A disney channel cartoon thats actualy worth watching.

[thegayhare]

Hello all

I've been amazed by a show on Disney channel it seems to me that it's the only watchable cartoon on the channel lately.  Maybe the only really watchable show they have.  That show is Phineas and Ferb.

Phineas and Ferb is a great show centered around a single summer and what two step brothers do to make the most of what summer can bring.

The average episode take place over one summers day.  The story centers around the boys searching for summer inspiration and then creating some elaborate and over the top way to accomplish it.  Generally this involves building something (the brothers are mechanical geniuses) while their older sister tries to get them in trouble.  There is also always a side story involving the boys pet platypus in his job as a secret agent.  one of the great things about the show is the fact that in every episode there is always atleast one great musical number.  The fun thing about this is that the numbers always advance the story somewhat and they are always sung by the charactors in the episode.  

One of my favorite episods involves the boys helping get there moms favorite band back together to help there dad with there anniversary.  It's great for a number of reason first the shear number of fun musical numbers, the fact that it's one of the few eps where older sister Candace isn't trying to work against them and it's just a fun story.

So what do you folks think

Just for fun here are some songs

Go Phineas

Getting the band back together
Lead guitar
Base player
Drummer

Backyard beach

Phineas and Ferb get busted
got these chains on me
Little brothers

[Aisha deCabre]

Dangit, you didn't put up the final song in that anniversary episode...I found it rather pretty for being made for a cute cartoon series.  

Seriously though, as far as a person of my age admits to still watching cartoons...   I do admit that this show reminds me alot of the originality that cartoons from the 90's sported.  Good times.  Especially since Jeff "Swampy" Marsh co-produced it...I think he did something on Nickelodeon as well.  I like how there are running jokes in the shows, but they never really get old, since every episode is just a bit different and they don't always follow the same pattern time after time, and yeah, the music's catchy as all heck.

Plus, you just have to like the little details they put into characterization.  The fact that the siblings are "step-siblings" instead of just siblings, and that Ferb and his father are from England, as well as many of the other characters being from distinctly different racial backgrounds altogether (the nerdy kid from India, Baljeet, I found pretty funny...though I can't tell if Doofenshmurtz is from somewhere in Germany, or what oO).

I catch the marathons whenever they put them on.  Knowing executive meddling and whatever other show-destroying trope someone can come up with, the good shows never stay on for that long.  

EDIT: I feel I must also mention that the beginning theme song is sung by Bowling for Soup, which I didn't know until just earlier today, which is awesome. xP

[Sofox]

Every so often I switch to the cartoon channels and dip into any unfamiliar programs to see if there is anything worth watching.
Often there isn't (there's like this one 3d cartoon who's characters are blatant stereotypes that got old 20 years ago, another is a generic Animé involving cards and monsters and characters as bland and predictable as oatmeal), but Phineas and Ferb was definitely one that caught my attention. To be honest, I think the last cartoon that caught my attention this way was Yin Yang Yo!, about 2 years ago, but that show doesn't seem to be on anymore.

[Kenji]

Probably one of the only Disney Channel original shows I watch is Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go.
The story is pretty nice in my opinion, the characters are entertaining, and Mark Hamill continues to rock as the voice of a super evil a-hole.

[Rafe]

Some of you might know that, (as if the wallaby avatar wasn't enough of a clue) I'm a fan of Rocko's Modern Life.  A serious fan.  (Ask Amber.  I've forced her to watch many episodes.)  I still have a website up (ancient as it is) where I decided to write about it.  If your're interested, it's HERE.

I started watching RML because back then, it came on before Ren & Stimpy.  It looked like a nice cartoon, and I kind of half watched it, but at one point I saw something which made me say "Did they just do what I think they did?".  Turns out that the creators of RML were packing all kinds of "adult" humor in the show, so I started taping it, and finally writing about all of the stuff they were very skillfully packing into it.

I got a lot of email from other fans, as you might expect, but then, I started getting emails from, of all people Jeff "Swampy" Marsh.  He appreciated that someome was actually noticing all those things they had been inserting into Rocko, and then offered to answer some of my questions about obvious inside jokes and generally filled me in on things only he and his co-workers knew.  He had all kinds of stories.  It was great.  

Here's an example of what he told me.  There was an episode with a bunch of musical type song-and-dance numbers which had a kind of environmental/community-action theme.  He had written all the song, and I was asking him about his musical exprience (he'd done a lot of other musical stuff for Rocko).   The episode, for some reason was called "Zanzibar".  I said something to him about the title obviously being an inside joke, so he told me about it.  In one of the garage bands he'd been in as a youngster, they were always trying to come up with exotic sounding titles for their music.  Several times, they used the title "Zanzibar".  He told the other writer this story at some point.  And as a running joke, every time they couldn't think up a title for an episode of Rocko, someone would say , "Know, let's call it 'Zanzibar'".  When that episode was finished, they RML folks were sitting around at  hamburger place trying to think of a title, and when he said "I know, Zanzibar!", Joe Murray, Rocko's creator said.  "Okay, let's call it Zanzibar", and they did.  He had lots of great stories.  

One of these times I'll tell you the story of how they managed to get the scene where Heffer ends up in a love relationship with a milking machine past the broadcast-standards people.  

[superluser]

Here's an example of what he told me.  There was an episode with a bunch of musical type song-and-dance numbers which had a kind of environmental/community-action theme.  He had written all the song, and I was asking him about his musical exprience (he'd done a lot of other musical stuff for Rocko).   The episode, for some reason was called "Zanzibar".  I said something to him about the title obviously being an inside joke, so he told me about it.  In one of the garage bands he'd been in as a youngster, they were always trying to come up with exotic sounding titles for their music.  Several times, they used the title "Zanzibar".  He told the other writer this story at some point.  And as a running joke, every time they couldn't think up a title for an episode of Rocko, someone would say , "Know, let's call it 'Zanzibar'".  When that episode was finished, they RML folks were sitting around at  hamburger place trying to think of a title, and when he said "I know, Zanzibar!", Joe Murray, Rocko's creator said.  "Okay, let's call it Zanzibar", and they did.  He had lots of great stories.

See, I would have just assumed that an environmental themed episode named Zanzibar would have been a reference to Stand on Zanzibar.  But good job ferreting out the truth.

(I used to write some stuff for the Simpsons Archive, so while I don't have any contacts, I know some people who have had similar experiences)