Nostalgia. Whether it is an old game we see at a store, a reminder of our favorite movie as a kid or a TV show that just never gets old, nostalgia is something that makes us wish we can go back to how things once were just so we can relive that special moment.
The shows of today cannot compare to the ones we grew up with, which is why there are so many spin-offs and remakes appearing on almost every network that produces programs geared towards kids.
Samantha Kane, a junior, really liked watching “Scooby-Doo” as a kid. Her dad liked watching it when he was young, so she ended up liking the show when she was growing up–starting at the age of five. Kane enjoyed watching the older seasons, but the new show, “Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!” left her questioning what was done with the show.
“What did you do with my favorite show?” Kane said. “The new cartoon, ‘Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!’ is just not the same–kinda like how ‘Teen Titans’ got changed.”
Kane thinks that as long as they don’t change what the show is actually about, then everything should be fine with the new shows. An example of a remake that has changed from the original was “Teen Titans Go!”
“‘Teen Titans’ had more action, but ‘Teen Titans Go!’ has no action or fighting in it,” Kane said. “They’re really not superheroes. [The new ‘Scooby-Doo’ series lost the spark that] the original characters were meant to have.”
Kaylyn Herdman, a junior, had her own favorite TV show as a kid. “Kim Possible.” She started watching the show when it first aired in 2002. At the time, she had a socially conscious reason for wanting to watch.
“It was one of the first female empowering TV shows on,” Herdman said. “Here’s this girl who’s a babysitter by day and super spy by night. It doesn’t have any inappropriate jokes that I could have picked up on when I was younger, so my view of the show really hasn’t changed a bit.”
Herdman has her own take on the subject of spin-offs and remakes.
“If you look at the ‘The Powerpuff Girls’ spin-off, it’s terrible, and the ‘Teen Titans’ spin-off is absolutely terrible, but the ‘Girl Meets World’ spin-off is actually pretty decent,” Herdman said. “I guess it just depends on how much effort they put into it.”
Today, it is fair to say that nothing can replace the shows that helped shape us when we were younger. The shows of today just don’t have enough originality, so we are stuck having to watch reruns because the spin-offs and remakes are just not cutting it.
