Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson for November 30, 2020

The problem with not aging well is that it applies to video games as well.

This remake is suckish. Wait, what do you mean this is the original?

Now I’m wondering what the show is…could be a number of things.

Don’t know what they’re rambling about. The Adventures of Super Mario Bros 3 is a decent enough cartoon.

Did Dana spy on me when I tried to watch Tranzor Z or Speed Racer recently?

Rolling on the floor laughing at the show probably wouldn’t have worked well either.

I just watched an episode of Jonny Quest (original). I forgot violent that show was. I think Jonny killed at least 3 villains

This has happened to me before too. Memory is a funny thing…

Does the show have a whole bunch of racial stereotypes in it?

Phoebe can’t judge if her parents have aged well because she wasn’t around when the show was originally on.

There are comic strips out there with the exact same problem.

Don’t “wine” about it.

I think Phoebe’s parents seem to have aged reasonably well. Am I in the minority?

When I was a kid I used to watch reruns of the old Adam West “Batman” show. Being on the autistic spectrum, I didn’t realize it was supposed to be funny.

I only know of one person who aged well. A retired steam locomotive engineer. When I met him, he was 95 but looked only 60.

Today’s GREATEST EVER is tomorrow’s bad joke, that’s just the way things are. Some shows escape this curse; sometimes it works the opposite way and a reviled failure from the past becomes a rediscovered phenomenon. The Wizard of Oz was a box-office dud. In 1977, Star Wars blew everyone’s mind so hard we ignored certain things; people watching it now are mortified by how whiny Luke is. And they’re not wrong.

Improved awareness is one of the reasons for that. So many of the “classic” shows contained very casual, matter-of-fact sexism, racism, religious intolerance, homophobia, transphobia, fat-shaming, slut-shaming, you name it. Most of us didn’t notice those issues back when, because they were so prevalent that we didn’t even realize they were issues. Nowadays, though . . . yikes!

That’s one of the worst feelings….you sit down to watch something you used to love when you were younger, only to find out it’s utter trash. Sonic Underground, I’m looking squarely at you!

I need to re-re-watch the original Muppet Show. I don’t remember cringing about anything in it that I didn’t cringe about in the first run (some skits were meant to be cringy but not in the same way that we would cringe at sexist, racist, -phobic stuff nowadays). At least, not that I can remember. I re-watched the show about 10 years ago on DVDs. I need to re-re-watch it again. To see if their material affects me differently in more modern times. I haven’t watched actual TV since the early/mid 1990s, so I don’t feel I have missed much. LOL The shows I have on DVD are ones that friends of mine suggested and let me preview before I bought the DVDs (Firefly is #1).

Kinda surprised nobody else has mentioned “Seinfeld.” I still like it, but it’s become a poster child for badly aged TV.

It happens to comics as well. Some aged gracefully, some have turned to utter crap.

Have to catch the reruns on the Old Fogey Network…

(senses unnecessary sarcasm in the fourth panel of the cartoon)