There’s this fella on YouTube – he’s well-meaning, but super corny. I’ve always thought it was like watching Dunder Mifflin’s own David Wallace in his “Suck It” phase, playing out a midlife crisis online.
He just posted a reaction to “Mindful Education.” And hoo boy. It’s… it had an impact.
So apparently they’re just now starting work on season 7. Part of the reason season 5 was so goddamned drawn-out is that they were covering a production delay. They finished season 6 a year ago, but have been doing nothing since due to various behind-the-scenes factors – except for some recent ramp-up, hiring new storyboarders, hiring back who was still available, and so on.
Anyway. Season 6 should start airing soon, now that season 7 is finally in production.
Look, on Twitter I just compared Kevin to the Woodmen from Twin Peaks and this is the best analogy I’ve made for anything in my life, all right?
None of this is avert-your-eyes material for anyone behind on the show; more of a meta thing. But, uh, the time progression is super odd.
To date the show is set over a little more than two years. Which kinda sorta works out with the original three production seasons, the latter two split in half on transmission. Each covers around a year.
But not really. Season 1 is clean enough; seemingly one full year, start to end. Season two starts off okay; by about 20-some episodes in it’s reflecting or referencing things 20-some episodes into season 1 as about a year ago.
But then, uh. Season 3 seems to be set over about two weeks. Like, the whole thing, plus a few episodes on either side. Doing the math, that can maybe just about technically work, but jeez.
Then seasons 4 and 5 together cover about eight months, which is more sensible but between the multi-episode arcs and the catch-up fast-forward episodes it’s really hard to figure out how time progresses outside of the two seasonal episodes and word from on high how old (by the month) Steven and Connie are during Reunited. Which sets it in maybe mid-April of year 3.
Anyway. This is just here because I realized the period that season three covers, and – yikes. Those last four episodes? That’s ALL ONE DAY.
No wonder Steven’s developing some issues.
I think from now on whenever someone asks me about the show, I’ll just show them this scene.
.
Yeah, I feel like I’m missing something. All I know about this show is that Rebecca Sugar got her start doing porn of it on her LiveJournal.
Ed Edd n Eddy is a very Marmite show and this is a spot on impression, so
that wasn’t going to be my original post but i hit the by accident and, well.
i love EEnE i think it’s hysterical, but it’s ultimately a lot of slapstick jokes about obnoxious preteens. It has a very fun squigglevision-esque art style and some of the best foley/sfx i’ve ever heard in a cartoon, and comedy voices that should annoy me but are juuuuust on the right side of funny|annoying
i was a little young for Beavis and Butthead so i guess Ed Edd n Eddy was the closest thing i got. also the Kanker sisters are my idols
also i dunno if i’d call the pretty obscure porn Rebecca Sugar did on her LJ that got spread around because it’s racy where she “got her start” i’d sooner nominate Don’t Cry For Me, I’m Already Dead or Pug Davis
That’s a less interesting story than porn, though.
I love every frame of this. EEnE was a big part of my cartoon consumption in middle school and onwards. Best use of “random” sound effects in a cartoon ever. Just an all around solid cartoon.
i way should have linked this already: in a recent Talking Simpsons, Rebecca Sugar and Ian Jones-Quartey and Toby Jones talk about their love of the Simpsons episode “The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show” and also working on their own cartoons
So the show is five years old now. 645 days of which have been spent in hiatus during the season 4-5 narrative block. (The entire show prior to season four experienced a total of 636 days of hiatus. And that seemed like a lot at the time.)
(Hang on, that means… it’s only consistently aired for 1.5 years out of the last 5 years? That, uh, registers as correct.)
I still think “Alone Together” is one of the most astonishing pieces of television I’ve experienced. In twelve minutes, it broaches so many topics, explores so many themes, soars cleanly, gleefully past so many boundaries that nobody even though to set because they didn’t imagine someone would actually go there, especially in this context. It’s such a delirious fever dream of awkward joy and anxiety and discovery, that opens the mind a little further every time one sees it.
I think it will always remain one of my favorite episodes of television. As amazing as “Mindful Education” is, it doesn’t have the drunken roller coaster of glee and confusion and panic, the pure transformational – literally, transformational – catharsis of “Alone Together.” And, God, it’s twelve minutes that a person can slot in anywhere, just to perk up. To remember how magical the world can be.
i was predisposed to love this show because i was such a fan of Rebecca Sugar’s work on Adventure Time, and the pilot was like everything i dreamed of from a show she’d create. Laser Light Cannon reinforced that it was gonna be a show to keep an eye on, Mirror/Ocean Gem was a real exciting break from the status quo that raised the plot stakes, and Lion 3 was really direct and beautiful and raised the emotional stakes (side note, i like how Lion 4 revisits the climax of 3 — surely an emotional high watermark for the viewer as it is for Steven — and completely subverts it, almost undermines it even)
Alone Together though, man. i’m with you, it’s fucking phenomenal. i watched it like 3 times in the week i first saw it. i was just on the cusp of starting to interrogate my gender identity and figure out what it means to me to be a nonbinary person, and seeing this 11-minute kids cartoon follow the awkward, pubescent adventures of an explicitly gender neutral teen character was just gobsmacking. (Since then of course the show has added another delightful nonbinary character in Smokey Quartz, who is Literally Me)
Like Mindful Education, Alone Together is also an episode that wonderfully fulfills its remit as children’s TV by actually trying to impart important lessons to kids, ones that ive never seen a show touch on before (certainly not with as much nuance and sensitivity). It absolutely cemented my love of this show and opinion that it’s my Favorite TV Series Of All Time. Just, exquisitely good.
Honestly I figure adult art and expression should also carry a layer of didacticism. This whole thing that adults have where they feel insulted when people try to suggest they don’t know everything? Yeah, it’s got to go. (Adults are dumber than kids! And this is part of why!)
Yeah, though. I love how deeply the show weaves its themes into its fabric, and its characters and their motivations and interactions, so that when it chooses to foreground the implications or consequences of certain actions or situations, it tends to feel grounded and meaningful. This is a perfect time, if an utterly bizarre scenario, to talk about consent. And objectification. And anxiety and self-doubt, and how all of these intersect.
The metaphors this show uses are so perfect. They’re blunt enough that it’s hard to miss what they’re saying (unless you’re male, apparently, and watching “Cry for Help”) yet broad enough that they can’t be pinned down either, and can be used in different ways to hold different discussions. (With enough plausible deniability to develop the show to the point where, several years in, they don’t have to hide what they mean anymore.)
…
Another thing about “Alone Together” is, I keep finding new things. It’s not like a Nine Inch Nails track, but – like, for instance, the doughnut check-in moment. It’s only recently I noticed how the screen grows dark as the doughnuts draw apart, then snaps back to normal as they right themselves. Until I heard an interview, I hadn’t clocked what AJ Michalka was doing with Stevonnie’s laugh, consciously blending Callison’s and Grace Rolek’s. Apparently they shopped that for a while, to make sure it came out right.
Callison is being coy about this very issue, in a recent interview.
I’ve been thinking for a while if they’re gonna age-up Steven – as the story vector and foreshadowing (never mind the practicalities around the voice actor) suggest they may, eventually – it’ll probably be soon, at the start of season six. Would make sense as a narrative pivot, but also they’re going to need a new intro sequence. Nearly everything in the present one (character designs, Rose’s sword, the beach house, the premise and major cast) is now outdated. Peri and Lapis are getting new designs, and will probably be in the intro now. (Don’t know what they’ll do with the song. New lyrics?) And – they’re not going to want to redo the intro more than once more, I figure, and if they age up the show’s main character they’re not going to want to stick with a practically brand-new intro with an outdated design for him.
I’m… not expecting, but thinking this may be happening in the next few episodes, as Steven has some experiences that change how he feels about himself.
this show makes me cry every single episode almost
the fantasy of having people care about ypu when you were young i guess
