Have Animation Fans Chosen ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’ As the Single Best Cartoon Reboot?
Sorry to the new Futurama, Rugrats and whatever other beloved animated series is getting a reboot next, but according to cartoon fans, you’ll never beat Beavis and Butt-Head.
When a room full of studio executives decides to revive a beloved and nostalgic franchise that hasn’t been touched in decades, the reboot is simultaneously a safe move from a business standpoint and a creative risk that can ruin all the longstanding goodwill that the suits are about to turn into easy dollar signs. This is especially apparent in animation, wherein the nature of the medium allows showrunners to bring back all the original characters and acting talent that made the show’s first run a success without having to delve into the uncanny valley with awful de-aging technology, while the fanbases for animated shows somehow tend to be the most passionate, opinionated and hostile to change of any internet following.
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As such, one fan of animated TV shows decided to take the temperature of Cartoon Twitter and their feelings toward the many animated revivals and reboots that have littered every streaming platform for the last few years. And, out of a pool of candidates that includes the aforementioned shows, The Animaniacs, Duck Tales and, of course, Velma with its participation trophy, the winner of the competition for Best Animated Reboot is, apparently, the new seasons of Beavis and Butt-Head from series creator Mike Judge and Paramount+.
Given the show’s devotion to satirizing American culture in the stupidest way possible, Judge’s challenge in bringing Beavis and Butt-Head into the modern era back in 2022 was to seamlessly introduce the iconoclastic and deliberately dumb spirit of the show’s original run in the 1990s to a “whole new Gen Z world.” And, two seasons and an astounding 50 new episodes later, it’s clear that Texas' two laziest losers haven’t skipped a beat — like when Beavis and Butt-Head attended a single college lecture on white male privilege and immediately got themselves arrested for stealing a police cruiser under the assumption that white men would not experience consequences in the 2022 streaming special Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe.
In the above thread, fans celebrated Paramount’s decision to bring back Judge and give him creative control over the reboot, a seemingly simple move that the producers of other more maligned cartoon revivals couldn’t or wouldn’t pull off. Additionally, Beavis and Butt-Head’s characteristically silly approach to cultural satire prevents the show from trying to win over modern audiences with a preachy, self-serious assessment of current affairs, avoiding disasters Futurama’s decidedly misguided 22-minute explanation of NFTs in the form of Monday’s episode “The One Amigo.”
One Beavis and Butt-Head fan explained the show’s timeless success succinctly, commenting, “They’ll sometimes do contemporary topics, like 2011 did a Twilight episode and 2022 did a Hoarders episode. But they’re just springboards for Beavis & Butthead to get inspired to do something stupid. And 99 percent of the episodes are still ‘Beavis & Butthead fall down a hole.’”
Staying true to the inspiration behind the original series and not taking the task of modernization too seriously sure sounds like a formula for animated reboot success. Maybe, if we’re lucky, the Futurama writers will take note and make an episode parodying science fiction and the nerd culture surrounding it instead of trying to teaching us how to use ChatGPT.
