"Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? Popularly licensed and profitable is he!"
That's not how the SpongeBob SquarePants theme song goes, but the statement is factually correct. The Nickelodeon yellow legend is still immensely popular across various age ranges. And that gives you some easy gift ideas for kids in and around your family.
Rather than merely give the kid in question a stuffed sponge for the holidays, you can dig a little deeper and offer up a couple Spongebob board games from Hasbro for less than $25 each.
From the creator of Home Movies comes a new animated show on Fox. Bob's Burgers will be about a guy (Bob) who runs a burger grill at an East Coast seaside town with his "tightly wound wife and three unhelpful kids".
Fox is obviously returning to form with another animated family comedy, as if their entire Sunday night line-up weren't enough. I yearn for animated shows that dare to be a little different like South Park, Futurama and The Venture Bros.
However, the show involves hamburgers and as a hamburger fan I may give it a shot. It is a bit of a concern that Fox is overdoing it with the animated shows. Perhaps Cartoon Network and Fox should just switch names and be done with it.
Also, based on the photo doesn't the main character look a little like Luigi from the Mario Brothers? Will he have a thick Italian accent as well?
No Generation X'er can forget the monochrome colors and compromising frame rate of 1970s Hanna-Barbera animation. Take that unmistakable style and some autumnal inking, and you've got The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn't.
Boomerang is reaching into the Hanna-Barbera archives to bring back this all-but-forgotten TV special from the 1970s. You can catch it at 10 a.m. and at 7 p.m. (ET).
According to a network release, The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn't "chronicles one dangerously fateful day for Johnny Cooke, a young Pilgrim, and Little Bear, an Indian boy, who are discovered missing. The first Thanksgiving feast cannot start without them, and when their friend Jeremy Squirrel hears they are in peril he goes on a daring rescue mission."
(S04E05) This episode was certainly a surprise in many respects. It was one of the funnier installments of the season so far. It also brought back a lot of old themes and cleared up some incomplete storylines that had started to gather dust. On one hand, I'm glad that those have been resolved, because most of them were revealed to be kind of irrelevant anyway, but I also felt as though it was rushed, like, five loose ends from old major arcs had to be hastily tied up in twenty-some minutes. Well, it's better than continuing to string us along, right?
Cartoon Network's Star Wars: The Clone Wars just might be the best action/adventure show on television. Come to think of it, it might be the only true action/adventure show on television.
But, as the show ramps up the action content and significantly sweetens its visuals, its increased intensity might be driving away some younger viewers.
As The Clone Wars moves through its second season, the war is growing -- both in scope and violence. Viewers are seeing more dead Clonetroopers, more crashed vehicles and more beloved characters in deadly jeopardy.
Its ratings continue to cruise in hyperspace (especially for males), but I wonder if the darker tones of season two could drive younger kids and their parents away from the show.
(S04E03) I swear to you, dear reader, that I do my best to stay somewhat objective when reviewing The Venture Bros. It's tough, though, when the writers keep knocking them out of the park like this. We're only a few episodes in, but I'm already enjoying things more than I did with season three, and it's not just because this episode had mind-blowing prog rock and UPS guys with the Shining.
Comedian Nick Swardson has scored his own sketch comedy series on Comedy Central. The show will hit the air next year and feature a lot of digital shorts and animation, some of which will be based on almost Python-esque "Gay Robot" character. Swardson and Adam Sandler actually shot a pilot for his "Gay Robot" character years ago and thanks to the magic of YouTube, you can also enjoy it. Warning: if you're easily offended by jokes of a sexual nature, please get over yourself and grow a sense of humor before watching it.
Here comes one of the most brilliant casting moves in television history since Saturday Night Live hired a 12-year-old boy to play Dan Quayle.
Ron White, one-fourth of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, has been cast as the lead voice in a new animated sitcom called "Hounds" for Comedy Central.
The show will be set in a small Southern town where White will play Chicken, "a countrified Yoda with a bottle of Jack and a bag of weed, an opinionated Southern philosopher who considers himself the center of the universe." No offense intended to "Tater Salad," but I can't think of a better person to play that part...until someone resurrects the remains of Sorrell Booke in some kind of horrible government experiment to turn flesh eating zombies into a military weapon.
Jonah Hill will soon be stomping around Seth MacFarlane's territory. The comedian has signed on to co-write and contribute voice work to a new Fox animated series. The show will center on a rich seven-year-old kid who walks and talks like an adult and has trouble adapting to public school.
I'm looking forward to Hill's animated show, but I'm also a little wary. You'd think a show co-scripted by Hill would end up on a cable network. The young comedic actor has developed a reputation for his very blue comic rants and ad lib scenes in films like Knocked Up, Funny People and Superbad. It'll be interesting to see him hold his tongue for Fox and still deliver the laughs.
Lucasfilm's Star Wars: The Clone Wars might just be the beat best action and adventure show on television.
Admittedly, there isn't a ton of competition as action shows are few and far between on TV these days. They're expensive to produce in live action, so reality TV, detective shows and "chick-flick" dramas drive network schedules. Since the Star Wars universe exists only in the imaginations of George Lucas and his team encamped north of the Golden Gate bridge, The Clone Wars has more room to play affordably.
The second season of The Clone Wars launches this Friday on Cartoon Network. To build some force behind the premiere, LucasFilm Animation hosted a press event at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County. Munching on Wookie-Cookies (as all of the catering was Star-themed) and rubbing elbows with costumed Clone Troopers and bounty hunters, show creators and cast members mingled with reporters in an enthusiastic, nerd-friendly atmosphere.
In case you have not heard already, the fourth season of Venture Bros. arrives on [adult swim] at midnight on October 18 (meaning the night of the 18th, technically the morning of the 19th). Mark your calendars.
This news has already been floating around for a while, thanks to sites like the Mantis-Eye Experiment, but things have been confirmed by Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer during their panel at DragonCon. Some footage of this has finally been released by AdultSwim.com, so you can stop crawling around YouTube for people's crappy cell phone recordings.
Before Doctor Who fans say good bye to David Tennant in the BBC's final three specials of 2009, they'll get a little extra colorful bonus Tennant from the Beeb's Red Button service and the Who website.
Doctor Who: "Dreamland" is the show's first venture into "3D" CG animation, and that makes for a stylistic representation of the Tennant's tall, skinny Time Lord. Writer Phil Ford (a veteran of both live action Who and Torchwood) takes the The Doctor to a diner in Roswell, New Mexico where all manner of alien shenanigans are going on.
American fans won't get to see the six-part series in its first run, as they're blocked out of video feeds on the BBC's websites. If only there were other websites that showed online video (illegally) posted by fans. Oh, well.
According to its creator Todd McFarlane (via his Twitter account), an animated version of his comic book anti-hero Spawn will be returning to the airwaves in 2010. Spawn last had an animated version on HBO in 1997 (and it had adult content such as nudity, profanity and violence to boot).
Honestly, other than a few cult followers of the comic book, has anybody even heard of Spawn anymore? The character pretty much jumped out of the mainstream once the experiment that was Image Comics failed. Yes, I know Image is still around and the creators are still involved with it, but it was intended as an experiment to see if comic book creators could run a business as a collective. Most of the founders spun off into their own companies and it failed.
Spawn is too adult of a character to ever reach the mainstream anyway. It can't really be marketed to children. If the animated series does return (or get a reboot), it would be best served on Adult Swim (or one of the pay channels that would let it go uncensored).
Cartoon Network picked Thursday to announce a lineup of new, green-lit shows and the return of a couple successful 2008 outings.
The two new original comedy animated series include Regular Show and the intriguingly entitled Horrorbots. The former was developed by the network's sort of "animator in training" developmental system, Cartoonstitute.
Regular Show is created by J. G. Quintel and was developed as a short for the development program. In each episode, "two bored groundskeepers, Mordecai (a six-foot-tall blue jay) and Rigby (a hyperactive raccoon) are best friends who spend their days trying to entertain themselves by any means necessary, much to the displeasure of Benson (their boss, who is a gumball machine) and to the delight of Pops (an older, lollipop-headed gentleman)."
Every time The Goode Family aired on ABC, it felt badly out of place -- right up until its cancellation. Now, its producers are hinting that the show will live again on another network.
ABC canceled Mike Judge's latest animated series last week. It was hardly a shock considering the network moved it around its schedule more than a Three Card Monte dealer shifts the Queen of Hearts. ABC looked for a place to bury the Goodes -- then they killed them.
But, on the show's Facebook page, show-runners John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky claim the show will return on a new network.
"Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? Popularly licensed and profitable is he!"
From the creator of Home Movies comes 
No Generation X'er can forget the monochrome colors and compromising frame rate of 1970s Hanna-Barbera animation. Take that unmistakable style and some autumnal inking, and you've got The Thanksgiving That Almost Wasn't.
Cartoon Network's Star Wars: The Clone Wars just might be the best action/adventure show on television. Come to think of it, it might be the only true action/adventure show on television.
Here comes one of the most brilliant casting moves in television history since 
Jonah Hill will soon be stomping around Seth MacFarlane's territory. The comedian has signed on to co-write and contribute voice work to a 
Lucasfilm's Star Wars: The Clone Wars might just be the 
In case you have not heard already, the fourth season of Venture Bros. arrives on [adult swim] at midnight on October 18 (meaning the night of the 18th, technically the morning of the 19th). Mark your calendars.
Before 
According to its creator Todd McFarlane (via his Twitter account), an animated version of his comic book anti-hero Spawn will be 
Cartoon Network picked Thursday to announce a lineup of new, green-lit shows and the return of a couple successful 2008 outings.
Every time 
Have any questions for Rich Sommer of Mad Men? Ask them here!
Syfy's Alice -- An early look
The TV Squad Podcast: Surprising shows, decade-end lists, and the Commenter of the Week!
