Hello, blogosphere, it's Neil. This will not be a Gravity Falls post because there have been no new episodes since "Roadside Attraction". All I have to say about the show this post is that the next episode, "Dipper and Mabel vs. The Future", looks like it will be the saddest episode of the second half of Season 2, as it deals with Dipper and Mabel being a week away from both the end of summer and their thirteenth birthday, and how they initially think it will be awesome to be thirteen, only to have the reality of what's happening dawn upon them, with having to deal with leaving the friends they made this summer, no longer having the freedoms of childhood, and the very likely possibility of Dipper and Mabel going the way of Stan and Ford and losing the loving bond they share. But enough about that until after it airs, or until after the next TV spot airs. Today, I would like to talk about a new thing announced by Nickelodeon and Viacom called The Splat. Referencing the time from the late 1980s to September 28, 2009 when their logo was multiple variations of a splat of orange slime with the word "Nickelodeon" in the middle before it was changed to the word in orange writing with the "N's" looking like humps rather than "N's", it was announced in August but kept deliberately mysterious. The Twitter account for TeenNick's late-night block, "The 90s Are All That" (named for Nick's classic sketch comedy show "All That"), a block that airs reruns of 90s and early 2000s Nick shows, started talking about it. With the cancellation of TeenNick's only remaining original show, "Degrassi", and the show primarily airing reruns of Nick's live-action teen sitcoms, some expected this to be a renaming of TeenNick with reruns of 90s shows running throughout the day. Others thought it would be a new block, a new channel, or a new streaming service. It ended up being the block option, but not in the expected way. Starting on October 5, it will be a nightly block on TeenNick, not the main Nickelodeon channel as many expected, that will air from 11PM to 6AM. It will air shows such as Rocko's Modern Life, Rugrats, The Wild Thornberries, and many other classic Nick shows, in addition to reviving old promotions done in the 90s in a way that would allow them to work for the audience Viacom is targeting with this new block. The network seems to be a way for Viacom to rival Cartoon Network's Adult Swim by taking advantage of 90s nostalgia with classic cartoons and such, rather than airing adult-oriented animation. Many believe that some of Nick's older shows, such as Ren and Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life, worked better as adult cartoons than kids' cartoons due to the former's grotesqueness and the latter's subtext. I'm surprised that both Nick and Disney haven't already made their own rival blocks to Adult Swim. Plenty of Nick's shows, such as Invader Zim, use more black comedy than would be expected for kids' animation, and Disney's Gravity Falls probably only gets away with some of the "over-the-head" jokes because of the heartwarming brother-sister relationship between Dipper and Mabel and how it almost always has a good message about growing up to share. I would gladly support Disney XD and any of the Nickelodeon networks having their own nighttime blocks for teen and adult oriented animation. In addition to this, Viacom is considering reviving some of its 90s shows for a modern audience. As good of an idea as it may seem for some fans of those shows, it says something kind of bad about Nick's current slate of original animated shows when they have to fall back on shows from the 90s in order to attract good Nielsen ratings. The current Nicktoons haven't really gained much of an audience even with kids, with Harvey Beaks, Rabbids Invasion, and Breadwinners being largely ignored by kids, Sanjay and Craig and Pig Goat Banana Cricket serving as rage fuel for old-fashioned animation enthusiasts such as The Mysterious Mr. Ender on YouTube, its Ninja Turtles show only being considered alright because most won't call it a Nicktoon, and SpongeBob and Fairly Oddparents being the only Nicktoons that keep an audience, and more for reruns of older episodes rather than because people like the new episodes. SpongeBob and Fairly Oddparents have been on since 1999 and 2001, respectively, and should've ended in 2004 and 2006, respectively, because their newer episodes are only really watched by hate-watchers that know that both shows have jumped many sharks in the past few years. Unfortunately, Nickelodeon has even more radical plans for SpongeBob, such as a third movie, a SpongeBob-themed Nascar race series, and even a Broadway musical. Yeah. Really. They claim that it will get kids interested in the art of stage musicals at a younger age, but seriously? A SpongeBob Broadway musical? Licensed by Nick? Meant as an extension of the brand and not as a parody? Maybe reviving older shows would be a better idea, if this is what they'll do to both their still-running old shows and their newer shows. I, for one, would like a revival of Invader Zim, Jhohen Vasquez's cult classic science fiction black comedy about an inept alien trying and constantly failing to take over Earth and the paranoid conspiracy theorist human kid who tries to prove to everyone around him that the title character, Zim, is an alien, but is never believed. I would rather it be on a channel like MTV, however, to attract a teen and young adult audience, because of the high level of black comedy and grotesque situations in the show, because it seems that Vasquez prefers making shows for older audiences, and the show was more popular with teens and young adults than kids, anyway. I also think that Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Koinetzko, the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel series The Legend of Korra, which are considered by many to be the best Nicktoons ever made because of its anime-based animation style, relatable heroes and villains, and willingness to tackle many real-world social issues throughout both runs of their shows, should return to create another show set in the Avatar universe. It could be a prequel about an older Avatar, an interquel series set between both shows about Aang as an adult, another sequel show about the Avatar after Korra, or a show about people outside the Avatar's main group of allies and what their perspective of the world is like. A show like one of those might work better on something like Amazon Prime Instant Video, the streaming service that both of those shows are currently available most conveniently on, however. Also, it seems like Mike and Bryan have moved on from Avatar, and, if they were to go back to TV at all, would probably make an adaptation of Threadworlds, the graphic novel series that Bryan is currently working on. If Nick does revive any of their older shows with new episodes, such as Rugrats, Ren and Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life, Hey Arnold, Angry Beavers, CatDog, Wild Thornberries, or Rocket Power, I would find it downright awesome if Alex Hirsch, the Gravity Falls man himself, to serve as the showrunner for one of them after Gravity Falls ends. He knows how to almost perfectly blend (mostly) family-friendly irreverence with genuine heart and respect for his audience (as long as you don't read any Ask Me Anything sessions he does on Reddit, because he very much takes advantage of how he's not monitored by Disney when he's on that website to say some pretty ideologically sensitive things, but that's not what this is about, now is it?), and Nick could certainly use some heart nowadays. Other projects I would want him to work on are making a new show for any network that picks it up, be it Disney XD, Nick, Cartoon Network, or Adult Swim. If he returns to Disney, I might want him to be a part of the DuckTales revival set to happen in 2017, if he doesn't make a new original concept. Some would want him to make a sequel series to Gravity Falls, though that doesn't seem too likely for a lot of reasons, the most prevalent in my mind being the extremely confusing timeframe of the show. It's set in the summer of 2012, yet has been going on for four years, so I don't know exactly when a sequel series would be set. If he were to move to Cartoon Network, I'd want to see him become a writer/storyboarder/director of episodes of Adventure Time, Regular Show, Steven Universe, or We Bare Bears, or revive one of the classic Cartoon Cartoons with his own style worked into it, if he doesn't make his own show. If he were to work at Adult Swim, I would want him to work with Justin Roiland, the co-creator of Rick and Morty and voice of many of its characters, including the two title characters, who is also a friend of Hirsch's from going to college together at CalArts and working on Disney's Fish Hooks together from 2010 to 2014, with Hirsch serving as showrunner in the earlier episodes until he left to make Gravity Falls, in addition to voicing minor character Clamantha, and Roiland voicing main character Oscar. He could provide writing and voice acting for Rick and Morty, as he had guest voiced on the Rick and Morty episode "Big Trouble in Little Sanchez", and the fact that Gravity Falls and Rick and Morty are possibly in the same mulitverse, as shown by the three items that Stan lost to the portal in the Gravity Falls episode "Society of the Blind Eye" showing up in the Rick and Morty episode "Close Rick-Counters Of The Rick Kind". Or Hirsch and Roiland could collaborate on their own new show for Adult Swim that mixes their personal styles to make something to truly unite all fans of both Gravity Falls and Rick and Morty. The one other thing I would want Hirsch to do would be to write, produce, and/or direct a new movie for either Walt Disney Animation Studios or Pixar Animation Studios, because he has acknowledged both Disney Renaissance films and Pixar films as influences on his work. Bill Cipher is essentially a mixture of the Disney Hercules version of Hades, the Eye of Providence, William Beale, character actor David Lynch, and the Christian Devil. He also judges what he can get away with putting in Gravity Falls by considering what could be put into a Pixar film, and while Pixar films do have a fair amount of over-the-head jokes and occasional boundary-pushing violence (and against children, no less, as seen in The Incredibles), I don't think that John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, and the rest of the Pixar team would even think of putting some of the things that Alex Hirsch has put into Gravity Falls into their movies. Now back to the Nick news. Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies have recently announced an intention to release a new theatrical film called "Nicktoons" that is supposed to blend traditional animation, CGI, and live-action in, according to the press release, an Avengers-style crossover similar in style to movies such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Space Jam, and Wreck-It Ralph, in that it intends to feature old and new Nicktoon characters in both major roles and cameos and play off of the nostalgia many people have for these characters. There is reason to be skeptical about this, seeing as how they haven't given an idea of what the plot will be like, and the decision to make it in a live-action-CGI-traditional animation mix is largely considered to be unnecessary and based in a misguided belief that it will make more money if it's at least partially in live-action. Mary Parent, president of the newly-founded Paramount Animation and producer of both the recent film "The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water" and this "Nicktoons" movie, says that they have no intent to update any characters in a way that would be untrue to their spirit and simply want to put them in a film that will please old fans and create new ones. Of course, the end result is more important than a press release meant to calm angry fans down. So will I watch The Splat? Sure, if it's available On Demand, because it will be on in the middle of the night most nights and I'm still going to a school that I have to come early to. Maybe on weekend nights I'll have the chance to see it in real time. Would putting older Nickelodeon shows back into production be a good idea? If SpongeBob and Fairly Oddparents don't stop churning out new episodes and the rest of the current Nicktoons continue to be as base-level for kids' cartoons as they are and don't do anything to make them worth watching like Cartoon Network and Disney know how to do with at least a few of their shows, then I guess this is all they can do. If Alex Hirsch works on a revived 90s Nicktoon, I will absolutely watch whichever one(s) he works on. And would a Nicktoon crossover movie work? Again, we can't know for sure until it comes out, so I'll be cautiously neutral. Thank you for reading, and I hope you read next week's post. Good-bye for now.
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