Yeah. An infant's response to death is just as relatable as any of their other mishaps, especially when they lose a co-dependent lifeform even smaller than themselves. Case in point, the Rugrats didn't just see Melville as a bug, they saw him as a friend.
shareI thought it was pretty sad, especially when Chuckie got emotional when they were eating chocolate pudding, because that's what he and Melville used to bond over.
shareGreat way to teach kids about death I guess but I didn't like the line "Dead is when you are asleep for a long time...like forever." There are better ways of putting it than that. A kid might think they will go to sleep and not wake up.
shareIt wasn't meant to teach kids about death. If the viewer doesn't already know about death, they're the wrong audience for the series.
shareWell what was it meant for do you think?
shareThe episode was about coping with loss. The presumption is that the audience already knows about death and doesn't need it explained to them. It's not about death itself, it's about the mourning process.
The "going to sleep forever" thing was just part of the typical dynamic where the baby characters' knowledge of things is based on their own observation. The concept of the series is that the babies are every bit as smart as the adults but their knowledge of the world is limited by their lack of education, and that lack of education was the result of the metaphoric disconnect between adults and children in which Germain based the series. The babies don't fully understand the adult world and the adults don't have a clue about the babies' world. The constraints on the babies' understanding of certain things is precisely because the adults condescendingly view them as babies, rather than because of an inability to understand.
Here's an old interview with Germain where he explains some of this:
http://www.animeexpressway.com/rugrats/germain.htm
This is one of my all time favourite episodes and I've just finished watching it. The bit where Chuckie finally accepts that Melville is dead is so sad and heartbreaking it sends tears steaming down my face. I dont know of any other episode of a cartoon that hit me as hard as this one does.
shareIt was very sad.
share