When Cartoons Go Wrong: Bad Episodes of Great Animated Shows

As a longtime fan of quality animation, I’ve watched and loved a great deal of cartoon TV shows. Several of my all-time favorite shows are animated, and I usually fit at least one or two cartoon picks in my annual “Best TV of the Year” lists. Despite its enduring (and unfair) reputation as “kiddie material,” animation is more appealing to adult audiences than ever, and the more recognition it receives for its achievements, the better.

However, my time in studying and analyzing TV has taught me that no series is flawless, and animated series are no exception. Even the best of these shows will produce a clunker now and then. And though I like to praise the best, it also seems prudent to – once in a while – acknowledge the worst.

To that end, I have selected ten of the best animated shows of the past 30 years, and have picked the Big Dud from each of them – specifically, the episode that represents the creative low point of each series. In doing so, I don’t mean to criticize the shows at large, but in acknowledging where they (occasionally) got things wrong, it may help future shows get more things right.

What follows are my picks, listed alphabetically by TV show. Please note: I usually approach these articles with the intent to be gentle, but my snarky side usually ends up besting me. You’ve been warned.

Animaniacs – “Hooray for North Hollywood”

Animaniacs typically found wit in brevity – most of its shorts ran between 5 and 10 minutes, letting characters as varied and colroful as the Warners, Slappy Squirrel, and the Goodfeathers tell a full story without dragging things needlessly along. “Hoorway for North Hollywood” is the jarring exception – it runs a whopping 45 minutes, spanning two episodes that originally aired as an hourlong special. But that’s hardly the episode’s biggest problem. The story was originally conceived as a feature-length film, detailing the story of Yakko, Wakko, and Dot trying to produce a movie script of their own. Eventually, the film script was repurposed for a TV episode, and scenes were chopped up and edited in a haphazard attempt to retain a coherent story. The effort largely failed – “Hooray for North Hollywood” is a dry, undernourished satire with precious few laughs and multiple storytelling holes, not to mention a lot of quickly-dated movie references. (There are spoofs of Fargo and Jerry Maguire, because… current?) Several pointless songs, added at the last minute, do not help – a super-sized runtime yields a super-sized disappointment.

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Avatar: The Last Airbender – “The Great Divide”

Avatar garnered widespread praise for its endearing characters, complex stories, and spectacular action, and maintains a passionate online following to this day. Fitting, then, that at least one episode has earned a passionate hatred – Book One’s “The Great Divide.” The story follows Aang and friends as they help two warring tribes navigate their way through a dangerous canyon, with the bulk of the episode filled with endless bickering. The episode doesn’t push the overall series arc forward, and displays little in the way of character growth, making it one of the few genuine “filler” episodes of the series. But more importantly, it’s just a dull and turgid episode, lacking the excitement and wonder that Avatar displayed even in its nascent early days. And the ending, in which Aang appears to “resolve” their differences, is confounding and ridiculous. The episode has grown infamous in Avatar circles over the years – the writers even meta-mocked it in “The Ember Island Players” – but it’s thankfully just a brief bump in a largely excellent series.

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Batman: The Animated Series – “I’ve Got Batman in My Basement”

Home Alone was a smashing success when it first hit theaters, and inspired plenty of imitations and rip-offs in the early ’90s. The weirdest of these? Look no further than this early Batman episode, which plays less like a traditional superhero story and more like kiddie fanfic. After Batman is incapacitated by the Penguin, a young Encyclopedia Brown-wannabe hides the Dark Knight in his cellar, and enlists his friends in setting up multiple traps when the bad guys come around. (The kids even try to drive the Batmobile at one point, with non-hilarious consequences.) Even showrunner Bruce Timm would later admit that the script for “Batman in My Basement” was “terrible”; the episode remains an abundant source of mockery for many Bat-fans.

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Bojack Horseman – “Thoughts and Prayers”

Arguably the best TV series of the 2010s, Bojack Horseman excelled on nearly every level. The rare exception, as it were, was political commentary – a topic that only seemed to click when the target was perfectly interwoven with the show’s razor-sharp Hollywoo(d) satire. When it wasn’t, we’d get an episode like “Thoughts and Prayers,” which deals with America’s ongoing gun-control debate in didactic and tone-deaf fashion. Following a mass shooting at a mall, Diane writes a viral blog post that inspires new gun legislation and subsequent heated debate on the subject. The topic, however, is largely overshadowed by the season’s other character arcs (such as Bojack’s reconciliation with Hollyhock), and doesn’t get nearly enough room for development. And the commentary, when it does come, is too heavy-handed to be insightful or funny. Worst of all is Diane’s final observation – “This country hates women more than it loves guns” – a line of dialogue which suggests the Bojack writers are firmly ensconced in the bubble they usually excel at piercing.

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Daria – “Depth Take a Holiday”

Daria was TV’s most note-perfect depiction of high school life to last more than a single season, blending humor and pathos in clever yet consistently true-to-life ways. From time to time, the show would get experimental, pushing the boundaries of realism through the freedom of animation. Some of these experiments worked (a musical episode set during a hurricane), but one stands out as a particular clunker. “Depth Takes a Holiday” follows Daria as she partners with Cupid and the St. Patty’s Day leprechaun to bring the holiday spirit back to Holiday Island. The title suggests that the episode was written as a change of pace, a fantasy storyline to break from the show’s traditional commentary on adolescent life, and the ending acknowledges that the events we’ve just witnessed don’t make logical sense. Unfortunately, that doesn’t excuse the episode itself, which completely misunderstands why audiences fell in love with Daria to begin with. “Depth Takes a Holiday” is a bizarre blemish on a great series – shallow, boring, and (worst of all) not funny.

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Gargoyles – “A Bronx Tail”

In its first two seasons, Gargoyles was a standout in the Disney canon – a dark, well-written show with complex characters and an engrossing serialized mythology. The third season, however, brought a change in networks and showrunners, and the quality notably declined – the deep story arcs were largely supplanted by a series of gimmicky standalones. Case in point: “A Bronx Tail,” which sees Bronx (the gargoyle “dog”) being separated from the rest of the clan and coming across an isolated Pennsylvania community, where he befriends a young Amish boy. The episode isn’t notably worse than some of Season Three’s other one-offs (“Broadway Goes to Hollywood” is certainly no masterpiece), but it feels the most disconnected, with a focus on a character who never had much of a presence to begin with. Fans of “boy meets dog” stories may rate this one a bit higher, but it’s a forgettable effort for what stands as one of the best animated shows of the ’90s.

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Phineas and Ferb – “Mission Marvel”

Phineas and Ferb is one of the more qualitatively consistent animated shows in recent memory. Some episodes are better than others, but by hewing to a structural episodic formula, it managed to generate laughs, week in and out. All of which makes “Mission Marvel” such a head-scratching misfire. Functioning as a crossover with Marvel’s Avengers (specifically from Avengers Assemble, another Disney Channel show airing at the time), the episode has Phineas and Ferb assisting Iron Man, Thor, and co. as a group of their most hated foes threaten the tri-state area. The tone of this episode is all over the map – the P&F scenes are played for comedy, while the Avengers scenes are (mostly) straight drama, and the two halves never mesh into a coherent whole. The episode also features a strangely harsh read of the Phineas/Candace relationship – he seems uncharacteristically rude to her, for plot purposes, and she undercuts a potentially heartfelt reconciliation with the need to “bust her brothers” once again. Much as I enjoy both the Avengers and P&F, the two shows should stay strictly in their own lanes.

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Rick and Morty – “Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate”

A collection of unfunny jokes and skits in desperate need of a cohesive plot, “Interdimensional Cable 2” is a self-indulgent episode that coasts along on the success of its predecessor (“Rixty Minutes”), never hitting a consistent comedy stride. The story features Rick, Morty, and family in a hospital waiting room, while Jerry is treated by doctors and asked to donate his genitalia. (Even by typical R&M standards, this episode leans way too heavily on raunchy humor.) While waiting, Rick flips through a variety of alien TV programs, featuring the likes of a kleptomaniac named Stealy and the manufacturing of the esoteric plumbus. Despite some occasional laughs (I’m partial to the Jan-Michael Vincent trailer – “This JAN-uary, get ready to MICHAEL down your VINCENTs!” – the episode is little more than an excuse for Justin Roiland to voice a ton of different characters (who all sound pretty much the same) and improvise a lot of commentary in the recording booth. Not dreadful by any stretch, but there’s probably good reason why the show has yet to give us an “Interdimensional Cable 3.”

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The Simpsons – “The Principal and the Pauper”

With over 700 episodes under The Simpsons‘ ever-expanding belt, you can certainly argue for a lot of contenders as the Worst. Episode. Ever. Examples like “Saddlesore Galactica” and “Homer vs. Dignity” and “Girls Just Wanna Have Sums” and “Lisa Goes Gaga” (to name but a few) suggest that the show has been past its heyday for decades. But I pinpoint 1997’s “The Principal and the Pauper” as a pivotal dud, and an early warning of the show’s decline. The story ludicrously reveals that school principal Seymour Skinner is, in fact, an imposter – the real Skinner (voiced by Martin Sheen) is an Army sergeant long presumed dead. The story is a nonsensical retcon for a great supporting character, and serves as a harbinger of the silly and gimmick-driven plotlines that would come to define much of the show during the next several years. By episode’s end, the residents of Springfield decide to ignore the revelation that Skinner is not what he seems – a wise decision, though it would have been wiser not to “reveal” it in the first place.

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South Park – “A Million Little Fibers”

South Park‘s comedy follows a simple formula: Each episode introduces a weird plot featuring some exaggerated real-world commentary, grounded by a cast of (relatively normal) young characters who comment on the absurdity. “A Million Little Fibers” makes the fatal mistake of completely removing the main characters from the story. Satirizing the Million Little Things scandal, the episode follows Towelie, a sentient, drug-addicted hand towel, as he publishes his memoirs and promotes them on Oprah Winfrey’s show. Oprah, meanwhile, has problems of her own, as her angry private parts rebel against her and create an armed hostage crisis. (Don’t ask.) The episode is weird meets weirder, a pair of ridiculous situations that don’t generate any stakes or serious investment – or, for that matter, any laughs.

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Thanks for reading. Yes, I’m aware I anger half the Internet when I write articles like this, but that’s honestly part of the fun. Anyway, more reviews coming soon.