The Animated Series: What's Up With That Short Second Season?

I've always wondered why the second season of the Animated Series was so short, only six episodes? Perhaps I am missing something to do with the conventions of networks ordering Saturday morning cartoons, back in the 1970's, and I'd like to have the cleared up for me. Presumably they were aiming for the now standard 26 episodes, but I do wonder why the split was so unequal between the two seasons?

Also, before TAS disappeared from Amazon, Season 1 and Season 2 were not broken down as they are listed on Memory Alpha, and for some reason always had only Serpents Tooth & Counterclock in Season 2... I assume that was just a mistake on Amazon's part. I do however wonder why the break between Seasons is not based on the 1973 vs 1974 airdates, on Memory Alpha's list?

 

It was common in the '70s for later seasons of Saturday morning cartoons, if any, to have a reduced number of episodes. Children tend to have more tolerance for reruns; I know that when I was a kid back then, I was perfectly content to watch the same episodes over and over again. So you could just add a handful of fresh episodes to the rotation of reruns from the previous season(s).

And they weren't aiming for 26. Filmation shows at the time typically had 16-episode first seasons, and any later seasons were typically either 6 or 8 episodes. So if ST:TAS had gotten a third season, the total length would've been either 28 or 30 episodes.

 

Good to know. That explains the short season lengths then. Cartoon lengths seem to have gone all over the place over the years. I suppose it depends upon the time slot: more recent stuff I've watched has generally had anywhere from 26-13 episode a season airing generally once a week, but some older works like the original Thundercats, being weekly shows, have huge seasons at 60 something episodes.

 

Yeah, I never will understand how the 1992 Batman, an experimental gritty kid's show aimed as much at adults as at children managed to snag a 52-episode season order for its first season. I know they were aiming for weekday airings with a heavy helping of reruns, but Jesus Christ, man, that is a lot of episodes. In that case, I figured they decided to do the whole series upfront, was surprised at the success, then tossed in a couple small seasons with some tweaks (More Robin! Bring back Batgirl!) and a DTV movie for good measure (in addition to the theatrical movie[!] they already made while making that first season).

 

It used to be that cartoons were mainly on Saturday mornings, once a week, so the typical season was maybe 13-16 episodes. But He-Man in the early '80s pioneered strip syndication, with new episodes Monday through Friday every week, so the typical season length increased to 65 episodes. This was also when it became common to subcontract the animation to overseas studios in Asia (usually Japan or Korea), often multiple different studios, which was necessary to handle such a large load of episodes. (Or sometimes just one studio doing really rushed, crappy work, like most everything animated by Akom, such as X-Men and early The Simpsons.) Filmation was the last US studio to keep doing its animation in-house, though they did subcontract The New Adventures of Zorro (1981-2) to Tokyo Movie Shinsha due to having too many shows on the schedule that year to handle on their own.

Sometimes a show would have both Saturday morning network airings and strip-syndicated weekday afternoon airings, and there could be a notable difference in quality between the two because the syndicated, afternoon episodes were able to skew a bit older and were able to be smarter and more sophisticated. The most notable examples I recall are The Real Ghostbusters and Gargoyles.

These days, though, strip-syndicated cartoons are a thing of the past, so we're back to having shorter seasons again.

 

All this talk about He-Man... I feel moved to go OT to promote the series on Netflix "The Toys that Made Us."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toys_That_Made_Us

The Toys That Made Us is an American documentary streaming television series created by Brian Volk-Weiss.[1] The first four episodes of the series began streaming on Netflix on December 22, 2017,[2] and the next four were released on May 25, 2018.[3] The eight-episode documentary series, as it was originally touted, focuses on the history of important toy lines. The first four episodes focus on the Star Wars, He-Man, Barbie, and G.I. Joe toy lines[4][5] with subsequent episodes featuring LEGO, Transformers, Hello Kitty, and Star Trek,[6] which aired on May 25, 2018.[7] On July 19, 2018, it was announced at San Diego Comic-Con that the show had been picked up for a third season, with episodes featuring Power Rangers, professional wrestling, My Little Pony, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and was released to Netflix on November 15, 2019.[8][9]

It's a pretty cool series that touches on the history of the He-Man cartoons, among other aspects of our culture's franchises.

 

Back in the days when local TV stations aired syndicated cartoon series like GI Joe for example; they ultimately wanted to have 80 plus episodes for daily 'striped' syndication, so as those shows ran they'd continue production of new episodes until they hit around 80 or 85.

 

The usual strip length was 65 episodes, 5 days a week for 13 weeks, just as the standard Saturday morning season length in those years was 13 episodes, one per week. Generally a syndicated show's first season would be 65 episodes. To surpass that, a show would need to be renewed past that original order -- for instance, Batman: The Animated Series began with a 65-episode order (released in pieces over several seasons, but produced as a single block) and then got another 20 episodes after that (released in two sets of ten in consecutive years). The original GI Joe had 95 episodes in all -- two 5-episode, weeklong stripped miniseries, a 55-episode season to get to the magic 65, and then a 30-episode second season. He-Man got a full 65-episode second season for a total of 130, but She-Ra got only a 28-episode second season for 93 in all.

Some shows were split between network and syndication; for instance, The Real Ghostbusters started with a 13-episode network season and then added 52 new syndie episodes to total 65. Whereas the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles started with a 5-episode stripped miniseries, then got 13 weekly network episodes, then got another 47 syndie episodes to total 65. Both series then got additional seasons on Saturday morning, generally 13 episodes each.

 

A pity...

 

Oh, I don't know. The need to produce up to 65 episodes in a single season often led to rushed, sloppy animation. Fewer episodes means more care can be taken.

 

Yes. And animation is a whole different ballgame today because of computers and many shows are done largely with "puppets" on rigs (with some exceptions) and re-use is easy, so the kinds of quality flaws from too may episodes are still there but just of a different stripe.

Used to be you could tell who directed a short just because every director had their own drawing style. (I can tell a Freleng from a Jones from a Clampett from an Art Davis from a McKimson directed Warner Bros. cartoon on sight within seconds just because each one had a different drawing style that their units followed...and there are people who can look at old theatrical cartoons and identify which animator did which shot, just by how it's drawn and moves.) That ceased to be the case with mass production for TV and especially now with computers standardizing so much.

 

Even though I am colorblind, I once could tell what network was on without looking at the dial. NBC was sepia-yellow, CBS darker somehow, and ABC split the difference.

The early episodes of COPS had cameras that made the night hideous (along with the Sodium and mercury vapor lights).

Today, the night seems too bright, the LEDs too clean... Just thinking out loud.

When New York streets were empty, the super hi-def video seemed out of place.

A better choice would be to show film of New York pre-Covid—from 70 mm to 35 mm.

The empty streets?

Super-8, black and white. A daguerreotype still.

Then 16 mm as things turned...videotape for morgues.

At the last—only then—comes the superfluid video to show how we have changed...

Sorry for the side track. As Ed Tom said..
“My mind wanders...”

 

I think art styles nowadays are still distinct, I can tell at sight something by Vivenne Medrano from Noelle Stevenson, or Lauren Faust. With the current animation techniques you get less "off model" shots in the sense of individual frames being drawn poorly (a lot of the classic anime I've watched had problems with that). But, especially for shows with a lot of background assets that get reused, you still get the kinds of errors you see an TAS with things be drawn with the correct shape but being off in some other way (movement, color being wrong or the wrong models getting used, things not being in shot when the should be, ect.).