Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Toons After Dark: JBVO (2000)

At the dawn of the 21st century, Cartoon Network was, well, celebrating stupidity with some of their shows. For example, Ed, Edd, & Eddy, while a left handed homage to Our Gang and the Three Stooges, to an extent, made it clear that the three protagonists' collective IQ was well below 100 on average.

And, then, there's Johnny Bravo. The blond Elvis impersonator was one of the network's most popular stars of the period, such that Johnny (Jeff Bennett) was entrusted to host a Sunday night series, JBVO, in which the network would use viewer requests to program a half-hour's worth of cartoons. With certain exceptions, actual half-hour cartoons, such as Dragon Ball Z, would not be eligible, although DBZ was used one night, with Johnny fast-forwarding with commentary that belonged on Mystery Science Theatre 3000, to emphasize the point.

In a way, it was a parody of MTV's Total Request Live, with the idea being that Johnny, no smarter than a broken brick, was a parody of Carson Daly as well as Elvis Presley.

Following is a sample clip, since full episodes aren't likely to be available any time soon.




I felt sorry for the kids that called in. Makes you wish TV Pixx was still on the air.

Rating: C.

4 comments:

Goldstar said...

Regarding "Ed, Edd 'N' Eddy"; To be fair, Edd (Double D) was actually pretty intelligent, it was just that he was so polite and soft spoken that his sensible words often fell upon deaf ears. Double D should have been the one in charge, but he was constantly being overruled by the loud mouthed, egotistical Eddy.

hobbyfan said...

Well, the Stooges had one smart guy (Moe, most of the time), too, so the correlation fits. Eddy thought he knew everything, but was usually wrong.

Unknown said...

Hi, I posted an episode of JBVO onto Internet Archive. The best thing about this site it is free and legal to download things from the site.
Here is a link to the episode.
https://archive.org/details/JBVOEpFromJan5th2001
I hope you enjoy.

hobbyfan said...

I'll have to see if it's still there, Jade. Thanks.