Seriously.
Ok I used to watch Rugrats as a child, but I thought this was just for kids so what was the subtle adult humour in it that people think there is?
I watched an episode today ondemand. In the first episode, Tommy, Phil and Lil go through a phase where they take off their clothes, and Phil and Tommy look at their own bodies, then Lil's, and Tommy says, "uh, Lil? Can I ask you a question?"
In the next episode, Angelica makes a secret club that the babies want to join, so she hazes them to see which one can join. This includes forcing them to drink milk, while shouting at them to drink faster.
Some of the jokes between the adults were also a bit mature.
A bit? The whole thing was an adult show before the post-hiatus episodes. The "babies" are only "babies" metaphorically, in the same way Stewie is a "baby" on Family Guy.
Couple of classic bits that immediately come to mind:
Boris pretending to call Dr. Kevorkian while Stu was showing his home videos.
Charlotte saying "I love you" to Angelica while on the phone with Jonathan, and when Jonathan misinterprets it as directed at him, she replies, "No, not YOU, Jonathan, I was talking to my daughter. I'd never say that to an EMPLOYEE. Not after the Clarence Thomas scandal."
No jptf2 sorry but you are the idiot.
Rugrats is a children's cartoon if it was an adults it wouldn't have been on Nickelodeon, Nick Toons and Live & Kicking. (old 90s BBC show on Saturday morning)
Nowadays its on Nick Jr
The channel it airs on has nothing to do with the style of the show, idiot. Rocko's Modern Life also aired on Nickelodeon. I guess that's a kids show too, despite being the most vulgar cartoon on television at the time?
There was no such thing as "Adult Swim" in 1991. The only networks interested in airing cartoons at all were interested in airing them on "kids blocks." Rugrats was written by writers who came over from The Simpsons (another adult cartoon).
If you ask me what was the key to what was happening in the 90s with all these shows that were more interesting in some ways than what's happening now, I think what was happening partly was that a lot of people were working it in who hadn't been interested in animation and hadn't been interested in children's television before, and they kind of got in through a side door - which was the explosion that happened with The Simpsons - when the Simpsons happened - all these people who never would have even been considered, like me, or Steve (Viksten), or Peter Gaffney is another one, all these people who would just have not have been thought of as people who would write for children's animation, were suddenly being asked to write. Because people who were writing for The Simpsons were all these Conan O'Brien kids. That generation. And a lot of other people, like Peter Gaffney and Jon Greenberg, and Rachel Lipman, all these people who worked on Rugrats, were all people who came out of that world. They were all working at Harvard Lampoon.- Joe Ansolabehere
No, you're the idiot. Nobody [aside from you] has ever considered Rugrats to be adult satire. There's adult humor here and there under the guise of innocent lines, but this is true for many shows aimed towards a younger audience. It really is okay to like a childrens' show as an adult; you don't have to try and shoehorn it into being an Adult Swim show of its day.
shareYeah, no. First of all, you're wrong: http://www.5x5media.com/eye/film/rugrats.php
Secondly, you demonstrate you don't understand what adult humor is when you write, "under the guise of innocent lines." Adult humor does not mean something is inappropriate for kids/vulgar/sexual innuendo. That's merely one form of adult humor.
It's not here and there, the core of the show is a satire on suburban yuppie parenting, period. It's not "under the guise of innocent lines." They don't need a guise because it's generally not controversial. Ridiculing parental incompetence isn't something you have to hide to get past network censors. Even when the show had a more direct/inappropriate joke that could be controversial, the explanation to the joke is too detailed to incite outrage (ex: Charlotte Pickles saying she'd never say "I love you" to an employee after the Clarence Thomas scandal).
There was no such thing as "Adult Swim" back then. Every cartoon was considered by the uniformed to be a "kids show." The Simpsons was considered by the uniformed to be a kids show. And guess where Rugrats got their writing staff members from...
Here's what Joe Ansolabehere had to say:
"If you ask me what was the key to what was happening in the 90s with all these shows that were more interesting in some ways than what's happening now, I think what was happening partly was that a lot of people were working it in who hadn't been interested in animation and hadn't been interested in children's television before, and they kind of got in through a side door - which was the explosion that happened with The Simpsons - when the Simpsons happened - all these people who never would have even been considered, like me, or Steve (Viksten), or Peter Gaffney is another one, all these people who would just have not have been thought of as people who would write for children's animation, were suddenly being asked to write. Because people who were writing for The Simpsons were all these Conan O'Brien kids. That generation. And a lot of other people, like Peter Gaffney and Jon Greenberg, and Rachel Lipman, all these people who worked on Rugrats, were all people who came out of that world. They were all working at Harvard Lampoon."
Rugrats was not aimed at a younger audience by the writers. They didn't even know what children's writing was to begin with to even attempt to write it, so they decided to write what they know. That's something else Ansolabehere said.
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If you want a perfect example of what I'm talking about when I refer to the original Rugrats episodes as, as their core, "parental satire," watch the episode, "The Big Flush," and pay special attention to the scene where some of the parents are taking the babies to a brief swimming class (while Stu and the other guys are in the main pool with their own story):
The new age nut case swimming instructor woman spews a bunch of crap about getting the child to "become one with the water," etc., leading to Betty turning to Didi and going, "woooo...I think this one inhaled a little too much chlorine." This is followed by the mothers dunking the kids in the water repeatedly and it having the exact, realistic outcome: the babies were screaming and crying the whole time.
Parental satire. Of course, this wasn't the only form of satire the show used - it delved into other aspects of American culture - but a lot of cartoons do that. It was the warm parental satire that distinguished it from other cartoon satire. Rocko's Modern Life, for instance, mocked numerous aspects of American culture, but it didn't use humor pertaining to suburban parenting. Doug had a warm/loving type of dry, gentle satire pertaining to early adolescent experiences related to school, different types of relationships, and various types of people everyone encounters in life, but it didn't satirize parenthood.
That was what Rugrats specialized in and what the writers who took over after the hiatus didn't understand.
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I've been roped into looking after my niece now and again. So I've got the first 4 seasons of Rugrats on my hard drive which I plugin to my Blu-Ray player.
I used to love it as a kid. So I thought she would. It's been working a charm. Just load it up she'll watch it and I can carry on doing what I want.
I've not been watching it but I did watch the Real or Robots? / Special Delivery episode from series one. Both had clear subtle adult humour in them.
In Real or Robots Stu is talking in his sleep. Didi says "Are you ok Stu?" and he replied "Yes, Ramona". Didi looks angry and puts her hands on her hips and says "Who's Ramona?" and Stu replies "My assistant".
In Special Delivery I was actually quite shocked. As Tommy is going down the post conveyor belt. There's a postal worker reading a magazine. The magazine is called "True Mail Man". On the back is a woman wearing a red bra and knickers next to a post box. He then proceeds to pull out the center fold with a smile on his face. So he's reading a porn magazine for postal workers lol.