If you’ve been keeping up with this publication, you know at least these two things: 1. Eric and I are A-tier cartoon junkies and 2. we’re zany to the max! Therefore, once news broke that Steven “Sharkey Boy” Spielberg would be rebooting Animaniacs—a show whose original run still stands as one of the greatest variety shows to ever grace the medium of television (and which you should be watching on Netflix tbh)—it was somewhat inevitable that the Great American Animation Hot Take Industrial Complex (i.e., us) would begin producing piping hot takes within a matter of minutes.
Below, we present to you a look behind the scenes of how the rather, err, vulgarly opinionated minds behind The Dot and Line work in real time when confronted with the joy and terror of a 2018 Animaniacs reboot:
Hot Take #1
ERIC:
http://www.avclub.com/article/steven-spielberg-teams-warner-bros-animaniacs-rebo-256037
FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK
JOHN:
Hot morherfucking sandwich [sic]
ok
OK
Well this changes everything
JOHN:
I was thinking just exactly that.
I feel very mixed about Animaniacs.
On the one hand, there’s no way it ages poorly. The show is ageless. And now it has 20 years of pop culture material to mine.
ERIC:
on the other hand….
JOHN:
On the other hand STOP FUCKING REBOOTING EVERYTHING AND COME UP WITH NEW IDEAS JESUS FUCKING CHRIST
ERIC:
fuck man i don’t want to watch Animaniacs lampoon Trump
i flat-out don’t want that
JOHN:
Ugh yeah.
And it will.
His fucking star on the hall of fame.
walk of fame
whatever
ERIC:
like the viscera I feel toward ’10s politics/culture is not the nostalgia harvest I want out of that show
Hot Take #2
ERIC:
on the other hand…
can you imagine how perfectly trollish the Animaniacs are going to be to the trump admin?
BOINGY BOINGY BOINGY BOINGY
like
JOHN:
Yeah exactly.
So I feel very mixed lol
ERIC:
mayyyyyybe there’s a silver lining
that’s the take
This Is A Giant Gamble, Mr. Spielberg
JOHN:
I’m writing it basically like this chat tbh
ERIC:
or something
hahahahah
Real talk: The concept behind Animaniacs—in which Looney Tunes-esque characters turned wayyy past 11 romp around the insider-y creative arts worlds of Hollywood and New York and cause absolute chaos in proximity of well-known pop culture figures—is timeless and seemingly impossible to butcher. (Seriously, every single week for 99 episodes, Tom Ruegger, Andrea Romano, and company wrote the book on mocking the innate hilarity of everything in the ’90s—from the Clinton family to Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas to performing sexual favors on Prince. The core of the show is nonstop absurdity. It’d be hard for even M. Night to Shyamalan this up.) And we’ve made our feelings toward any more content from this show pretty clear, considering we named a whole damn column after one of its best characters. (Also, Mr. Spielberg, please don’t sue us.)
That said, it would be pretty miserable if this testament to the glory of zany hijinx and lightning-quick referentiality just turned into a Trump-bashing vehicle. That also said, all I want out of life is to watch Dot Warner abuse Donald Trump on national television…specifically, on its original network? Here’s looking at you, FOX.
Anyway, color us conflicted. Feel free to weigh in here, but only with comments that begin with “Helloooooooo, Nurse!”
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