I’m a fan of Green Lantern: The Animated Series. I said as much when I wrote about the Cartoon Network series several times here on CliqueClack during it’s painfully short run (two big space epic storylines in just 26 episodes). And it took over a year since it was canceled, but the complete series Blu-ray finally came out this past spring. I had been slowly rewatching the series through the Blu-ray and with the Independence Day weekend, I sat down watched through to the end. Turns out that I’m still very much a fan of this show.

The main cast’s whole dynamic is great, but the shining stars of the story are the two new characters of Aya and Razer. Both have character growth that develops slowly; you really see it when you watch the episodes one after the other. While the Star Sapphires frustrate me to no end (mostly for the same reasons their whole origin frustrates me), Carol Ferris herself is very well-written. Also it’s so rare for Carol’s Star Sapphire costume to not look male-gazey and I appreciate that her costume in GL:TAS doesn’t make me cringe.

Watching through it again reminded me of how much potential and set-up they had for another season, from Sinestro’s introduction to the mention of John Stewart to that very last heartbreaking shot of the finale. Green Lantern: The Animated Series is a prime example of a show that got some great storytelling done but had so much more to do. Even if you watched the series when it aired, I highly recommend giving the whole series a watch through — the Blu-ray is as good a way to do it as any.

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There’s a difference between the old school Looney Tunes cartoons and Cartoon Network’s Looney Tunes Show. Although the old school WB cartoons focused on a child audience, with a secondary layer for adults, the new school Looney Tunes Show focuses on savvy adults while including comic pratfalls to entertain the elementary aged viewer. Basically, these contemporary cartoons are geared towards former Saturday morning watchers who want cartoons they can watch with their kids while the old school Merry Melodies were geared towards our younger selves with elements our parents could appreciate.

Cartoon Network’s Looney Tunes Show clearly targets an older audience while maintaining slapstick for the younger crowd. If you haven’t caught an episode, Bugs and Daffy are adult male roommates, a la Bert and Ernie, who handle dating while snarking on contemporary society. In the “Black Widow,” Daffy takes a spring vacation while Bugs recreates a 1930s mystery with his girlfriend, Lola. Is it like the original Tex Avery/Chuck Jones cartoons? No. The Looney Tunes Show is closer to its mid-90s WB cartoon siblings who used pop culture to comment on contemporary society for a more aware adult audience. There’s a great opening moment when Daffy snarks about the number of vacation and holidays in the American education system while deciding his low-employed self should vacate instead. The episode includes mild unspoken commentary on adults who recreate their former youth and deliberately enact mischief while fearing facing the consequences. Porky’s ongoing “I left my iron/curling iron/magnifying glass/etc. on”, will resonate with every single vacationing adult.

The show features a lot of SNL vocal talent. Kristen Wiig is hilarious as Lola Bunny. The ongoing literal metaphor gag (“letting the cat out of the bag”) got me every single time. While I’ve seen other cartoons use literal metaphors humorously, I’ve never fallen for it. However, Kristen Wiig’s the master of vocal deadpan. Every time she matter-of-factly discussed the elephant in the room I never expected its accompanying visual cue. Jeff Bergman is equally talented. Without checking IMDb, I wouldn’t’ve known that he played BOTH Bugs and Daffy, with two clearly distinct personalities and vocal inflections. Finally, I would not have pegged Fred Armisen as Speedy Gonzalez without IMDb’s help.

However, I still find the original 1930-1969 Tex Avery/Chuck Jones cartoons like “What’s Opera Doc” or “Rabbit of Seville” smarter than its contemporary offspring. The current show features too much dialogue where silence and gestures could’ve served equally well. “Black Widow” might’ve included more punch if the filler scenes, i.e. Daffy and Porky en route to their vacation, didn’t use as much verbal text. I wonder about our culture that’s losing the ability to read visual cues and between the lines, when we overtly crowd our shows with unnecessary words. Additionally, animation-wise, I miss the detailed backgrounds.

Overall, I think the contemporary Looney Tunes Show is smart because of its vocal talents and covert social commentary. It isn’t the Looney Tunes from our childhood and it isn’t meant to be. It’s more a grown-up version of Tiny Toons than anything else. Think of Lola as a grown-up Babs and Bugs as a wiser Buster. It’s geared towards our grown-up selves who own our own homes and want our contemporary issues reflected back at us in animated form. Rather than our mimicking Bugs and Daffy in “Rabbit Seasoning” as children, they mirror us with tanning salons, cars and daddy issues.

Silly rabbit, The Looney Tunes Show is for adults, not kids. New episodes appear on Cartoon Network every Tuesday at 8/7 central.

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2012 was not the best year for my viewing experience. Besides Community being put on hiatus, the entire DC Nation block (Young Justice, Green Lantern: The Animated Series and the animated shorts) were taken off Cartoon Network’s schedule only 12 hours before air, only to have the Cartoon Network Twitter account happily announce later that day the block was coming back in 2013. I wrote about the situation back when it happened in October, but it is disappointing that we were never given a reason for the hiatus.

Still, this Saturday marks the return of DC Nation and needless to say, I’m very happy about it. The thing is, the episodes premiering this weekend also happen to be the ones that were still sold on iTunes for about 24 hours after the hiatus started, so I’ve already seen Young Justice‘s “Before the Dawn” many times over in the last few months. So without giving away spoilers, here’s why you should watch if you’re at all a fan of the show.

So if you remember from the last episode “Darkest,” undercover operatives Aqualad and Artemis had to kidnap three of the younger team members (in particular Blue Beetle) and blow up the cave in order to keep their cover. “Before the Dawn” is entirely about the team’s multi-layered mission to get the kids back. Missions like this were the norm last season and this one gives us plenty of opportunities to highlight several of the team members while keeping the story moving. For instance, we see more of Artemis and Kaldur undercover, but we also get to see M’gann struggle with the consequences of her actions during and leading up to the mission (something speculated several times over the summer by fans, actually). We also get to find out a little bit more about the future from which Impulse escaped and how Blue Beetle ties in to all of this. In general, we’re getting a clearer picture of the invasion that the season has been leading up to while also building on character arcs.

Personally, my favorite part of the episode was the focus on Batgirl and Robin. Both Barbara Gordon and Tim Drake are characters close to my heart thanks to growing up with the DCAU, but neither have had a huge amount of focus compared to the original team members and characters like Bart and Jaime. But in this episode, we get to see both of them working together to kick alien butt. And as a lifelong Barbara Gordon fan, it made me far too happy to see her take a leadership role, going as far as confidently making a very difficult but necessary decision by the end of the episode. Yes, Batgirl is awesome during this mission. Did I mention we also get an amazing cameo from another iconic Batfamily member that could potentially be foreshadowing a future team member?

So far, season two of Young Justice has had much more focus on the overarching plot and less on the characters. “Before the Dawn” is my favorite episode so far this season because it manages to balance character moments while still having plenty of action and adding to the overall story. The only negative about watching the episode was knowing that I’d be waiting months to find out what happens next, and considering there’s a pretty huge cliffhanger to end the episode … let’s just say I’ve been a very patient fan this winter. I’m definitely going to rewatch the episode this weekend when DC Nation return, but man oh man, I can’t wait for the weekend after to find out what happens next.

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