Midnight Court: '80s vs. '90s Animated Series With Guest Judge Seth Green! | Midnight Boys

0:00On today's show, the Midnight Boys become Midnight Toons. In honor of the 25th anniversary of Adult Swing, the Ring of Versus settling one of the most contentious debates of our time. What is the greatest air of cartoons? The 80s or the 90s. Mr. Lathen claims the 80s is the peak of the art form. While Mr. Holmes, Mr. Dinaron and Mr. Alman seek to defend the supremacy of the 90s. It's mutant turtles against animal maniacs, sponges versus robots in disguise. This is Midnight Court. Dun dun. All rise for the honorable Seth Green. Yeah, rise. Yeah. Get up. Thanks, guys. I actually, wait. No, no, no, no, no. Please be seated. I'll be seated. Call it. Yeah. You're what's for.

1:01Thank you all. Thank you all for gathering today. I believe it is my duty this afternoon to supervise a debate between both sides about which is the greatest era of cartoons. It's the 80s versus the 90s. I have been privileged enough to experience both of those in real time shocking reality. But I really want to hear. I have opinions obviously, but I'm open to being influenced by your opinions. Call it the order. I would like to point out that it was my understanding that we were talking about television cartoons here today. Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm going to introduce a debate between the television cartoons of the 1980s and the television cartoons of the 1990s and hereby we are engaged. Correct.

2:02First of all, Arnold Seth Green, we would like to thank you for your contributions to this medium and for coming on the midnight boys to serve as the guests. I think that both of me and my opposing counsel here are all very happy to have you sitting down here. I'm assuming that this means that I am leading off in opening statements. You're up. I'm not taking the form, but just to say that thank you, it is my privilege. Okay, so greatness has a definition. It's the quality of state of being exceptional in size, skill, achievement, power or importance. Opening statements with a definition, always a clutch movement. So again, exceptional in size, skill, achievement, power and importance. What do I take that to mean as it relates to today's debate over the 80s cartoons which are fantastic and the 90s cartoons which are fantastic. Three things I break this down to, variety, staying power means how long did these cartoons

3:07last in our hearts and lore, size, skill, power and importance. What's the story? Depth of story means impact, impact means obsession, obsession means staying power, which characters have endured, which characters are the engines of other lore, which characters have inspired, which characters have grounded, which characters have deepened, which characters have stayed around with people in the back of their minds to such a degree that inspired them to create not only their own worlds, but some of the worlds that we operate in. Which characters are we longing to see again and when we see them again, when we touch them again, when we are around them again, how comfortable and emotional do we feel when they're back. When you hear I have the power, when you hear thunder cats, oh, GI Joe, real Americans,

4:09when you hear that, what did she remain to a generation of young girls? What does cowabunga mean? You had never heard it before. The world may never know, but you, but you, but you heard it in 1997. Who do you want to hang out with? Michelangelo. Who do you want to be your leader? Leonardo goes up and down with the 80s and what these cartoons were able to do, not just to entertain a generation of children, but to inspire a generation of creators to create lore that was so deep, impactful and meaningful that we are still to this very day exploring it. I am not going to try to in this conversation in any way, contend with the variety of what happened in the 90s and the explosion of cartoons that were around in that decade. But what I will say is those sons have fathers and their dads are in the 80s.

5:14All of those cartoons, that entire boom comes from this understanding that kids needed a place to vacation where they felt safe and that was in the 80s television cartoon, boom and era. It's my opening statement. Thank you very much. Council would you care to make your opening statements? Yes. Good morning. Good morning, to note that it took, it's going to take three to represent the 90s. It's not, it's the 90s crew. Three is the young ladies. Yeah. Let's hear it. All right. Good morning, your honor, Mr. Layton, midnight mob, midnight riders. Before we begin, I'd like to take you on a journey. moments we woke up on a sweet Saturday morning. The energy, the expectation of when you would run home after school. These are times of wonder, of freedom, of

6:17imagination. Who among us knew that 24 frames per second could change the world? The question laid before us today is simple. What is the greatest era of cartoons? Then, Mr. Lathan over there alleges that it's the 80s. We will be arguing about the 90s. But what I want us all to remember is that this is not a versus. We're discussing art. A medium. The same medium that changed my life. So please, let's refrain from digging our heels too deep in the mud and making this a Jordan versus LeBron conversation. No, this is much much higher. Today, my colleagues and I are representing 10 of the greatest cartoons of all time, the Simpsons. Batman, the animated series, SpongeBob, X-Men, Pokemon, the list goes on and on. And through these 10 shows, we're not just telling the story of a decade, but illustrating the peak of an entire art form. The 80s was

7:20a time of cultural and economic decadence and its children's programming followed suit. Now, if this was an argument about selling plastic and the best commercials, I think Mr. Lathan over there would have the case. But today, when we talk about the 90s, we're talking about a promise made good. An explosion of art and ambition. The Disney Renaissance happening in the multiplexes, the birth of dedicated children's programming like Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, the rise of adult and teen animation on MTV and the Fox Network. See, animation is a continuum. Yes, where maybe the fathers born in the 80s, but I think every good father wants his sons to run further to fly farther than they ever could. Today, my colleagues and I will cover three main points. Mr. Denner on here will talk

8:20about the commercial impact of the 90s. Mr. Alman over here will talk about the lasting influence. And I will speak about the form. So I ask you, let's not get lost in nostalgia people. Let's not turn this into generational warfare. I want us all here to remember the lessons that these cartoons taught us when we ran home. It's about teamwork. It is about community. It is about the future. And with that, those are our opening statements. Excellent. We are going to have an exciting debate. Yeah. It's really good. So it seems that we would simply open the floor to a debate. Shall we engage each other in a spirited Q and A? Yes. Question. I noticed in your opening argument that you mentioned the

9:24Simpsons. What year did the Simpsons debut on television? I mean, I could tell you the exact date, December 17, 1989. Okay. So let's say that I understand that the Simpsons is more of a 90s cartoon. Two weeks is not going to make the Simpsons in the 80s. Right? It's not going to. We'll tell you though that the Simpsons debut on the Tracy Alman show even before they debut on television. So that's a little bit deeper into the 80s. What I would ask, not just you, but the audience watching is consider the time in which the Simpsons was conceptualized, not the time in which the Simpsons actually aired on television. Think about the creation of the Simpsons. Think about a show like that that has its boom in the 90s. What is causing someone like the creative team behind the Simpsons to use animation to tell that story in that way to an audience? It is the explosion of animation

10:30that they are seeing is the variety of animation that's happening in the 80s is the fact that they are affected. Their minds are being changed and programmed by the most vast group of animated characters that we had seen on screen ever. So in my argument is that the reason why the 80s is so important is because the groundwork for what was laid in the 90s, all of the variety and where I'm going to talk about some of the reasons why some of these cartoons having quite endured as much as the cartoons in the 80s. We're talking about that. But animation as a medium that could touch everyone that you could tell a more adult story like the Simpsons on television, on network television, on Fox, which is a network that was fledgling at that time that needed programming like the Simpsons. That starts in the 80s. Even your heroes are made from a time where cartoons become really, really serious business and start

11:31to dominate culture in the way that they had before. So that is very interesting. Yes, was did the Simpsons debut in what the final weeks of the 80s? Yes. But I will make a contention that we talk about the peak of the Simpsons and what they differ comedy and what they did for the world. That's 90s domination. But you know what? I don't think I need to totally make that point because we actually have an expert witness. Our colleague Alan Seagull who wrote a New York Times bestseller on the Simpsons that released last year actually has a statement for us in the back. Can we play our expert witness Alan Seagull and talk about the domination of the Simpsons in the 90s? People ask me all the time what makes the Simpsons so great. The best way I can explain it is it changed the way we think about the world. So here's a good example. A couple of months ago, Curry Barker, the guy who directed obsession, said he was inspired to write the movie by the Treehouse of Horror segment, the Monkey's Paw. Now, not the 120 year old

12:35short story, the Monkey's Paw, but the segment from a Simpsons episode that came out in 1991. That's years before Curry Barker was even born, but it warmed its way into his brain and that's what the Simpsons does. Now, it doesn't really explain the show's influence, so to do that, you got to go back to the 80s. Now, this debate is about 80s cartoons versus 90s cartoons, and this will help explain that. So in the 80s TV animation was kind of a backwater. It was cartoons made to sell breakfast cereal and action figures. Hey, I love Transformers. I love team man. I love GI Joe, but those were made to sell toys. It's the truth. When the Simpsons came along in the early 90s, it completely changed animation. It completely legitimized the medium, and it directly led to all these amazing shows. You had Rennand Stimpy, you had South Park, you had Rugrats, you had Futurama, you had King of the Hill, and you had Family Guy. Those shows would not exist without the Simpsons, and the Simpsons

13:38for that reason and many other reasons is the best show of all time, and you cannot sway me otherwise. Mr. Latham. Yeah, I'm speaking about the years where the epoch per se, he's just talking about the quality of the programming itself. But I would say the domination that happened with the Simpsons did not happen in 89. It happened in the 90s. It defined the 90s. I feel like the peak of the Simpsons is in the mid to late 90s, and you can talk, if you read some of them, the writing about it, they say they were inspired by other cartoons in the 90s, like Batman of the Animated Series, in the least of that nature. I somehow feel like you guys are arguing a point that I acquiesced. No one that has any objectivity is going to argue that the Simpsons is not a creation of the 90s. The Simpsons is part of what defined 90s culture. That is absolutely true. My case for the 80s is that the inception

14:38of even what you are naming, yes, of what happened in the 90s is based upon a cement foundation of what was going on in the 1980s. That what you are talking about right now, the Simpsons is an 80s creation that found its cultural footing in the 90s. It is an 80s creation. Somebody decide to endeavor into animation because of the explosion, because of a group and generation of kids who were educated on animation and the depth of animation in the 1980s. I am not going to argue about even the variety of some of the more adult animation that we saw in the 90s. All of that stuff is it matters. It is around, it is a part of what the 90s became. My argument is greatness. And greatness to me is what endures, what lasts and what moves on. That for animation, that has started in the 1980s for me. And what I would argue is that are we talking about the start of something because yes, everything has a history,

15:43everything comes from somewhere. But if we look at, let's say something like that man, the animated series. Now, when you look at not what that just did for cartoons, but for DC Comics, for live action, we could talk about Harley Quinn, we could talk about the Mad Reeves Batman, we could talk about the fact that we're these creators that yes, grew up on cartoons that were coming out in the 60s, 70s and 80s are using all of that influence and are saying we are going to create cartoons that just aren't kids programming, that just isn't for commercials. These are things that can fundamentally change not only how we view cartoons, but how so many of these characters are remembered far, far in the future. Let's cut the shit, okay? At this point in time, when we're talking about, oh, I don't know something like SpongeBob, Rugrats, X-Men, Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, we are opening up cartoons to a global fucking fan base. All right. Dragon Ball Z premiered when, when

16:50did Dragon Ball Z come out? If we're talking about when did Dragon Ball Z premier in the United States? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm asking when was Dragon Ball Z created? Answer the question. Well, Dragon Ball Z was created in the 80s. Yeah. Thank you. Dragon Ball Z has Japan premier April 26, 1989. And when and can this can when did that get forward over to the night? Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, can I finish making my point? Finish? Okay. That leans into my point. My point is that Dragon Ball Z in its inception, when people are thinking, I want to make something cool. I want that cool thing to comport and talk about all of these themes. I'm going to do it in an animated way. Dragon Ball Z drops in the 80s. The 80s is when all of these people were having the ideas of how they could tell animated stories. So when did that show? SpongeBob, Rugrats, X-Men, Daria, Charles,

17:51I didn't interrupt you. I didn't interrupt you. Now, let me get to everything everything that you're talking about. Let's take Batman for itself as its own example. So Batman is a very important cartoon. So is that X-Men? I wore the robe. Yeah. Batman is a very important cartoon. So is that X-Men? A very important cartoon. Right? Very important cartoons. I think what I'm talking about in the 80s, when I look at some of the cartoons that I'm talking about, I'm talking about lore that exists on its own. Batman had been adapted and readapted in comic books since the 1930s. The X-Men were characters that came out in 1963 or 1964, whatever it was. The X-Men had also been in animation before the 90s, right? But when I'm looking at the characters that I'm talking about in the 80s, I'm also talking about how unique these characters are, meaning the fact that these characters have their own lore, that he man has his own lore that exists and deepens his world in the 80s, that the Thundercats have their own lore. They are a

18:55universe. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are a universe. Like these other characters that we're talking about, we're not talking about reimagining of characters. We're not talking about updates of characters. We're not talking about characters that we've always seen the Justice League or Superman or anything like that. We're talking about worlds that were established in the 80s that could have their own conventions. We're talking about worlds that were established in the 80s that have their own people that are as furs. We're talking about one, the Care Bear, we're talking about Voltron. We're talking about things that in and of themselves exist in a deep, deep, deep universe with their own lore, with their own backstores, with their own stuff and versatile merchandising. It's critical. So, so, uh, actually, I think, um, Mr. Dehran, could you maybe talk about the commercial impact of some characters that have their own lore? Like, I don't know, SpongeBob. Well, I mean, SpongeBob, Pokemon, Rugrats, we could say they're all day and talk about how these shows, not only like,

19:59because what I understand what Councillor Lathen is trying to, was trying to bitch to us, right? However, you do understand that Transformers, He, Man, Thundercats, or all there just to sell toys, right? All these conventions were there because they had action figures. They need, they want to sell these to kids. You make the cartoons that sell the action figures to kids. That's the whole pipeline. Now, that's hard to say that. Are you condemning that process? Is he'll gotten or somehow deceptive? All I'm saying is that's the truth, right? That's not to say that the cartoons are the intent somehow weaken the effect of the execute versus impact. Of course, not. Of course, not your honor. What I'm saying is, yes, I bought all of those toys. No, what I'm saying, your honor is that the 90s cartoons not only did the thing where you make all the money by, man, the Rugrats orange VHS tapes. The Simpson's tape shirts, brother. You

21:00couldn't go anywhere without seeing SpongeBob in the 90s, my friend. It was everywhere. Okay, Batman, the animal. Like, these are things that encapsulated a whole generation, right, would not only merchandise public stories, only. And that's what I mean, right? These things, these cartoons were came out of a need to tell stories, not to sell merchandise. How much money has been made in the history of SpongeBob merchandise? I mean, here's the thing. Okay, do you guys know? No, no, I'm asking you, my personal receipts. Do you guys know the number? How much money is going to make? I imagine 16 billion dollars. So 16 billion dollars have been made off SpongeBob merchandise. There's no such thing as a children's cartoon that doesn't sell merchandise. No such thing. It is almost arbitrary, whether or not the car, the merchandising comes before the cartoon or after the cartoon. It doesn't really matter. I would like it. And so, but let me before you, before you interject, counsel, which I did not, like before you interject, let me tell you why I don't think that it matters.

22:05Because in all of these things that we're talking about, what we remember is story. That's all we remember. What we remember is why Skeletor wants a, uh, uh, Eternia. What we remember is how he man and Shira are related. What we remember is where the power comes from from he man. Why the Voltron must form. Why what we always remember, we never remember toys. We remember story. What when you say he man, people are going to say by the power of grace, go, I have the power. They're going to remember the incantation that he man must use to transform from Adam into he man. They are going to remember story. And it doesn't matter if that story is invented so that you buy Castle Grace Gold, Castle Grace Gold must have its lore. I'm not taking anything away from SpongeBob Squarepants or what SpongeBob Squarepants is meant. I'm not taking that away at all.

23:07But what I'm saying is to bring up a property that has sold 16 billion dollars worth of merchandise as an example that it's not there to sell merchandise does not make any sense. But what's interesting to me is that you keep bringing up story and lore and how deep you can get is a bunch of catchphrases because when I think of something like Batman the animated series, I think of the Mask of the Fantasme. I think about a cartoon that was on the big screen that is quite literally pushing not only that character forward, but what we thought animation can be for an entire generation. When I think of Dragon Ball Z, I am thinking of coming home the tsunami block. Watching fucking Vegeta die, sacrifice himself. It's funny. It's very funny when you keep bringing up well, oh, these stories don't have the depth of Thundercats, the TV show that I love. I find that

24:08very hard to believe, but Mr. Armin, can you maybe talk about the influence, especially if some of some of these team programming, some of these TV shows that were far more adept at really, really pushing what we knew this could be. Yes, I think it's very easy for us to push aside any sort of commercial value for either one of these immaculate decades for animation and really look at a elevated and heightened cultural relevance that came from the 90s. Not only was there a bellweather of incredible shows that pushed the envelope both commercially and critically, but there's also an idea that permeated in the 90s that these creatives were almost hijacking the airwaves of our television sets to give us something so unconventional and so groundbreaking and fleeting edge that some networks didn't even know what to do with them. I think of the heightened MTV eras bringing us Doria, not something not while also culturally relevant,

25:14relevant to a million other creators that came after them. Liquid television as well, yes. The earliest days of adult swim, giving us such high concept television shows at Space Ghost Coast to Coast, an amazing send-up of the late-night talk show, but we don't even need to go there. We can simply look to the hardware. Things that brought home incredible amounts of awards in a critical acclaim such as South Park, such as, oh, I don't know how many Batman the Edimons series enemies have. I know that Garfield won a few in the 80s, but it's really something that got really cooking in the 90s that I think when you can easily see the cultural influence that came from the 80s was ultimately perfected in the night. You may be our fathers, but we went to the leak. What a fascinating. I just love that you dragged Garfield.

26:17Two-time daytime maybe. I'm not getting this dreaded Garfield. Garfield did. We agreed before this Mr. Lathan that we would have a top 10. Can you please list your title? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Can I just continue to engage? So, what a fascinating appeal to authority? What a, what a, what a fascinating, no, hold on for a second, from somebody with some hardware, by the way. I mean, if you want to talk about Academy Awards, but like, but, but like, what a fascinating appeal to authority. So we are in a court of law, by the way, this is nothing but an appeal to authority. I'm appealing to the people. Look, power is cool. Even he meant so. So, so like, I find an appeal to authority fascinating in the realm of cartoons. Like, in the realm of cartoons, I'll tell you why, there is no authority that can encapsulate what it feels like to spend time with your friends

27:17that are animated on television. There is, can I please finish? There is no, there's no authority that can encapsulate what it feels like to sit down and with a cartoon, right? And be in a world with your friends and you're there and it's babysitting you. It's helping raise you. It's giving you a message. You are connecting to the medium. It's forming the ideas in your brain. I couldn't care less how many imis everything one. I know that that's important. I don't care how many imis, how many latent, I don't give a flying fuck about that. What I care about is that there was a generation of young people and children that was inspired by worlds that they could not put their fingers and hands on that were demonstrated to them on television and when did that start for them? How did that start for them? Are they still connected to those characters now? Because you can

28:18talk about Daria or you can talk about Beavison Bloodhead characters that are really important but that are flashpoint examples of a time fixed in the 90s. Then you can talk about he man with the thunder cats or Voltron or these relentless eternal worlds that people keep going back to. I can go further if you want me to talk about my top 10. If you want to talk about the care bears. If you want to talk about all different types of people with different types of lore, with different types of language that make people feel in different ways. I just let you guys know, I think about all the imis that everybody won for everything that they were doing. I'm going to say I don't give a fuck. I can't talk about the language. You can talk about shows that are ever lasting Mr. Lathan. How much did the he man movie make? Oh, it made 17. No, it made 17. No,

29:19it made 17. Okay, Cash, you can't ask your question. Is it okay? It sent you want to bring that up? But we have a respawn on the streaming view. Okay. Can't Amazon Prime number three? I'm not going to lie. I have a lot of streaming. It's characters are and it seems like the kind of on the last legs. Okay, well, I'll just have you know that live action movies that are based on toys in the 80s have made nearly eight billion dollars. How many of that transformers speak? A lot of it is transformers, but that doesn't mean anything. What that means is that the transformers themselves had a deep enough lore to continue things into the 2000s. So if you want to have a conversation, I was not going to bring it up. I figured you guys might. But if you want to have a conversation about how these characters have transitioned into live action, I'm not saying right now that the he man movie didn't come too late. I'm not saying that that's not a 2006 movie or 2010 movie rather than a 2026 movie because now the movie is for you guys when it shouldn't have been.

30:22But what I will say is that to have those movies in live action and to put them on the screen for worldwide audiences, we don't have to ask whether or not it's worked. It has worked. And it's worked over and over again. And it's worked for huge, huge box office returns and made stars. Stars that your generation has watched. Well, but here's the thing we don't have to talk about live action. Mr. Lathen, did you support the latest Thundercats animated show? Very good. That came out on Cartoon Network. I did watch it. But here's the thing. Did you support it? Did we talk about it on the midnight boys? Did you you keep saying how ever lasting all of these things are? But it seems like that show got canceled for the exact reason that you're you're saying, but I was, oh, it's live action. Oh, it's this is not that. If all of these TV shows were as iconic and influential as you would say, why aren't the boomers over there? I'll only interject the TV is so complicated. I mean, the residents didn't get a second season. So I mean, so I mean, that's like almost a

31:26non-argument. But I'm looking at I'm looking at the Simpsons. I'm looking at SpongeBob. I'm looking at Rugrats. I'm looking at Oh, X-Men 97. We covered that on the midnight boys. I'm looking at Pokemon. Well, we covered no, we covered by the way, we covered X-Men 97 on the midnight boys. And we should just say that you hated it. So so so if we're going to talk about is this is our is my opinion, my critical opinion. Hold on, hold on, hold on. We're going to need a side bar about this X-Men 97 opinion. You don't want to get into. We don't have time. But I say this though. So my chambers asking, so asking, hold on, hold on, just real quick. So asking whether or not I enjoyed or supported a ThunderCats cartoon, which every ThunderCats cartoon that's come out, okay, let's come on. I've watched it, right? Asking whether or not I've enjoyed or supported it because it hasn't been on the midnight boys is a weird argument, especially since you mentioned X-Men as a part of 90s animation that you loved and you have done nothing on this podcast for two different seasons of X-Men 97 except shit on it, which is a revival. X-Men 97. Hey, hey, hey, hey,

32:30it's called X-Men 90 fucking seven. Okay. So it's called X-Men 97. So apparently you don't like the X-Men cartoon from from the 90s and X-Men 97 as much as you say, thank you, dude. I'm glad that you brought up this place because all of us have jobs talking about lore stuff, right? All of us have jobs talking about lore stuff. We all have jobs talking about it. I'm going to use a different exhibit and the exhibit is this. It says, I wasn't a comic book scholar as a kid. I knew of them, but most of my knowledge of the Marvel characters came from the 80s animated series and pop culture. Who do you think said that? Richard Nixon. Yes, he was the first to say it. That was Kevin Feige. Okay. Who said that? Kevin Feige said that a lot of his, and he goes on to say just how much of this medium, just how much of all of this lore that the 80s cartoons solidify

33:31for him. So you guys don't exist as the Midnight Boys without this era. You're simply not here, because without the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this podcast doesn't exist and all three of you know it. So the reason that you are sitting here talking to me, the reason that you were in Vanity Fair the reason that you're joe me the explainer that you're a chuck that you're Steve that I'm me. The reason Seth is here, the reason the set exists, the reason all of it by the guy who put it together is because he was inspired to be deep into these characters and to these worlds by stuff that he watched in cartoons in the 80s. He said that I didn't. What a boomer tape. You're the main argument is that you guys are not a main argument. I want to make sure that you guys can hear what I'm saying. You brought up, you brought up the last thing legacy of any of this stuff

34:35and you brought it up to say that I don't watch the Thundercats, right? And so my retort to that is not only do I watch the Thundercats. It was you and your elk. It was like, like, I only do I watch the Thundercats. Not only did you watch the one of the cartoons that you said you love that you fucking hate now, but I'm also saying that the legacy of all of that time lives on in stuff like this. I couldn't care less whether or not Kevin Feige likes this stuff or doesn't like this stuff. What I'm telling you is that my point is that this era of television is so singularly important. What it did for to expand everybody's mind. It's more it's more important than the 90s. Yes. It's not more varied. It's not deeper, but it's more important. So you're on your own. I actually just got you. You are saying the quality of 80s children's programming was higher than the 90s. I like them better, but that doesn't matter. But I ask you a question. Well, the simple question in its clarity is what is the greatest era of cartoons 80s versus 90s.

35:43And it was obviously open to interpretate. And his argument is that the 80s is the greatest because it came first. It came first. No. Well, more if I understand it, well, we get into that later. Yeah. Why don't we open it up to you, Your Honor? Why don't you, uh, I don't know guys, I watched all this shit like it was. It was great. And I and I was so young watching TV that I saw like the really fucked up stuff coming out of the end of the 70s. Yeah. Cause they was still putting that on the UHF and re running like they were like, we, I don't know, we put this in front of our kids. What does it do to your brain? And it was just so experimental and strange. And so yeah, I got to grow up in an era where all of the animated programming came post the Reagan administration's decision to loosen the FCC rule that allowed entire programming to exist around something that would have a product. So there used to be an FCC regulation against that. And then they were like,

36:43nah, fuck it. Let's, let's make an entire show about this gavel and holy gavvy. And then everyone to watch this episode of gavvy and be able to buy all of the toys. And literally, you're correct. Everything came from a consumer intent. But I don't think that lessons the goal of any of the creators, right? Cause a lot of creators were putting out stuff that they were like, I don't know is this the fucking toy? And then plenty of people were like, yeah, what if it was a story about these guys? You know what I mean? So I don't even know how to approach this debate from a decision-making standpoint because each one of these errors provided so much valuable programming, so much consistent inspiration. And do you punish the later Renaissance masters because they learned from all of the experiments of the early impressionists? Like everybody goes to look at the Mona Lisa and they're like, what is this? It's so little. It's so shitty. And of course, that's not meaningful. The the piece itself is almost unimportant. It's the fact that this was the very first time

37:48that somebody was like, all right, it's a portrait, but out the window, there's a landscape. And everybody was like, what a landscape and a portrait in the same image? What? You can fucking do that. And so from there, everybody's making landscape portraits. They're putting like people in large situations. It's not just portraiture. And as a result, the Mona Lisa becomes the one of the most important pieces in art history, just because somebody tried something so experimental. I don't know that it, it's like, do you do you punish the creation of everything inspired by the Mona Lisa because it was not the inspiration itself? Can you say the Mona Lisa is one of the greatest art pieces of all time? Or does it simply represent such a critical moment for the art world as a whole that it will always be a classic? I'll answer this question. So I'll tell you, I'll answer this question. This is the way I look at this. Let's say more of a statement, but it is a debate. But let's say you bring in, let's let's take this to hip hop. Let's say you bring in a record,

38:54right? And the record is the first time somebody used the 808. It's the first time you heard it. First time somebody put it, the drum is on there or whatever. But the record sucks. The record is still important because it's the first time you heard this technology. My thing is, what if you bring in the first time somebody ever used the 808 and the record is amazing? Then it has two things going forward. Number one, the composition of the Mona Lisa is phenomenal. Like the composition as it as a piece of art is phenomenal. It is also pushing art forward generations, right? But the composition of it is phenomenal. The cartoons that go back before the Flintstones, we could talk about cartoons. Everything has, but when I'm talking about our cartoons to me that are both phenomenal and scope and story, maybe not an animation, like phenomenal and scope and story,

39:55but also insanely influential to one of the most important groups of creators ever. Because a lot of the cartoons that you guys are talking about, they were created in the 80s. There was a time when this was just 80. No, that's great. That's a good point. That's a good point. Okay. So let's use your hip hop analogy. Okay. One of the first examples of like rap that really escaped pop culture. Grandmaster flashed in the first five. For example, rap, that's a, okay. Like cool. Okay. This is what 1989 or not. Yeah, like late like 80s, 30s. Like the like via Blondie. There was a moment where Blondie was like, hey guys, why do America rap is a thing? He's talking about the message. It's before the 1990s. Yeah, like a breakthrough. Exactly. Right. And then like that's when people are like, yo, people can really like rap like this. Oh my gosh. This is like, this is crazy. Then you come back like mid mid 90s, you get Eric Beaneer King mid 90s. Early 90s mid. Yeah, but like you'll go,

40:59just go ahead and do it. Yeah. You know what I'm trying to say. Yeah. Why are you doing this to me? Because because the timeline matters. The time I say, you're right. You're right. Yeah. Because, but but go ahead. Go ahead. Would you like even though like we know Grandmaster Fash for your five, that is like extremely important to hip hop. Would you now go back and say that Eric Beaneer King, what they were doing, was not trans-hover. It was not magical and that you would put a Grandmaster Fash in a level above Eric Beaneer King because they came first. I love this that you went here. It's all your dates and messed up, but that's okay. I'm, I'm, so, so your dates and messed up, but that's okay. I love that you did this. Rock him is exactly what I'm talking about. Rock him is exactly what I'm talking about because rock him to me is the Marlon Brando of Ratt. Marlon Brando as an actor is the guy. He didn't do this by himself, but he represented the break between I say, I'm a blah blah blah blah blah. And to get my soul. The method sort of approach to acting that changed up that led to Nicholson and Hoffman and all of these guys from

42:07the Stratford School, the stuff that that came right after him, right? And changed the way movies are created. Rock him is that for hip hop. But if you were making the top five lists right now, a top ten list, people wouldn't put them on it. People wouldn't put them on it because the people that came behind him, the JZ's and the people like that have built on what he did and taken the art form to a place where they won all the Grammys and they sold all the records and they did all of that. But the fact that you bring up rock him who legitimately to me, to me, other people will say his cool G rap, other people will say his different people is the architect of modern rap. His place in this particular game and hip hop cannot be clouded or shrouded by nobody to me because he legitimately to me changed the way people rap and something else. He remains right now, no matter who you put on a mic that started rapping after him, one of the single nicest motherfuckers that you've ever heard before in your life. So if you listen to lyrics or fury, if you listen to some of the stuff

43:11that came out after that, if you listen to Guess Who's Back, if you listen to so much different rock him, shit, your favorite guy who sold 10 million records and run all the Grammys and all of the stuff that matters, he'll I'll wrap them right now. And I'm already that. And I will say if we get out of, you know, being so in sindy area, plethora, whatever, I do agree with you. I love cartoons. And if you ask any of the animators, the storyboard artists, directors who came up during the 90s, they will obviously gush about what was happening in the 60s, the 70s and 80s. And I agree it is so, so, so important. The future is mashup. Yes. It's so important to honor the architects. But if we right now are making a list of not just the greatest era, but the greatest cartoons of all time, I would argue that there are so many on this list that would easily be in the top five because it, it takes great architects to build a foundation. And then you see your kids and your

44:18sons and your daughters run and push and medium forward and take something that people thought was childish and only for kids and to say like, no, we are going to expand through this art. What you think a cartoon can be. That's not just the sentence. That's not just Batman the animated series. We respect the 80s. You know, we respect at we respect the caribbean, the teenage, we ninja turtles, the transformers. But I don't think that we can have an honest conversation without being quite honest that narratively. What these, what these heroes were pushing just in how they were drawing, how they were storyboarding, how they were taking stuff where it's like, oh, this is a narrative that's going to follow episode one, episode two, episode three. We do have to bring that in the conversation. And that's not to denigrate the 80s. That's just to say like, hey, every art form is going to progress. And the 90s is where the peak is. I don't agree. And so this is the crux of the argument. The crux of the argument is while I do agree that there's more variety and

45:21more production value in the cartoons from the 90s, I don't think that they're that much better. I legitimately don't. I think that a lot of times they're more daring. They look better. There's different things. But as far as like what I give from them, I don't think they're that much better. Don't you think that's nostalgia? It doesn't matter whether or not it's nostalgia. I think it matters very much. Well, no, because it you have nostalgia. Yes, this is your stuff. So so when you so when you're telling me right now that like you look at all of these all of these these things from the 90s, you're talking to me from the nostalgia. See, a lot of people think that nostalgia is only the oldest thing. Nostalgia is your thing. So when you're talking to me about 90s cartoons, you're talking to me about nostalgia. You're looking at this and it's interesting that we haven't really talked that much about nostalgia. Like we went to other things that you know, like what the television academy and all of these people thought. But you're talking to me within the nostalgia. Okay. And so like what I'm saying is that doesn't matter. I am saying I legitimately

46:23like the Thundercats more than Rugrats. I like it better. Like I'm saying that I legitimately legitimately like the Transformers more than SpongeBob Squarepants. I like it better. The Decepticon. Just a question though. I apologize for everything. But do you think that that's connected to what was new in your own timeline? I saw something really interesting happen, right? Because I grew up in the era of brand newness of Star Wars. So like I got to see the first Star Wars in the theater. I was like a baby. My parents brought me to see the first Star Wars. And so that always had a deep connection for me. Everything came out in real time. My parents were like, this fucking Star Wars, right? And I got to experience it. So when the next generation of Star Wars was coming out, all of the advertising it targeted that legacy of nostalgia that everyone's like, you remember how this could go? You remember what this feels like to love these characters to get in this universe, to share it with your kids, right? But the kids didn't have the same access portal because

47:29their experience was defined by the permanent existence of all of these icons and ideas, right? So kids born into the prequel era were like handed down Star Wars as something that forever existed. And some of the generation got into it. It was able to take it as their own. But I saw something totally different happen when like Guardians of the Galaxy came out. And all of a sudden a brand new generation of not just kids, but also parents are experiencing something for the first time. So just to make this point, I feel like it's important to the debate, to just acknowledge that what you experience as a kid is forever going to be the thing that you beat your chest about because it's what helped you gain your perspective on the world to come. It shaped the way that you receive these kinds of things. And I don't know that we can realistically determine a greatest

48:31era when the one you experience in real time with your friends and other people that helps you sort of understand, oh, I think these things, I feel this way. This is what I find funny. These are the things that I care about that it's it happens in real time in your generation with all of the media that's put in front of you. And it's what you and your friends choose to share and sort of fall in best friend love about. Right? I worry that we won't be able to authentically determine because the greatness of it is almost held by the behold. So I actually agree. But like, but this is what I say, this is what I'll say, this is what I'll say to Star Wars and to what we're talking about. I'll say that Luke is actually tried to non-styles around, right? He like literally literally tried it, right? In the 90s. He tried it in in in in Phantom Minus, right? He like, he tried to non-styles right. He tried to give you more elevated what he thought was political and stuff, but at that time, he couldn't execute it, right? The other the other stories.

49:35There's a there's something about the the first three stories that is simpler. Therefore, I don't want to say that it's better, but it's more digestible. So even what we're talking about, which is the idea that something is better just because it's more expansive, I will always push back. Something is something is good to me because how it makes you feel and how long it lasts. And that is what I'm judging this on. Yeah, just like sex. Am I right guys? Like how like how long something lasts? How I make you feel? That is why I fuck with it. But I would I would if we're using that criteria, how something makes you feel and how long it lasts, I would argue a lot of the cartoons that we're talking about have lasted longer. Well, no, I mean, relevant longer. Well, I mean, it's tough right? Because then you get into the conversations about like the really the really older stuff like stuff stuff like

50:36the stuff that came to the US like Star Blazers or Battle the Planet. Like stuff that was in Japan for years before that. The thing about the 80s that were so interesting is it was a like, I don't fucking know kind of era, right? And so a lot of people would just put it up shots like maybe this is a thing. The story of any of those like original Japanese animation shows is how the format of American distributors being like, well, let's just get a license for this and they completely change it. I don't make it. Let's make it. Let's make these guys this. We can maybe not animation, but like a power ranger. They just didn't have any translators. So they were like, I don't know. Maybe these guys are bad guys and they sort of wrote a new story about it. You're right. That did really become the whole Saban era of power rangers. I don't know, but I still love those shows. Those things that I learned from watching OG Voltron and especially like Robotech,

51:37those lessons, I learned them almost too young, right? It was such a sophisticated emotional. It didn't cater to the idea that you're a kid and that you wouldn't understand. It's more like, you get this. You're a fucking kid. Because kids are so adaptable. You're like, okay, that's the message. Your OS is overwritten so quickly. It's almost dangerous. Can I ask just break a character for a minute as a creator of Robotech again? How do you delineate the eras? Because you guys lampooned stuff from the 70s, from the 80s, from the 90s and obviously you grew up in the 80s. So you'll have that. I did. I had this weird thing of growing up in the 80s in the 90s. I was 16 years old when I moved to LA and that was 1991. Maybe 1990. I had a secondary teenage evolution. I went to school out here, had fun groups out here with a prom in LA. It was a very weird duality, but I got to experience both sides of it. Also, I never felt,

52:41like it took me a second to find my literal peers. Because the shit that I wanted to talk about in the 80s, there was very limited access to other people that shared that view. It was mostly like, the fuck are you talking about? I love Batman. You gotta understand the fantastic force. So creating the family dynamic. It's not that. We're about chicken the biggest thing that we're conscious of is just knowing that we're not the sum total of experience, especially with pop culture. And that's really what we think robot is, it's like your relationship with pop culture in whatever era it is. And sometimes we can apply more screen time to something that we know more people are like asked about. But a lot of times we love just putting four or six seconds at something that one guy is like, Tiki, was that the fucking thing from the carvel in these jerseys and we're like, that was. Why would you make that? We're like, this for you, dude. That's for you. It's my favorite. It's for whoever got it. Yeah, there's somebody. There's somebody, but you know, it's like, we can't put more than three seconds into this guy's. So here's the thing. We will be arguing

53:46all day, judge Seth. We want to talk more about robot chicken. So you do have to make a decision. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you make your decision and then we'll get into more of the left contentious part of this episode. Well, I want to give my final. Right, right. This is why I feel this way. But just to introduce the debate, I have to say, because what we're really talking about is greatness and what is the definition of greatness, right? Like, especially you could apply this to almost any field, the professional boxing, right? Like I look at someone like Mike Tyson is one of the greatest fighters of all time, but I was also living through his era. So I got to see him as a young fighter with all of his complicated circumstances. I got to see him raw and young and sort of un... Like, so few people had taken advantage of the way that people would come to like, just come at him. And so to me, he's one of the greatest fighters of all time, but then I look at footage of Ali and even like casual footage, interviews, him at like the Oscars and it's,

54:47I can't, it's hard to argue. So, right? So what we're talking about is greatness. Yes. And what would define the ultimate perception of the greatest era of cartoons, the 80s versus the 90s? Here we are. So I'm going to tell you how I view these cartoons and stuff like this. And this is the part where there is nostalgia that's definitely in it, right? So if you think about the characters that are discussed here, obviously ingenuity matters, lore matters, all of that stuff is important. But the thing that makes these cartoons endure to me is because the question is answered, which of these characters do you want to be your friends? Like, which of these worlds do you want to hang out in with these characters as your pals? Do you want to hang out with Michael Angelo? Do you want to pet a care bear? How awesome would it be to fight alongside Lionel? He'd go on adventure with he man, hang out with the duck tails like adopt a pound puppy, all of those cartoons that we had in

55:52the 80s, they were made for a different time. You did not live through the 80s. You survived to them, right? It was a world and a time before the world was disinfected. And when you see that the world was disinfected, it becomes the beginning of something very distinct. This freedom to create, which I applaud, this freedom to be daring, which I applaud, this use of the medium in a different way, which I applaud. But what I will say is that it also got fragmented. It was the venture cartoons for the adventure kids. There was more dope cartoons for the dope people. There were more, there were cartoons that were Daria and Beavison but hey, you brought those cartoons up. Those cartoons were more aimed at me, somebody who was born in 1980, but like Beavison but hey, it was since a rebellion for me. And Daria comes from that and all of that stuff. Elon flux, all of the stuff, all of that stuff, I watched it all mattered. But it to me was much more of its time than the stories, the lore,

56:54the characters and the kingdoms that were really birthed out of the cartoons in the 80s. And not just that the talent came from it. So if you're saying the best, the best, the greatest of cartoons. The greatest. I'm making the distinction. If you're saying the best era of cartoons, the 90s, if you're saying the greatest, the greatest era of cartoons, great means, lasting influence, ingenuity, quality of art, all of that, I say that it is the 80s. Russ McKase. Gentlemen. If we're talking about greatness, I think what's important is Mr. Lathan obviously brought up that without the 80s we would not be here. But I think what is actually impressive about the 90s is the very thing that Mr. Lathan over there, 10 of greats. It's the fact that with these cartoons, it opened up a wide net.

58:00It's the fact that yes, in the previous decade, maybe the lines were more drawn. You were a nerd. If you like team man, teammates, we've been in tutorials or if you couldn't put your X-Men action figures away. But I really think it's the 90s why this show exists because it says two people. Hey, it doesn't matter if you're into SpongeBob or the Rugrats or Powerpuff Girls, Indexers Laboratory or Dario and Beaves and Butthead. We are opening up this world to show all of us deep, deep, deep down our nerds. And that's what I think the true measure of greatness is. It's the fact that saying, hey, instead of thinking that this is a small tribe that will never get bigger, hey, man, Simpson might not be your thing, but I got something called Gundam. I have something called Dragon Ball Z. I have all of these other things. And if you can get all of those people in the net, suddenly it's less year-neared in its pet. We're all nerds. So when I think

59:07about greatness and what I think about the 90s, I think it's taking all of those decades that came before, not just the 80s, not just the 70s, not just the 60s. It's taking all the blood, the sweat, the tears, the fighting, that all of those animators, all those storyboard artists, and saying, hey, now that the leash is taken off, we're going to show you what we can actually do. And I think that that is something that we always need to celebrate when we talk about animation. We have to celebrate the fact that like, hey, all the architects that came before, they built such a solid foundation. We're going to get buckwild, we're going to get fucking crazy, and we're going to show people that it isn't just a small tribe anymore. This is something global. I mean, spent a lot of time talking about greatness. You know, you mean, lasting influence, size, skill, staying power, whole thing, and allow me to piggyback off your sports metaphor, your honor. The 80s. The 80s, because I'm not the sports guy.

1:00:09I'm not the sports guy. We talk about the NBA, the 80s, for the NBA. It's kind of like the 80s for animation. Bird and magic, Transformers, GI Joe, he-man, came and showed the world like, yo, this is something that has lasting influence. This will be here for a long time. This is not just a fad, it's not just a moment. This, this medium, this era of whoops, this era of cartoons is here to stay. But the 90s is where size, skill, staying power, and lasting influence were perfective. Armico Jordan, SpongeBob, Batman, the Simpsons. We've gone this whole time. I haven't missed your family guy, by the way, just something to know. Animaniacs, the 90s is where cartoons made their magic. Speed takes so long. And it's the- Can you just say that just real quick? You guys, I should be-

1:01:10This is not for the eye-op juxtapes, it's for the eye-op juxtapes. Hey, we got you. We got you. We got you. Hey, let's go. Hold on, hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. You will have an opportunity for a rebuttal. Okay. Because, because, because you guys have- Hold on. Hey! Galslipersuit. I'll be quick, Your Honor. The things that indeed raised the creatives and the authors of the 90s owe a great service to the 80s. Truly, they do. And it's the level at which they were allowed that level of expression, that level of ingenuity, that level of bravery to change formulas in such a way that the 90s brought in really makes a foundation upon a stronger foundation. And the things that brought

1:02:11everything out of the 2000s and the early 2010s, even today, the people that were raised in the 80s were now making the things that the 90s are produced. And yes, we owe a great debt to it. But the things that came out of this both in critical acclaim and an ingenuity come from the 90s. In an impeachable. We are not slaves to time and we are not slaves to fucking- Okay, so quick, so quick, so- Where are- Galslips have your attention. That's what- So, okay. So quick, quick rebuttal. Just quick rebuttal. Because I didn't know that there were going to be three different clothes and arguments, right? Like, I thought- Are we not a team? Well, no. Are we- Are we- Are we- Are we- Are we- Are we- Are we- Are we- Are we- Have you ever been in a court before? You're in a court? One guy, it's a- Hold on, hold on, listen, listen. Have you ever been in a rebuttal to a closing statement? Well, there's already a Kageru court. I'm telling you, shut up. There's a whole- You already got your time. Listen, can I talk? There's a whole team of lawyers. There's a whole team of lawyers and one person gives a closing statement. That's how that goes. Well, okay, I'm going to respond directly.

1:03:11I'm going to do- Why are you responding to a closing statement? I'm like, I'm going to respond to gentlemen. I knew he was going to respond directly to gentlemen. I'll tell you why. I do that. I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. I do it, I do it. That is a fucking horrible example. So in the 80s, so in the 80s, so the 90s were better than the 80s for the NBA, specifically on superficial levels. In the 90s, you had- In the 80s, you had three different. You had the Celtics, the pistons, the Lakers, the 76ers. You had all-time grates exploding the league to a place that they've never gone to before. You had the ascension of Michael Jordan. You had Magic Versus Bird. You had Downright culture that has almost not been matched in the NBA since. Versus 90s. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is not the Belsen incident. I can't get a talk. This is the Belsen incident. Versus 90s, the M. Mike, I like this. Oh, my cause Mike is.

1:04:12What? Belsen, Belsen. What are you talking about? Belsen. Belsen. Well, Belsen. You go and say here, tell me that it's a con like Joey. Joey, Joey, Joey, Joey, Joey, Joey, Joey. You got to hear it. I'm gonna tell you, let me fuck. Let me finish, bro. I did not interrupt you while you were talking. I did not interrupt you while you were talking. We're so far. Okay. So let's listen. Let's just see where this goes. Like the ascension of Michael Jordan comes along, but it also comes along with this insane dominance. It also comes along with X-Wing. Jump me. Let me finish. Aftermarket on the sneakers. Listen, listen, it also comes along. Like it also comes along with expansion coming into the league. It also comes along with a different style of basketball. Like it, Michael Jordan, if you look at Michael Jordan in the 80s, in the 90s, that was a less competitive decade of basketball with actually less guys that got to the mount top and to the peak. This is already been brought by the way. But when I'm telling you, it's not arguing for brown because everybody won't champion chips on browns watch.

1:05:13But what I'm saying is if you compare 90s basketball to 80s basketball, I actually understand why y'all would like the 90s more. It's a place where the global market went crazy, where they were able to coalesce around one guy more than anything else, where you have worse basketball being played if you look at some of the nicks and stuff like that. Look, I'm not getting to all of that. But I would say that the same decade that gave you Dr. Jay, Bird, Magic, Michael Jordan, the bad boys' pissants, different styles of basketball from different places, fast breaking on the West Coast, beating your ass up in Detroit, the blue collar basketball you get from the Celtics, all of that stuff, that's better, that's a better decade. That's a better decade of basketball. This is the same for you. He's mostly saying he doesn't like your closing eyes. I'm saying the closing argument is actually indicative of the argument that we're having right now. It's not because what you're looking at is you're looking at

1:06:15how shiny the toy is rather than just outside. That's not true. What I ask you about is you brought up my daughter. But I know you don't agree with this. No, you don't. I will. I will put up this all the time. No, I talk about when we're going to go with it. Please get back to the question. I actually disagree with you. I don't know if you're really fine. I know. What if I ever say that the line on the top of the game. Let me just give me one second. Get me a feel like it's own clip. We spit. That's really is. We each on a podcast a couple of weeks ago we spent like 15 minutes talk about the last dance and what that did to us. And even though it was this pandemic, the phenomenal. Like what Mike Viles movie. That was my set of words. Mike meant in in that moment in real in real time right in the 90s. You're going to sit here and tell me that look, we Mike or not my chart magic and birth save ball right 70s. It was bad.

1:07:16Like the Joe uses all that we get to the we get to 80s that uh that rivalry brought the NBA back in 84 when David Stern takes over like that's better to be the dominance by one player. I don't I'm that's it but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about when the league exploded. The league exploded in 92 when Mike and them went to Barcelona. Technically, whoops brother technically we're talking about the greatest era of because he's lying. I'm not lying. I know you're lying. Seriously stop saying that. Like I'm being all the way. No, I said he's simply saying that the original space jam was better than the new star. Your honor. Would you please gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen, this has been hilarious. This is what we do. Welcome to the big dip. Okay, great, great. This is a really challenging question just in summary before we throw this to the poll because it is um do I render a decision before after the poll? I mean you could if you feel like I don't really know we're not going to I genuinely we're not doing a poll. We're not going to know what the poll is. The people

1:08:18are all fair enough. I genuinely don't know because I do believe that the context of the greatest is kind of defined by the beholders who get through experience in real time. Like we've done so much stuff on robot chicken through the years and the people that stuff the stuff that people love the most is always something that they're either discovering but like that's the fucking craziest thing is how many people were like I didn't know he man was a thing and I love Skellator now and it is like why it just feels so disruptive to what I would think your learning mechanisms would be like parents who told me that they showed their kids robot chicken star wars before they showed them real star wars and I was like does that fuck up the way that you think of Darth Vader? Like when Darth Vader's coming at you with a lightsaber you like that guy's not scary. I saw him in a Christmas sweater on roller skates and uh it didn't seem to like the comedic interpretation of it doesn't seem to color the interpretation of any of this sincere messages. That was a conversation

1:09:18that Jeff Johns and I had about the DC characters when we set out to make robot chicken DC specials he's like I said what's what's on the table what are we allowed to do he's like you do anything we'll sort of know when he's when you see it if it's funny or not but he said you can't break these characters these characters exist at such a weight and gravity that regardless the interpretation whatever the audience's first blush is with them they love them because that's what those characters do they inspire love they inspire attention right and then you're captive for whatever story is being told around them it's it's funny like I I talked to I had this thought I love I love Stephen King and I started to see so many media interpretations of King that you have I had this realization like King is sort of the new Shakespeare right like we we can just see somebody else do the stand at some point it's it's like uh it's a western now right strange things with Osbeck everything is blue that filter right right so so those formats really work the audiences appetite for new

1:10:25versions of these kinds of characters in a similar story that innovates in one way or another that that remains like from the days of you know the greatest bards or racontours moving about around fires and telling people stories right but that's I don't know how to how to discern what is the greatest because I think what's most great is the fact that we as a species are addicted to this that we want to share these stories and our our celebration of great characters together I love that the most that that's what's persevered is whenever so bored or so or so well programmed that we're not looking for something new something to something new that we can currently share together but all along these same lines all along these same concepts and formats I don't know guys less about labels you got to make a decision oh yeah oh

1:11:33totally fair well yeah judge thanks guys yeah he's a real I do I keep it really really real yeah this sucks this sucks because I I agree with everything that you've said and also I really like I feel you guys and kind of was in both of these eras it's all great is what he said no no no that's not fair the toughest test of Seth's career right genuinely is right this is worse than accidentally handing out an Oscar for all la la land well if we're talking about greatness right and the greatness that's consolidated in a period of time I think it it will come down to what is most remembered and it's impossible to argue how all of the innovations of the 80s all

1:12:35the creations of the 80s all of the tools and mechanisms and like just the thought process right like there was so much taking industrial things and commercial concepts and mashing it up with art in a way that was liberated by war like Warhol's movement Basquiat like all of these other people who were like art is art can be something that is commercial right like art is the feeling that you get when you witness something and that's why Warhol was obsessed with the idea of the Campbell soup can he said what in in post wartimes what represents greater stability than canned nutrition and so just that iconic design that was what he argued pop art is akin to Da Vinci you could you could own this piece of commercial art the the the borax soap box like this is a globally recognized

1:13:41image that inspires a feeling to generation so don't hate me guys I have to say that the 80s was the greatest era of cartoons and all things that came after that exist in their own unfolding greatness will forever owe a debt to this period of time that showed everybody how to continue to innovate it's why like the very first American Idol that I saw in the US is probably the best example of that format even though it was extracted and elevated to greater commercial success that idea of genuinely sourcing a talent from all over the nation before everybody was corrupted with like well we don't want to make this person feel bad or everyone was like God it is really hilarious to watch these narcissists try when they just don't have the talent right the original contest where

1:14:42even Simon Cowell was like what are we talking about guys we're not this isn't a joke we're going to put millions of dollars behind this person and are they going to sell tickets are they going to sell records like all of that it's foundational it's foundations exist in that period of time I know I love all of these things that's what's so hard I love all this shit so much I made a fucking TV show about it for 20 years what are we talking about I love all of this shit gentlemen you have all made incredible cases I'm sure I'm going to get fucking dragged but you know what do you want I'm an elder statesman and I'm always going to be well thank you you're on a bank that I will thank you gentlemen this was an incredible debate and I feel like it was a privilege to preside over it definitely all right before we before we leave want to get into some robot chicken stuff before you go yeah you know my I'm just going to catch these Pokemon while we're talking no okay I'm going don't fuck with me guys what did I can't count anything I'll check with the auto catcher guys okay y'all are y'all on this program no I'm I'm so I'm like it's still

1:15:45shocking how many people still playing it's no that's what's fun is like it's first of all it's the only thing in my life that's not work like even all of my greatest passions got turned into a job really hey hey I'm actually here you guys just robot chicken just released a special have you seen it I have to do the anniversary of the old special yeah by first question for you is very very simple how do you start put it because robot chicken puts its arms around cartoons of other decades obviously that's what we'll be talking about how do you put your arms around the decade that you were a part of well for us like or at least I speak for me but Matt Matt and I were in lockstep about this we talked about what we wanted the because they came at us and we're like all right we're gonna do two specials it's already been announced that we did a cartoon network special come out next year and a wholly dedicated adult swim special so we were privileged enough to be like on that I mean obviously riding on the shoulders of you know Michael O'Lean and Keith

1:16:49Crawford and Mike Lazio who sold this block sort of renegade bullshit programming between 1130 at night and 6 a.m. on Sunday they were like they were like do whatever you want see if you can get commercials see if you can get any advertising dollars against it we give you zero money what was what they said and so they did they took like they essentially clip art of existing animated stuff properties that they owned and made like space ghost and Harvey Birdman attorney law like just created the weirdest most renegade shit and then bought reruns of shows right like that's why family guy wound up back on Fox we were long canceled and then lasso bought the reruns of family guy those first we did 22 but I think they only had the first like 13 or 14 of them and they just ran the shit out of those and it just got so much viewership that McFarlane called me and was like hey I know you guys pitched this week because we had made

1:17:50robot chicken as like like web a web episode web episode stuff for dial up internet yeah okay this is very early say like 99 we made those first things so many gave us a little bit of money and they're like what can you do with this I'm like I don't know I'm just off sort of figured it out we're like what's legal and they were like I don't know and so we just made a bunch of really renegade shit and then I tried to sell it a bunch of places we almost sort of the comedy and then September 11th happened and they're like we're just not doing comedy right now and um we tried to sell it I came at MTV at one point we even showed it to SNL like because we had these little shorts and I was like I don't know what the fuck this is but it's stop motion toys doing pop culture jokes I swear this is a thing and uh uh McFarlane told me that adult swim was like buying stuff and so we wound up having a meeting with the people who've taken that over with lasso and they were like can you make quarter hours of this I was like I don't know what a quarter

1:18:51hour is they're like it's 15 minute programming I was like yeah yeah for sure and they were like what could you do like 22 20 of them we're like yeah fuck yeah of course and then uh and then they we did we just said about doing that but it was a period of time where all of these other creators were having a similar experience right and adult swim was very intentional about getting us all together did you guys know that you were created because when I was watching adult swim as a kid I did not understand the humor until I got it was like this alternative type of humor that is now all like comedy is now did you feel like you are a part of something or is this like no a bunch of weird shoes is just happening we're doing our own thing well I love comedy and I've been raised on it and studied it like for as long as I've been aware of those kinds of things and so I was absolutely aware of the fact that there was a tonality shift but it had happened through advertising it all through the 90s right like so the 80s were the end of the 70s like intentional parental programming and the 70s were a result of

1:19:59all of the drug experimentation in the 60s where they're like oh we got to teach these kids about life and so all the stuff that we got in the 80s was heavily PSA and like it's okay to cry and if you pee in your pants fight you're gonna move past it and also like make sure you eat vegetables and don't cover your shit and sauce like this is real basic don't get in white vans like look both ways for like I'll just like trying to keep you turns out creepers are just snatching kids so like watch out for creepers kids right yeah yeah that's the thing so all of the hard lessons of the 80s got really um actualized in the 90s right the 90s was the most latch key era available like parents was just like I don't fucking know do it yourself right and we and so all the everybody you're just on your own right and you're just on your own the TV's the thing that's given you information MTV was at least straight shooters like there was a point where MTV was the news and also all your sociological research I remember when the real world came out and it was post Rodney

1:21:02King like like post the OJ no real world came out before the OJ trial but it was just like we're gonna put this clansman in this room in this apartment you watched how real people were talking about it like between music videos will give you the rage about the shit and then it would be Kevin Powell Kevin Powell who went on to like run for Congress fucking talking to that chick that was from like Idaho like two real people having a conversation about some shit getting mad and you're like Jesus Christ but it was before any of those any of those commentators recognized the authority they had on camera and so the original real world was so interesting because it was people just doing it by the time they did the LA real world everybody had seen the New York real world and they're like oh I'm gonna be this guy right so by the time they got to San Francisco Puck is like I know how to be the villain on TV right yeah there's a performance too that became instructive for somebody like Spencer Pratt who's like I know how to be the villain on TV so I don't know I've just

1:22:06watched this unfold era after era after era and the same way with comedy and so I said to him sunrise like in our for when we showed up at Comic Con and there was a room of 2000 people that loved robot chicken I was like we got to really think about what we're fucking saying my question my question is this so when when I talk to other creatives and stuff like that they always talk about the lesson from what it is that they made doesn't matter what it is the lesson like asked somebody what's the lesson from this and it's sometimes a narrative lesson but sometimes it's a life lesson for them what's the lesson from robot chicken always follow the audience the audience is the only thing that matters like you're making it for us but we have to be making something that we believe is watchable and entertaining and I got to make a movie and I had to cut it together and there were all these things that I thought were like really important to say on film and

1:23:08and I called I'm like I'm lucky enough to know John Favreau and be able to occasionally call him for advice aside from like hanging out socially but even once a while call him with like real like how the fuck do I do get a question because he's such an accomplished adult and he's incredibly generous and he I told him that I love that but broke so much and he said oh because he probably he positive like this he said there's incidents where you're gonna make something for you and there's incidents where you're gonna make something for them there's you have to weigh the ratio of how much in your thing is for you versus how much is for them and I was like well I've always loved like Albert Brooks this kind of thing goes everything in Albert's movies for them everything nothing for him like he'll say something but it's for them and I really I think about that all the time when we're cutting something when we're putting something together I'm like it's just indulgent like or or is an audience that that both gets this and that doesn't get this get this willing to receive

1:24:09right some always think about there's something in this there's a couple jokes in this special to me that remind me of this where you can see how large the shadow of like Rick and Morty Loose so there's like a joke about that or like even Tyler the creator being on Lloyd or squad where there's a generation of kids were like Tyler created was on like was on adult Twitter that was amazing so I feel like I met Tyler even though if he was 18 when we met we met them all at the up front and last I was like hey these are the lawyers going because I was super excited to meet them just because like a black sketch group and like doing very modern silly sketches and then also the whole music component you just have no idea what somebody is until you see all the shit so I was really excited to meet these kids all night I kept trying to like bro those kids and be like it was my man and they were like I don't fucking know like right so much and I realized it now I was easily in my 30s and they I don't even know if they were 21 when they were doing it right and I think that all of I remember being young and meeting adults and whenever the adult was like so what's

1:25:12fucking cracking here you know I'm thinking like I don't I just don't want to fuck up and say anything right now right so they all kind of cold-shouldered me in the up front oh no yeah it's all right I'm going to pass it I'm glad you brought up Rick and Morty actually because like to see like to see it cast a shadow it's like it's dish adults would show yeah it is but it's also it's from a different moment right and like we I don't know we we talked a lot about what this special was going to be and what needed to have a presence in it and we we went all over the place like we almost did a Ken Burns style thing there was like so many different points of access and as soon as we zeroed in on a cruise just how the hubris and the potential fallibility of a cruise right they did just like here it is and so then it became about like who's on the cruise and what is the story of what's our story and get knowing that the villains were all going to get together and like fucking let's have a villain plot right and and then that not working and that turning into a

1:26:17disaster and we were kind of convinced that we were going to flip the ship everybody loves beside an adventure somebody pitched the idea of Mike Tyson fighting beside and we're like since you're a scholar of this stuff I do want to ask outside of robot chicken we're at a point now where it's like I think the explosion of comic books and the explosion of the stuff that was on robot chicken and adults wouldn't stuff people are like is it over are people tired of this stuff when you see spider man or Batman or whatever like what are your thoughts of like because we finally got so much of it yeah like what do you think the future of it is it's interesting to see right like I think we'll always continue to innovate there's obviously a lot of reflection and and new tellings of old very um foundational properties I I think there's room for all of that I don't expect that we're going to get the ready player one experience that we've all like seemed to crave right like other sides not going to do it it's maybe fortnight but the the idea

1:27:24of being able to carry your skins into your Amazon online experience I just don't think there's going to be such a mass adoption of VR in that way VR seems to be like the most effective in shared shared remote experiences right where you can the same way that you play like um uh halo or something where like everybody from all over the world is in the same space whether you're watching a movie together a tv show together or you're like playing a game I don't know I I feel like um if we're just talking about robot chicken it feels like we've comfortably moved into a place where we could make two specials a year right and we could put out a half hour once a year the DC one the cartoon network one there's the way that we uh there's so many that I love being able to really focus on a single property and tell a story within that and even if it's just a lot of jokes around the universe like we did with Star Wars they all started folding into a narrative

1:28:24so there's narrative all throughout it that's we we kind of can't help but want to tell stories in those universes so to that end we can make half hours about anything right let me ask you this so and this is my last question as our generation continues to get a little bit older right I'm a baby exer more than 1980 so as we continue to get older and when you look Charles brought up he man and the fact that he man is not something that gets them excited at all right so as we age out of being able to sell our nostalgia to their generation what should be the creative edict of people like us of people like us who in 2005 2006 2007 you put this stuff out you goof on it you do whatever it's cool do we find new things to do that with yeah we do okay I mean with robot that's like it's well I've always thought the robot chickens more lifestyle than than like individual icons yeah it's more it was always kind

1:29:25of a pledge of allegiance that people seem to like I thought this was funny yeah this kind of shit is interesting for me that's the you know you talk about adult swim being something that pioneered that or or was at least the the shepherd of those kinds of messages we watched like the stuff that I was raised on money Python SNL um Carol Burnett like OG sketch it that just tried it all just I can soupy sales right like I because I came from because I was in entertainment as a child all of my I like I like I studied as a kid and watched all the shit that came before me just to see how it was done and I I like in all of it to the X games right there was a point where nobody was even trying to do a 360 on a fucking bicycle and now you have people doing like 300 foot flips like stop separate from the bike like Red Bull's profile now yes the fact that something like Red Bull exists to continue to inspire these games exist to like make people think well how can I do it

1:30:31better stronger faster more accomplished like I the the reason we declare something like the 80s the greatest is it was it was just a point of innovation that sort of showed people like you're allowed to do this right if there wasn't all the innovation in the 80s you wouldn't have even gotten something like the judgment night soundtrack right like you wouldn't have what a cool you just what because it was the first time that a very commercial company was like yeah fuck it we'll try fusion rap right and the if you hadn't had walk this way right like rap and rock being like no we're all making music I don't know collision course Jay-Z and Lincoln Park class shit you love do you still do you still love it all as much as you did when you were a kid like all these cartoons all the stuff is because it's your job now well yeah there was an interesting thing right where like as a toy lover I've held every grail that ever like stood yeah about Castle Grace go all of it like I've

1:31:31held the original paint like the lead the lead molds of the rocket firing boba fat you just like oh go and I guess I touched that right and you I don't know it's not that it loses any meeting I still have a passion for all these stories and I love seeing that inspiration in the eyes of the audience but the stuff that that gets me excited it's different right like I went to San Diego this year and I after I did all of my work fair I got to spend an hour just walking the fucking floor yeah and you know if I'm not with the fan lengths of security guards I've got a hat I'm short I just look like a creep right if I have a backpack on nobody will talk to me so that's pretty cool I saw Matt graining out on the on the the floor too I go hey you don't even have a fucking hat on and he was like I just look like an old guy say another vest no set green bro thank you so much for your stuff on the show man I'm honored oh yeah yes you're on

1:32:34earth what is the Jordan's a Jordan yeah