My Favourite Cartoon (CineTV Contest)

There's a contest running in The Cine Tv Community asking us to talk about our favourite children's cartoon, I couldn't help but get involved in this one, because recently I went through a bit of a nostalgia buzz looking back at some of the old shows I used to watch when I was a gig, which happened when I noticed my son being super interested in colours now that his eyes have adjusted, it's kind of fun seeing him looking at the tv in amazement, although, I think he started to get addicted to it - because anytime he was upset and me or my partner were carrying him around to go to sleep he would instantly stop and crane his neck to see the tv if he spotted it.

It'll be cool when he's actually old enough to watch and understand stuff, for now, though we'll just try to stop him from staring at the big noisy colourful wall in the corner haha

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Ed, Edd n Eddie
This has to be my all-time favourite kid's show from when I was growing up, and if anybody has never seen I'd advise checking it out, because as I've noticed re-watching a few of the older episodes recently, while it is a "kids show" it kind of isn't just for kids, and I think it can be enjoyed by anyone.

While it may not have adult themes, there are a few topical - for the time - jokes, and there are even moments where the characters themselves break the fourth wall, the fourth wall breaking doesn't happen often, but when it does it can be pretty funny.

Here is a random out-of-context collection of clips of the characters breaking the fourth wall and being self-aware.

In watching that I started laughing when I caught a blink and you'll miss it line of dialogue... wait blink and you'll miss it doesn't really work for sound, but you know what I mean.

Ed, the big dumb guy of the group dives on one of the other kids from the cul-de-sac, Jimmy, and shouts, "Prepare to meet your maker." Jimmy looks up in fear before Ed lands on him and says, "Antonucci?"

I actually never copped that as a kid and remember the particular clip after seeing it again, I always thought he said "Aunt... something," as I never caught the last of the word. But, now years later, I actually know that the creator of the show is called Danny Antonucci, and now, that reply makes sense and all is well with the world.

Premise
The show is centred around the cul-de-sac where all these kids live, but the main characters of the show, are the Eds or Ed Boys as one of the characters often refers to them.

The Eds are led by the short loud one called Eddy, who is a scam artist at heart, and has only one thing on his mind, making 25c from the kids in the cul-de-sac by any means necessary, usually they come up with convoluted attempts to rip everyone off, which almost always fails in the end.

The group helping Eddy fulfill his hair-brained schemes is Double D, or Edd, and he's essentially the brains of the group and is mild-mannered and well-behaved, who usually gets dragged into the shenanigans unwillingly, other than the need to help his friends.

Last is my favourite of the three, Ed, who's the big strong dumb guy of the group who loves watching old B-movies and reading sci-fi comics, he has a big heart and a hollow head, which makes him an easy person to manipulate into carrying out all of the money-making missions.

The episodes are 30 minutes long, but there are two stories in one which work out at around 12 minutes each.

You might be wondering why they need 25c, well the only thing in life they want is a jawbreaker each, which are these big sweets and they cost 25c each. That's why all the characters can be swayed into scamming all the other kids because they're drawn to this idea, and once they're mentioned they lose all sense of reasoning.

Jawbreakers in a way work as the perfect MacGuffin, which is a writer's term for something that motivates a character. Like the ring in Lord of The Rings, or unobtanium in Avatar, or those Sith Holocrons in the last Star Wars film.

The perfect MacGuffin in a show or movie is something that doesn't need to be explained to the audience, as there are a lot of shows and movies that overexplain why this thing is important, instead of getting on with the film.

Look at Breaking Bad, Walt is dying and needs money to leave his family, the money in a way is a MacGuffin and one we don't need to think about, as we understand what money is and how it'll help him. Using Ed, Edd n Eddy as the example of a MacGuffin in the show, IE the Jawbreakers, we don't need to be told why they want these things, because everyone knows that kids like and want sweets.

Impact
I think out of all the shows me and my friends watched when we were kids, this one had the biggest impact on us. For example, the word cul-de-sac had never been on our radar until we started watching this show, then we started using it to describe a road we used to skate down - we all lived on a main road, but turning off the main road was a cul-de-sac, and since it was a safer place to skate we would race down there, which got us into trouble a lot with the neighbours of that road.

Also, the idea of making money so we could go and buy sweets was basically from this show too. We would wash cars, cut grass, and do just about any odd job for our neighbours for a few Euro here and there, which was pretty cool, there were some days during the summer we'd start at 9 or 10 and by 1 o'clock a gang of us were heading down to the sweet shop and coming back we two large plastic bags of stuff, which was great.

There were other ideas that we got specifically from the show that I can remember is a Lemonade stand, which isn't really a thing over here in Ireland, we ended up building a small stand out of scrap wood and selling a few cups to people passing the road, but it wasn't worth the effort, to be honest.

Another idea was a yard sale, which isn't really a thing over here either, and we just gather up a bunch of crap we didn't want and laid it out on the green across the road. I don't think we got any sales apart from me buying something from one of the other kids on the road lol.

Thinking about it, my childhood was essentially this show, and when I wasn't living it, I'd be inside watching it, which is a weird thought.

Life imitating art, I guess.

One thing is for sure, I'm glad I grew up when I did and had the shows that were out around that time, there were just so many classics and personally I don't think any of the modern cartoons could really stand up to some of the 90s/ early 2000s shows.