Just watched the P&F episode where Django makes a picture to show his dad. What the fuck? THIS is the “painting a continent” from the opening?

First off, Django is way too normal. Phineas, Ferb, Isabella, Bufort, and Baljeet all look like cartoon characters. Django looks and sounds like a normal kid. He’s got that Phineas-in-the-pilot not-larger-than-life voice acting. He sounds like a real boy, not a cartoon person.

Second, his problem isn’t high concept enough. Lots of other characters get episodes where Phineas and Ferb help them. Isabella gets the hiccups. Dad forgets his anniversary. Bufort loses his fish. Candace can’t parallel park. All super high concept normal problems that get solved with insane shenanigans. Django’s art isn’t big enough to impress his dad, the famous artist who makes giant objects. That’s an insane problem that Phineas and Ferb solve with a normal idea!

Third, Django is too much of a straight man! We have lots of straight men in P&F. Candace is a straight man to the boys, and Mum is a straight man to her. Perry is a straight man to Doof. But in P&F, we always experience the story from the point of view of the insane person. With Django, his dad is insane and Django is a normal kid, but we get Django’s perspective. It feels boring because Django is boring compared to his dad.

I dunno, am I missing something? Does anyone else get serious Wesley Crusher vibes from Django? I just can’t wrap My head around why this episode is so different.

  • makeshiftreaper@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    8 hours ago

    I haven’t watched Phineas and Ferb but am generally familiar with the concept. There’s probably multiple narrative things happening here

    1. Writers are people too. Writing crazy over the top stories gets boring after a while. Sometimes you want to write something more grounded to practice nuance
    2. Lower stakes content is generally more relatable and relatable is a high priority in kids media
    3. Contrast makes stories more interesting. If you’re always dealing with world destroying calamities then eventually they become route
    4. When a show goes on long enough sometimes you try breaking the format as an experiment to see what the reaction is, maybe people like it better and you can pivot
    5. Subverting expectations is the basis of comedy. You’ve been led to believe that by their antics Phineas and Ferb would legitimately try to paint an entire continent, the fact that it’s just a regular painting subverts your expectation for a joke

    Those are just my thoughts as someone who is relatively familiar with what TV and Movie writing is like