heavy-handed:
The episode is heavy-handed because it goes over the actual consequences of passing such outlandish law. In the episode, Princess bribes the Mayor with a room of Turkish Delight so she could become the mayor of Townsville. What did she do? She legalized crime. She did this to spite the girls, which will give criminals liberty to do anything, while crime-fighters are suppressed with a threat of imprisonment.
This episode has hit hard for multiple reasons:
- First, the very idea of legalizing crime is a terrible idea. Crime being legal means anything that’s against the law will become legalized. This includes rape, murder, and even terrorism. Heck, you don’t even need to think about what legalizing crime could actually do if you watched the episode. Because in the episode, we saw the consequences of legalizing crime. Pokey Oaks Kindergarten was no longer safe for kids to go to. A police officer lost his uniform to thieves. And people stole everything from the Powerpuff Girls’ house and Professor Utonium’s lab. If you thought that was bad, imagine what it could do in reality.
- Second, it teaches the laws of realistic consequences and why it was bad for Princess Morbucks to legalize crime. As the mayor, she could do anything to spite the Powerpuff Girls, but legalizing crime would backfire upon her.
- Princess needs to realize that if crime is legal, that means anybody can be a criminal, and anybody can be a victim. The ordinance prohibited the Powerpuff Girls from fighting crime, but it didn’t prohibit them from becoming criminals. And since she had no exemption on who can’t become victims of crime, they took advantage of this by stealing everything Princess owned, including her father’s stuff.
- Princess also needs to realize that the law will only count against you while it’s in effect. If you did something that was against the law before the law came into effect, it won’t count against you. But, if you did something that was against the law while the law is in effect, it will count against you. That means, any crimes committed by the Powerpuff Girls wouldn’t have counted against them since they did it in a time when crime was legal, even after the ordinance was repealed. But if they commit any crimes after the ordinance’s repeal, then that is when they’ll get in trouble.
- When there is no law, there’s no obligation on who owns what property. But if you own something before a law against theft comes into effect, it’s legally yours as soon as the law is in effect. This means, any property in the Powerpuff Girls’ possession is legally theirs once the ordinance was repealed, and all of Princess’ stuff were in the Powerpuff Girls’ possession since they stole it from her during the ordinance. This also means that they were able to bargain using her stuff and her father’s stuff to get what they want, including getting the Mayor’s position back as the mayor of Townsville.
- Lastly, even though Princess was the mayor, she is still a child and thus bound to her parents’ rules. If anything happens to her father’s property because of her, she will get in trouble with her father. And everything her father owned was stolen by the Powerpuff Girls because of what she did.
- Third, the episode teaches a little about injustice. Legalizing crime is a threat to justice, which means the city of Townsville will no longer be fair to the Powerpuff Girls or anyone living in the town. As Bubbles says it, good is bad and bad is good when the ordinance is in effect. This is injustice at its finest.
The very idea of legalizing crime in a work of fiction is very serious, even in a movie made for adults. It was rather impressive that they put that in a children’s show. Well played, Craig McCracken! Well played!
Can You Spare a Dime:
Ah yes, how could I forget SpongeBob SquarePants, especially the pre-movie seasons. The show is colorful and cheerful, despite moments when it got creepy (like in “SB-129”) or scary (like in “Graveyard Shift”). And they had many lessons for children to learn. They even have a lesson against swearing. Sometimes though, the show does get rather serious, as it covers realistic consequences. But there was at least one episode that did that while the characters were not in character.
Why this episode was heavy-handed:
The episode is heavy handed because it shows how even a cheerful person like SpongeBob has their limits. To be truthful, none of the major characters were above it all. SpongeBob let Squidward take advantage of him to the point where he became a spoiled brat. Squidward was a bad guest who treated SpongeBob with disrespect and didn’t think before quitting. And Mr. Krabs has been an abusive boss, accusing Squidward of stealing his dime.
Out of all the animated show climaxes, the best one was the climax of this episode, where SpongeBob violently shook Mr. Krabs. The reason why this is the climax was because Mr. Krabs was the one who started this conflict. SpongeBob wouldn’t have given Squidward hospitality had Squidward not lost his home. Squidward wouldn’t have lost his home had he not quit his job. But the reason why he quit was because Mr. Krabs treated him with a lot of disrespect. He wouldn’t let his employees go until he’s finished counting his money. And when he couldn’t find his first dime, he accused Squidward of stealing his dime, and wouldn’t give him an option to deny theft. He’s basically trying to hold Squidward responsible for something he didn’t do (something that nobody even did).
Of course, this doesn’t end well for Squidward. Even though we feel bad for him, he could’ve been looking for another job before he quits. If you’re gonna quit working for someone, you need to plan ahead of time by looking for a job until you find one that you like. But he didn’t think of that because Mr. Krabs pushed him to his limits. With no job, he couldn’t get money, thus he couldn’t pay for his home, thus going homeless. Had he been hired by someone else, he wouldn’t lose his house after quitting his job. The other thing he should’ve taken in consideration is that for someone of his skill level, he doesn’t have a wide variety of jobs to choose from. Getting a job is difficult, especially if you were a college dropout, never had college at all, had no work experience, or have a useless college degree with a GPA less than 3.0. As much as he hates his job as a cashier, that’s probably the only job he could get.
And then we have SpongeBob. It was nice to let Squidward stay at his house when he has no home, but the reason why this didn’t end well for SpongeBob either is because Squidward has become completely dependent on him. He even acted like a spoiled brat (he wouldn’t have the lemonade because the lemon had an odd number of seeds, he wouldn’t have the soup because it came from a can, he wouldn’t read the job listings because he was allergic to newsprint, and the puppet show SpongeBob used wasn’t his show). And how long has he been doing this? It was so long that the show staff had to appoint a new actor to become the narrator. Yes, Squidward should’ve been looking for a job while staying with SpongeBob, but SpongeBob’s excessive kindness allowed him to take advantage of him, to the point that he went insane. So even though SpongeBob is the most innocent of the three main characters, he still did something wrong.
The reality of job seeking, dependency on welfare, and bad work conditions wasn’t the only thing that made this episode interesting. What else made this interesting was the role-reversal with SpongeBob and Squidward. In your typical SpongeBob episode, SpongeBob acts like a child and annoys Squidward, while Mr. Krabs was a mature fatherly figure to SpongeBob. This episode, however, was not the same. SpongeBob has shown to be more mature than both Mr. Krabs and Squidward, and it was Squidward who acted like a child and annoyed SpongeBob. When the characters aren’t their normal selves, there’s something going on.
After the Dock of Shame:
And now for the last one, Total Drama Island. Although episode in spotlight isn’t really “heavy-handed”, it was one of the most interesting episodes of Total Drama Island or even Total Drama as a whole. So if you watched the show, you know how it goes. The teenage contestants compete against each other and survive the bad conditions of Camp Wawanakwa. In each challenge, one team wins, while the other team is to vote off one of their team members. Their fate is determined at the bonfire ceremony, where each camper will receive a marshmallow, and the one that doesn’t goes down the Dock of Shame, rides the Boat of Losers, and will never come back, ever. As most episodes in the first season focused on the contest, one of them focused on the losers and what they thought of the contest. And this episode is the one where you get to see the perspectives of eliminated campers.
Why this episode was heavy-handed:
The episode is heavy-handed because it shows how past actions will eventually come back to haunt you. Although Heather has yet to face what’s coming to her (it did get back to her in “I Triple Dog Dare You”), this episode shows how others think of her and other campers.
In the first act of the episode, the eliminated campers went over how they liked Isle Playa de Losers. While it sucks to be eliminated, they seemed to like this island more, for that it treats the campers way better than Camp Wawanakwa did. While most campers were happy (given the relationship reunions, Cody’s healing, and the luxurious paradise, some were not too happy because they were cheated out of the contest.
The second act was when all of the campers were going over what they thought of the remaining ones. Some of the facts to point out at this point are:
- While they are divided on who they want to see win, the one camper they can all agree on is Heather. Given how she treated others (and how some of the former Killer Basses developed a negative reception of her), you can see why nobody wanted her to win. Izzy’s and Trent’s comments are really telling a lot.
- The overall opinion towards Duncan is rather neutral, but mostly negative. But looking at Harold’s and Courtney’s perspective of him, they had the exact opposite opinion. That’s because Courtney got into a relationship with Duncan, while Harold was Duncan’s biggest bullying target.
- While Gwen had some detractors, the opinion towards her was mostly positive. She may been grumpy the whole time she was in the contest, but she was the most productive one and has never been a contributor to the Screaming Gophers’ losses when they did lose.
- While not everyone agreed that Leshawna should win the contest, she was one camper that everyone could get along with more easily. The only one who wouldn’t get along with her is Heather, and Heather hasn’t been eliminated at this point.
- Owen seemed to be popular among the eliminated campers, but some don’t want him winning the contest.
Just that first point is what proven this episode to be more heavy-handed than the other episodes of Total Drama Island. You have seen how Heather was in the show. Despite Gwen being treated the worst by Heather (special mentions go to the diary-reading incident and the boyfriend-kissing incident). Just look at what she did to the eliminated campers. She got Eva in trouble with the Killer Basses by stealing her MP3 player, knowing that she will rage at them and become their next target of elimination. She conspired to get Justin eliminated to evade elimination for throwing the talent show contest. She repeatedly taunted the Killer Basses while bossing the Screaming Gophers around. She made Beth risk her life into getting potato chips when it was not even part of the contest, and then she got ungrateful and started an argument. She tried to separate Lindsay from Tyler, threatened to cut her hair if she worked with Leshawna, and told her that she was never really friends with her when she faced her elimination. And she kissed Trent in front of Gwen and made him look guilty for it (hence why Leshawna conspired to vote Trent off). Even Ezekiel, who had very little interaction with her for being eliminated on Day One, didn’t like her. Because of all the abuse she given other campers, her ratings were at 0% in this episode.
Heather wasn’t the only one who would face the consequences of her actions. As Lindsay told Courtney, even if Harold didn’t rig the votes against her, nobody really liked her that much. Like Heather, Courtney was pretty bossy. And not like Heather, Courtney was a hypocrite. She pushed everyone into doing the contest because she was a counselor in training, and yet she refused to do some of the challenges. She never really developed much of a strong bond with the Screaming Gophers, and with how bossy she was, she wouldn’t have progressed further in the merger games. For Harold, the reason why he has been hiding rather than having fun was because he switched the ballots to get Courtney eliminated. Because of how much of a threat she would become, he had to hide from her, even if it means lacking any common sense like not eating. To tell you the truth, one of the worst things any camper has done in the show, even including some of Heather’s antics and Duncan’s bullying, was rigging the ballot boxes to get one eliminated. Even if he did this to get back at Duncan, this is a serious offense for what kind of contest Total Drama Island is.
Earlier episodes have shown that some of these campers did deserve their eliminations, given what they have done. Ezekiel shouldn’t have made these close-minded misogynistic comments. Eva shouldn’t have let the anger get the better of herself. Noah should’ve been a team player. Katie and Sadie should’ve never parted from the rest of the Killer Basses. Izzy should’ve never given the Killer Basses ideas when Harold burned the paddles. Beth should’ve never taken the cursed tiki doll. If you have been a major threat to the other campers or have made them lose the challenges in a really bad way, you are going to get the boot.
Conclusion:
Cartoons made for kids may be fun, but they also come with important life lessons. And some lessons tackle more serious stuff. Even in a world of fantasy, realism may strike, and the ugly parts of it aren’t being sugarcoated.
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