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A Rugrat may also be a pejorative term for a toddler

Template:Infobox TV ratings Rugrats was an American animated series, produced by Klasky-Csupo, Inc. for Nickelodeon. It was the network's second Nicktoon. The series ran from 1991 to 1994, and again from 1996 to 2005.A New season is scheduled for 2008,however this has not yet been confirmed. The toddlers in the show, Tommy Pickles, Chuckie Finster and the twins Phillip (Phil) and Lillian (Lil) DeVille, are able to communicate to each other in baby speak (although viewers can understand them, because it is supposedly 'translated'). Oftentimes, they mispronounce words or use poor grammar. Despite the toddlers' inability to communicate with adults, they can understand their parents' speaking, although they often misunderstand what they hear, usually by taking metaphors literally. Angelica Pickles, at age three, is able to communicate and understand language from both the toddlers and the adults, which she often uses as an advantage when she wants to manipulate either party.

Reruns of Rugrats can currently be seen on Nicktoons Network at 9:00a E/T. Reruns are also shown on certain Spanish stations.See All Grown UP

The show airs in the UK on CITV as well in Canada on YTV Youth Television and in Australia on Nickelodeon Australia.

Characters

Main Article: List of Rugrats Characters

Setting

As the series is shown largely through a child's point of view, the area it is set in is never described precisely. It has been shown that the Rugrats live in the United States, although the name of a specific city or state is never mentioned.

The best guess as to which region of the country in which the series takes place is somewhere in the southwest, since the family has taken trips to both the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas, and Stu once mentioned "driving through the desert" while returning home from a one-day trip. Also Grandpa (while sleeping during an episode) mentions that he didn't want to move to California, despite the fact that he lived in the Dust Bowl. There have also been several scenes of desert or arid land around the area where the Rugrats live, but there was an episode which featured a snowstorm.

Grandpa may originally be from Tennesee; the episode "Sour Pickles", which takes place in 1960, has Grandpa mentioning his wife was working on Estes Kefauver's Senatorial campaign.

It is also unclear what type of community the characters live in; it could be a small city or a suburb of a larger city. This ambiguity in the setting was probably done intentionally to help give the impression of seeing the world through the naive eyes of toddlers.

One episode does however show they live somewhere in California due to the license plate shown on Grandpa's station wagon. In the episode "Special Delivery", a post office has the state's bear flag in front of it. Also in the Nickelodeon edition of Trivial Pursuit for Children, California is the answer to a question asking where the Pickles live, which may be supposed proof as to what state they reside in.

Their whereabouts in California are probably in the locus of Oakland. In one episode, Larry and Steve (occasional teenage characters, working as painters in this episode) remark that black and silver, the colors of the Raiders, are awesome. Of course, the Los Angeles area is also possible, as the Raiders played there until 1994. In another episode, Stu, Lou, Drew, and Howard want to watch a football game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Houston Oilers. Drew and Howard wear Cowboys t-shirts, while Lou and Stu wear Oilers attire. This implies a possible Texas setting.

In another episode in the first season, Didi is shown teaching at a high school in Yucaipa, an actual town about 70 miles east of Los Angeles. It has snowed in the wintertime in Yucaipa, as in the episode where the babies play in the snow and pretend to go to the north pole.In one episode a road sign for Route 666Is Seen.

However, in The Rugrats Movie, it is implied that the family lives close to Interstate 99, so the setting could also be somewhere in central Pennsylvania. This could be a script or drawing goof, as California has a state California State Route 99 serving the east side of the San Joaquin Valley.

In Rugrats in Paris, the phone call between Kira and Stu had a CG scene that came from Paris to Kentucky. Also mentioned earlier in the movie as Chaz was looking for an online date, one of his dates "is not allowed from the state of Kentucky." This could imply that they live in Kentucky.

It is reasonable to assume that they live on the west coast, because in one episode that was set on a beach, the sun set over the water. (Though this is also the case on the gulf side of Florida: think Tampa.)

Brief history

Rugrats was created by the then husband and wife duo of Gabor Csupo (pronounced Chew-poh) and Arlene Klasky in 1989 along with Paul Germain. They were inspired by the antics of their then infant children, which they found humorous; it was one of three pitches to popular children's cable channel Nickelodeon, which was planning on commissioning their own animated series, which would later be called "Nicktoons." They produced a pilot, "Tommy Pickles and the Great White Thing", which was directed by Peter Chung, later of Æon Flux fame. The production finished in early 1990, and was shown to an audience of children, of which the majority gave their approval. The pilot was only 6 1/2 minutes in length, and was not aired for that reason, according to Steve Mindykowski's Rugrats Online. However, this movie is available on the DVD Rugrats: Decade in Diapers, and Volume 1 of the VHS, as a special feature.

The series debuted on August 11, 1991, along with Doug and Ren and Stimpy. It went out of production in 1994, but after increased ratings when shown in primetime, it was revived in 1996, subsequently leading to 3 movies: The Rugrats Movie (1998), which became the first non-Disney animated movie to earn $100 million in the US, Rugrats in Paris (2000), and Rugrats Go Wild! (2003), a crossover with The Wild Thornberrys.

In 2001, the show celebrated its 10th anniversary by creating a special one-hour episode entitled "All Growed Up," focusing on what the Rugrats would be like in 10 years. After the special had aired, Klasky-Csupo said that they had no plans to make a series about it. The special became one of the highest rated episodes in Nickelodeon's history. Consequently, Nickelodeon eventually commissioned a full series, All Grown Up!, which started its regular run in November 2003 (a sneak peek full episode named Coup DeVille had aired earlier in April). Many fans feel that All Grown Up took a step in the right direction, while others feel that it takes away from the show's original premise, and reduces it to something that, at best, vaguely resembles the show that many people grew to love in the 1990s. Many also believe it pales in comparison to the writing, acting, artwork, and even music of the original show. Still, it is considered the best cartoon Klasky-Csupo has made since 1998. In 2003, it aired on Nick on CBS, then ended in July 2003.

Meanwhile, production on the Rugrats series (along with that of most of the other Klasky-Csupo shows) was eventually shut down, and the last new episode ("Hurricane Alice") aired on August 1, 2004.

In 2005, Klasky-Csupo announced that they were reviving the original Rugrats as a series of DVDs based on classic fairy tales. The first were based on Snow White and Jack and the Beanstalk.

Episodes

See List of Rugrats episodes.

Popularity

The first three or four seasons of Rugrats were very popular. The early episodes boasted effective but subtle references to popular culture and occasionally but rarely then-current events (for example, in "Tommy And The Secret Club" Angelica worries about Saddam Hussein breaking into her club; there were also references to Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill and George H.W. Bush, these references were used to keep parents interested in the show while their children watched, at different points in the series). Despite the occasional potty humor, the early episodes were more reliant on amusing dialogue and imagery than juvenile jokes. This was different in the second version which used more "gross out"/potty humor than the original.

Criticism

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After the show's revival in 1997 (and especially after the first movie), the show, though still making a few culture references, began relying on more bizarre and outlandish plots, and more reliant on gross-out/toilet humor, especially with the addition of Dil to the cast. The show also seemed to have changed its animation to a much brighter style. Two problems older fans had with the series' second run in particular were the show's increased use of baby talk (such as "diapey" for "diaper", for the most obvious example) and repetitive plots (the babies hear an adult's conversation and misinterpret their words, etc.). This is commonly seen as the moment when Rugrats jumped the shark.

Diehard fans also noticed that the show had lost its creative innovation and seemed to be a lot lighter in tone. This is clearly due to the departure of all of the show's writers and producers. The death of Grandpa's voice, David Doyle, and his replacement by Joe Alaskey, also created a negative reaction from many fans, as did the replacement of Christine Cavanaugh as Chuckie with Nancy Cartwright in 2002. The characters of Kimi and her family were met with a mixed reaction at best, while the character Taffy (voiced by Amanda Bynes) was universally disliked among fans.

Many fans of the original seasons of the show (1991-1994) say the newer episodes (1997-2004) make the series feel like two completely different shows. This shift in tone and creativity can be looked at in comparison to another popular Nickelodeon show, Doug, which was cancelled in 1994 as well, went on hiatus and was brought back to ABC in 1996 after being sold to Disney) with a much different (and often criticized) style.

By 2000, the show's long-reigning position as Nickelodeon's highest rated and most popular show had been surpassed by the then new SpongeBob SquarePants, which continues to hold this title to this day. SpongeBob's humor style was considerably more sophisticated and at times even more adult oriented than that of the later Rugrats episodes, and because of this was often compared to older, lower-budget Nickelodeon shows such as Ren & Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life as opposed to Rugrats and other high-budget Klasky-Csupo shows of the late-90s. Many see SpongeBob as the reason for Klasky-Csupo's downturn in popularity.

Other spinoff plans

Besides All Grown Up! there were plans for two other spinoffs that never made it to air:

• The Carmichaels was planned to see Susie move away from California to Atlanta, where she apparently has relatives. There were plans to make The Carmichaels into a series as early as the 1999-2000 TV season, but plans involving the toddler Rugrats had put the new series' plans on ice. Subsequently, when plans for All Grown Up! and Angelica and Susie's School Daze (below) came up, concerns for continuity led to this idea being shelved for good. The "Kwanzaa" episode (2001) serves as the show's pilot.
• Angelica and Susie's Pre-School Daze was planned to be about the titular characters going to pre-school. 13 episodes had originally been ordered, and slated to premiere late 2002, and was also intended to feature new looks for the two characters. The most recent official word on this series was in this press release for All Grown Up!, when it was announced that it was reduced to just 4 episodes. There were also complications involving the planned new animation designs for the characters. The Pre-School Daze ep (made for 2002, aired 2004) serves as the show's pilot, and used the regular Rugrats look (as did the other episodes involving the preschoolers that actually aired before that ep in the US). Klasky-Csupo finally completed the 4 episodes of the series . They had their television premiere on Nickelodeon UK.

However, the Rugrats as babies live on in the direct-to-DVD feature animation series, Rugrats: Tales From the Crib.

Trivia

This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. Please relocate any relevant information into other sections or articles.

• The first season of the series was somewhat more muted in both visual appearance and tone; the babies rarely spoke and acted much more like real infants than they did from the second season onward.
• The Rugrats received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in a ceremony on June 28, 2001. It was placed at 6600 W. Hollywood Bl., near Cherokee Ave. outside a toy and costume shop (Klasky-Csupo press release).
• Rugrats had a daily comic strip that ran from 1998 to 2003.
• The Pickles are a mixed Jewish-Christian family. Many fans say the Pickles are somewhat based on Klasky's real family (for example, as in the show, she is from Southern California and in real life she is a Jew and married to a Christian). There are two episodes that reflect the Pickles' Jewish heritage, one episode deals with the Passover holiday and the other with Hanukkah (in addition to episodes about Christmas, Easter, etc.). These episodes have been praised by Jewish groups and are re-run every year on Nick at the appropriate holiday times and can also be purchased on VHS or DVD.
  • In contrast to the show's tradition of dedicating episodes to explaining the story behind and meaning of Jewish holidays, every portrayal of a Christian holiday has been of a secular nature (and in the instance of Christmas, portrayed simply as a commercial endeavor; in the aforementioned Chaunakah episode, Christmas is actually portrayed as an "antagonist" holiday, as Angelica is too preoccupied with Christmas specials and the concept of presents to want to learn about her Jewish heritage).
• Susie Carmichael, the Pickles' neighbor, is based, at least by name on militant black civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael, who founded the Black Panthers in the late 1960s.
• In the episode, "The Clan of the Duck", Albert Einstein is dancing the Hora. Also, at the end of the episode, the Scottish babies lift their kilts and scream "FREEDOM!" This is a spoof of Braveheart.
• A spoof of the Rugrats is featured in an episode of PBS's hit Arthur.
• Rugrats was also parodied in the Fairly OddParents TV movie, "Channel Chasers" as "Carpet Critters". The show was also parodied by this name in a Free Willy parody sketch printed in Nickelodeon Magazine in summer 1998.
• Rugrats, along with Rocket Power, has a storyline in which a mother, in this case, Chuckie's, is not a main/minor character because of some reason (car accident, sudden death, etc.). This could be a another reference to Klasky's life, in which her mother died when she was only one years old.
• The 4th season episode "Heatwave" is a parody of the film Lawrence of Arabia (the Nefud Desert, or "Sun's Anvil", for the "Black Tar Playground", and Tommy's rescue of Chuckie is a spoof of Lawrence's rescue of the Arab Gassim).
• The Betty's plan to start a coffee shop is realized on "All Grown Up" with their business "Java Lava".

See also

• All Grown Up!

Series Directors

Mark Risley, Michael Daedalus Kenny, Joseph Scott, Dean Criswell

External links

• Nickelodeon's Rugrats site
• Rugrats daily comic strip at Creators Syndicate
• Rugrats at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Unofficial Rugrats homepage by Steve
• Sarah's Rugrats
• Nickelodeon Forums
• Rugrats at IMDb
• Template:Tvtome show

• 1990s TV shows in the United States
• 2000s TV shows in the United States
• 1991 television program debuts
• Animated television series
• Hollywood Walk of Fame
• Kids' Choice Awards winners
• Nicktoons
• Programs broadcast by YTV
• Rugrats and All Grown Up!
• Television shows set in California