Michigan native Butch Hartman,
has done every conceivable job in the cartoon industry since
1986.The Fairly OddParents marks his first time as an Executive
Producer. He has two daughters, Carly 8, Sophia, 6 and a wife,
Julieann, whose age he is forbidden from mentioning here.
He hopes to, one day, rule the Earth
television Adult Entertainment The Fairly OddParents is
a cartoon that's smart enough for the 'rents
By Dennis Cass
Posted Friday, April 30, 2004, at 2:39 PM
PT
Fairly Odd wish fulfillment
Little Timmy Turner can have anything his heart desires. In the
animated comedy The Fairly OddParents (Nickelodeon, new episodes
Fridays 9 p.m. ET; previous episodes repeat almost daily) the 10-year-old
Timmy makes wishes and his fairy godparents, Wanda and Cosmo, make
them come true. Sometimes Timmy wants something simple, like transport
to another location; while other times his wishes are more fantastic,
like transforming everyone in his hometown of Dimmsdale into superheroes.
Naturally, all this power comes with a price. When Timmy wishes
that his fearsome babysitter, Vicky, were nice, she becomes (poof!)
a cross between Mary Poppins and Snow White, but her malicious nature
escapes her body in the form of a spider with glowing red eyes,
snapping mandibles, and a white skull on its back. For the rest
of the segment—two 15-minute cartoons comprise each half-hour
show—Timmy tries to stop the bug from (literally) crawling
up the ass of his dad, his school principal, and ultimately, the
president of the United States—in a nice touch, George W. Bush
appears dressed as George Washington, complete with powdered wig—thereby
making them evil, too. Not that Timmy wasn't warned. "There
are repercussions," Wanda says in her anxious, warbly voice
before granting the wish. "All that evil has to go somewhere!"
Now entering its fourth season, The Fairly OddParents is enormously
popular. The second-highest-rated children's program on both network
and cable, Fairly Odd routinely earns top-10 spots on the overall
basic cable charts, occasionally even besting fellow "Nicktoon"
and attention hog SpongeBob SquarePants. Though Fairly Odd's target
age is in the 2-11 demographic, the show also boasts a robust
adult and teen following, which I attribute to its ability to
be sophisticated without giving the feeling that the "adult
material" is tacked on to keep adults from growing bored.
Like the writers on the late, great Animaniacs, the creators of
Fairly OddParents have decided to make the fastest, zaniest, smartest
show they can and trust that their audience, young and old, is
up for the ride.
On the surface, Fairly OddParents plays with the old adage "be
careful what you wish for," but the outcomes far surpass
the typical wish physics you find even in adult stories like W.W.
Jacob's "The Monkey's Paw" or Oscar Wilde's The Picture
of Dorian Gray. On The Fairly OddParents, an oil painting moldering
in your attic would be getting off easy. Although the show is
aimed at children, Fairly Odd cleverly tweaks the usual rules
of ironic wish-fulfillment.
When Timmy wishes he can do "grown-up stuff," for example,
Wanda and Cosmo turn him into an impecunious, out-of-shape, middle-aged
man who tramps around town like a character in a Raymond Carver
story. (Attending an R-rated movie, it's not the content of the
film that freaks Timmy out but the sight of his parents making
out in the theater.) In another segment, Timmy wishes his busy,
neglectful parents had every superpower—in addition to flight
and invulnerability, his mom acquires "meat vision,"
which allows her to shoot hot dogs out of her eyes—but instead
of paying more attention to Timmy, his mom and dad end up fighting
crime and protecting their secret identities. "I don't have
time for Timmy!" shouts Mr. Turner. "I need to make
the world safe for Timmy!" Ultimately Timmy has to wish himself
into a super villain to get his parents to notice him.
But the real genius of The Fairly OddParents lies in the complicated
ways the show places limitations on Timmy. His wishes are constrained
by a fairy code called "Da
Rules." Written up in a floating pink book that Wanda
frequently summons for consultation, some of the rules function
to keep the show's premise from breaking down (Rule #3: A kid
with Fairy Godparents can't tell anyone they exist), but others
seem designed solely to frustrate Timmy. He can wish himself to
be a "freakishly tall" and talented basketball player,
say, but he can't single-handedly bring the Dimmsdale Ball Hogs
out of last place because there is a rule against using wishes
to win contests. There are also rules against stealing, counterfeiting,
interfering with true love, and making every day Christmas, and
they are often interpreted broadly. When Timmy wants tickets to
a sold-out ice show he can't simply wish for them, because then
some other ticket holder would lose theirs, which amounts to stealing.
These limits keep the show from operating as 15-minute reminders
that "absolute power corrupts absolutely." In fact,
Fairly Odd advances a more radical notion: that there is no such
thing as absolute power. I hesitate to attach too much significance
to a cartoon—especially one in which Cosmo conjures an ear
of corn just so he can give it a hug, or Timmy's dad spontaneously
loses the pants that he's wearing—but there is something
heartening about the success of The Fairly OddParents. It's refreshing
to see a show that acknowledges the truth that even those who
have it all can't have it all. Sometimes you can't get what you
want not because the cost is too high or the consequences too
dire, but because, well, you just can't—no matter how hard
you wish.
