Where They In Love? #2: Cosmo and Wanda

Welcome to the second edition of "Where They in Love?" - a serious of editorials in which I analyze movies/books/TV shows that have great plot and characters, but an otherwise sucky romantic lead. Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes the characters just have no chemistry. 

Today, we'll be going back to a favorite old cartoon of mine. 

"Yeah, right!"

The Fairly Oddparents was a Nickelodeon cartoon that aired from 2001 to 2016, A.K.A., the prime of my youth. I vividly remember that on Saturday mornings, after Spongebob Squarepants, The Fairly Oddparents' theme song would fill the room with its blasting trumpet and groovy opening theme. While I always preferred the talking sponge show, TFO wormed its way into my heart with its sassy humor and its irresistible premise. 

Recently, I revisited TFO and its production, and the show didn't quite hold up as much as I remembered. Part of that has to do with the duo Cosmo and Wanda themselves. So, they are on trial for this month's article. Today, we will not only find out "Where They In Love," but we might also discover a few other things about TV culture while we're at it.

Part One: A Fairly Odd Story

The Fairly Oddparents is a show about about Timmy Turner, a kid with a pretty annoying life. His parents are idiots, his babysitter is abusive, and his teacher is cruel. But it's not all bad for him - he has two fairy godparents here to help grant him wishes. 

The typical formula of an episode of TFO goes like this:

1. Something bothers Timmy

2. Timmy makes a wish to fix it

3. The wish backfires

4. Timmy and friends have to figure out how to get out of the mess

Honestly, look at any episode, and you'll find this exact same thing each time. Even Spongebob Squarepants has a lot of variety with episodes, as we can have stories focus on different locations and characters in Spongebob's wide circle. 

Despite being very reliant on formulas, TFO ran for a whopping 10 seasons, practically octogenarian in children's television standards. Clearly, something was working. Maybe it was the right balance between snappy humor and wild imagination that kept kids interested.

Oh, and every kid who watched this show wanted a Cosmo and Wanda.

We love a literal power couple.

Cosmo and Wanda double as Timmy's friends and guardians. They're always at the forefront of each episode, there to grant Timmy's wishes, crack jokes, and be there to help him out when times get rough. 

The creator of TFO, Butch Hartman, has a very substantial online presence. 

(There's actually a lot of controversies about him and his habit of lying ot his fans, but that's for another time.) 

In a video in which Hartman draws some of his characters, he describes the inspiration behind wanting a show about a kid with a fairy godmother, but added the spin of having a fairy godfather as well. Cosmo and Wanda are a happily married couple, a package deal. 

But when you watch the show as an adult, you realize that they kind of suck. 

Yayyyyy guess this makes me just another adult complaining about a children's cartoon. 

Part Two: The Case

At first, Cosmo and Wanda seem like an "opposites attract" type couple. Cosmo is the goofy dad type, and Wanda is more of the voice of reason. 

This is a common trope seen in television especially. At first this trope came to be as a response to 50s and 60s sitcoms, in which the woman of the house was flighty and emotional, and the man of the house had to set everything right. To show that women could be intelligent and able to manage a household as well, the TV married couple stereotype flipped.

  

Two iconic TV couples from completely different eras.

This trope extends its way to children's television. On the off chance we get a kid who has two parents who are actually are in the picture, they often follow the "dumb dad smart mom" trope. Take a look at shows like Good Luck Charlie or The Amazing World of Gumball and you'll see what I mean.

Cosmo and Wanda follow this trope in suit. But when looking back at some old episodes, I was shocked just how vicious their behavior towards each other are, particularly with Cosmo. 

To refresh yourself on their personalities, here's a video with a compilation of Cosmo acting like a jerk.

He constantly cracks jokes about how much he hates marriage and that women are terrible. Not only that, but his rampant stupidity often causes problems, and it's up to Wanda to fix them. It seems like neither of them are getting anything beneficial out of this relationship. I know it's a kid's show, but it's a really toxic portrayal of what a "happily married couple" looks like. It makes me wonder if any kids watching this show ingested some wrong ideas about love.

And it's not like a couple on TV needs to be constantly bickering in order to be funny. In the Cartoon Network show Chowder, the resident old married couple was Chef Mung Daal and Truffles. They gave each other a few jabs here in there, but it was never unbalanced as it was with Cosmo and Wanda. Mung and Truffles show that you can have a funny couple in a show, without any unfortunate implications. 

This show is so underrated. Chowder Appreciation Week when?

From the creators of The Fairly Oddparents, it's an example of lazy writing at best, and making fun at abusive situations at worst. 

But...the story doesn't stop there.

Part Three: In Another Life

I really became interested in The Fairly Oddparents again after I stumbled onto the original pilot series, which is completely available for free on YouTube. 

If you didn't already know, TFO began as a series of animated shorts that ran as part of Nickelodeon's "Oh Yeah!" cartoon anthology. In total, there were ten episodes lasting around six minutes each. The animation style had a rougher and more hand-drawn look, and the voice for Timmy was different before being voiced by Tara Strong. 

There were a lot more errors and consistencies, but honestly I prefer this visual style. 

It has a lot more charm to it.

The most stark difference about these ten shorts is that the character of Cosmo is completely different.

Don't believe me? Watch the pilot.

In this first incarnation of TFO, Cosmo is smart, suave, and has a voice to match it. He's actually played by the same guy, Daran Norris (a.k.a. the janitor from Ned's Declassified). In the pilot, there are a lot more jokes about Cosmo and Wanda flirting with each other. Not only is Cosmo not an idiot, but he and Wanda seem to be actually in love.

Wanda herself changed, too. In the original, she's a bit more chaotic and sassy. In fact, Cosmo and Wanda often act as the same character. I can understand that when developing into a full TV series, the writers wanted Cosmo and Wanda to be more distinct from one another, but they could have gone down a better path than the one they chose. 

The most interesting Butch Hartman video is his reaction to the original pilot, mistakingly calling it "the lost episode." 

Hartman goes in-depth into the production of the episode, so if you're a fan of creator commentary and behind-the-scenes stories, I highly recommend you check it out.

What's most important about Hartman's commentary is that he acknowledges Cosmo was a different character, but says that the final product was an improvement. According to Hartman, he seems to think that the stupidity for stupid's sake counts as comedy. The stupider Cosmo became, the funnier he was to Hartman.

There's nothing wrong with having a character who's a bit dimwitted. In the early seasons of Spongebob Squarepants, Patrick wasn't just stupid. Patrick's misconceptions led to a lot of humor, like the episode where he told Spongebob that breathing air was "fancy" in order to impress Sandy. But when a stupid character causes more problems with their idocy, they can become hard to tolerate. 

Always remember: there is a difference between someone being stupid and someone being foolish.

At some point Hartman says he wanted a sense of "fun" with the godparents loving each other, 

but I guess that failed to translate during the development of the series. 

Unless Hartman is just delusional. 

Which we all know he is.

I'm interested to see what would have been different if Cosmo's character was kept in his original form, before he devolved into a blundering idiot. But that's not the version of TFO we got.

My ruling is: Cosmo and Wanda are in love because the writers say so. 

So what did we learn from this deep dive? 

According to Butch Hartman and bunch of other TV execs, "wife bad = funny." That, and sometimes in the development process, not every change is for the better. 

As for myself, I'm not going to do any TFO binges any time soon. I loved it as a kid, but it did not age well. The show remains an interesting case study of how even a good idea can deteriorate over time. For all the good that it gave us ("Jimmy Timmy Power Hour," "Channel Chasers"), TFO has jumped the shark more than once before finally kicking the bucket.

I don't even know...