The Haters Were Right (Reflections on 'Kim Possible') · 4:10am Jul 6th, 2014
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Spoilers. And fanart. You are warned.
As many readers are no doubt aware, I suffer from a heroine addiction, which means I need a steady infusion of depictions of cute girls blowing stuff up. I'm fine as long as my ponies are on the tube, but between pony seasons I am forced to get my fix from other, sometimes disreputable, sources. In fact, I frequently visit a back alley where a guy in sunglasses and a trench coat walks up to me and whispers, "Psst, wanna see a picture of a mahou shoujo throwing a hand grenade?"
Um . . . anyway, I recently made it all the way through all four seasons and the movie of Kim Possible. I cannot believe I have not previously watched all of, and memorized large portions of, that show before. It quickly made it onto my shortlist of all-time favorites.
The concept is pure genius: an idealistic and enthusiastic teenage girl puts her resume online, claiming she can "do anything," in the hopes of getting jobs babysitting and raking leaves, but is instead called upon to thwart mad scientists and topple third-world dictators. Fortunately, she is acquainted with a ten-year-old genius who makes superspy gadgets in his bedroom, she can do gravity-defying wire-fu because she's a cheerleader, and she knows a worldwide network of people from whom she can bum rides.
So I'm not the only one!
For reasons that become clear only gradually, when Kim goes on her missions, she drags along her lifelong best friend Ron Stoppable, who is deliberately depicted as Kim's exact opposite, utterly incompetent at everything while she is effortlessly competent. While she fights villains and saves the world, he mostly gets in her way, runs around screaming, and loses his pants.
What I love best about this series is that is dispenses with the typical conceit of a secret identity or double life: Kim and Ron save the world as a hobby, everyone knows about it, and it gets them absolutely no extra respect from their school chums. Kim argues with her parents over whether she can save the world on school nights, and the cheer squad is exasperated when she ditches practice to defeat a villain. This almost makes sense because the characters live in a world made up of superhero and secret agent cliches—and they know it. Kim's villains even frequently discuss the finer points of villainy, such as the proper pitch of an evil laugh or the appropriateness of leaving the room before the hero is about to expire.
I always saw it as a moustache.
The show runs for four seasons, each of which covers a year of Kim and Ron's time in high school. For three of those seasons, the show is nearly perfect. The characters are a lot of fun, the dialogue is sharp, the jokes are side-splittingly funny, and the action sequences, if a little repetitive, are mostly well done, except for some occasional CGI that is too obvious. Mostly light-hearted, Kim Possible is every once in a while unexpectedly brutal, though always bloodless.
The third season climaxes with the made-for-television movie So the Drama, which is easily the highlight of the show. Kim's arch-nemesis Doctor Drakken and his Kung fu-fighting henchgirl Shego develop their most elaborate and harebrained scheme to take over the world, a scheme that keeps Kim and the viewer guessing throughout. All the pieces fall nicely into place at the movie's climax, which contains a satisfactory amount of mayhem, to prepare for which Kim pulls a self-healing nanomaterial mecha suit out of her closet . . . which she has apparently had all this time.
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I . . . am not even sure what I think of that. No, on second thought, I am sure what I think of that. As Rufus would say, ROOOWRRR!!!
Of course, by the time So the Drama is over, Kim has saved the world, thwarted Drakken, thoroughly kicked Shego's backside, found out to her horror that her new boyfriend is actually a fembot . . . er, manbot . . . and caught her sidekick Ron on the rebound. They go to the prom together, and they have a big romantic kiss.
. . . And that's pretty much when the show tanks.
Kim Possible: Helping losers get hot chicks since 2002.
Even before I started watching this show, I knew Kim and Ron eventually became a couple. Indeed, I started watching the show on the recommendation of an sf writer who is also a fan, but was complaining about the canon ship. I favored the ship myself, and I told the haters to suck it, but I admit I was shocked when Ron and Kim became a couple at the end of the third season, with a fourth season yet to go.
The show flags through the fourth season, which, although it has a few good episodes, simply can't keep up the energy of the previous three. The writers appear to know that something is missing, and they try to make up for it by introducing new gadgets: not only do we have reappearances of Kim's aforementioned super suit, but she also gets a tricked-out spy car and a new outfit. These innovations hurt rather than help.
The series ends with a two-part finale that, although respectable, does not reach anywhere near the level of So the Drama. Indeed, the finale feels like the creation of a manic fan fiction writer who's bent on shipping all the characters just because he can, so by the time it's over, not only are Ron and Kim still dating, but most every other character, major or minor, has been paired up, even though most of them had not been the subject of any romantic subplots up to that point. Perhaps the weirdest is the sudden blooming of romance between Drakken and Shego, even though they had previously shown no interest in each other. Shego did, however, have a brief relationship with Mister Barkin, the sole faculty member at Ron and Kim's high school. If they really felt the need to pair up all the characters, I don't know why Shego didn't end up with Barkin. Shego with Drakken is sick and wrong.
As I see it, the show makes the same mistake as most every other boy-girl buddy cop drama that's ever been made. It follows the standard formula of such shows: Boy meets girl; they fight crime. Typically, in such pairings, the characters secretly love each other but can't admit it, and the tension between them ratchets up slowly over the course of several episodes or even several seasons, thereby convincing the viewer to continue tuning in. It's a popular formula because it works very well, but it can't be kept up forever, so sooner or later these two characters admit how they really feel—and then the reason everyone is watching suddenly disappears.
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Man, that is even weirder than those guys who photoshop themselves with ponies.
I've seen this happen before. The classic example is the original Get Smart, which is one of the funniest things ever to appear on television right up to the moment when Max and 99 get married, and then it sucks royally. More recently, Castle, a ridiculous cop drama starring Nathan Fillion as a mystery writer who hangs out with a femme fatale lady cop and helps her catch killers, was for a while my guilty pleasure show. I loved it right until they became a couple, and then I lost interest.
Exacerbating the problem, most of these shows work on what was probably originally supposed to be role-reversal, but is now so common that it's become the new cliche: the female character is usually the level-headed and competent one, whereas the male character is a bumbler. Some shows, such as The X-Files, do this role-reversal subtly. Castle and Get Smart do it overtly.
Kim Possible deliberately dials it up to eleven: omni-competence is her defining characteristic, and total incompetence is his. There is, in other words, not much to make the guy look like good boyfriend material, and indeed, Ron is about as obnoxious as a character can be without actually annoying the viewer at home. For three seasons, I thought he was funny, but throughout the fourth season, I was repeatedly yelling at the screen, "Why is she dating him?"
That's not to say that these ships simply can't work, but they are shark-jumpers. Shark-jumping isn't all bad; it just needs to be timed right. Jumping the shark is what you want to do right at the grand finale. At that moment, everything should be resolved, the crowning moment of awesome should happen, and then the curtain should close. That is, in fact, what So the Drama feels like: it contains the series' crowning moment, and then it ends with Ron and Kim going to the prom and having their big romantic kiss.
That's a good ending, and if that had actually been the ending, I would have been perfectly satisfied. I don't mind Kim and Ron dating as long as I don't have to watch.
In fact, I would compare this to another awkward romance in another kids' cartoon, that between Aang and Katara in Avatar: The Last Airbender. I grouse a bit about the ships in that show: none of my ships came in, and thus I have given up all hope of ever having a real relationship. I very adamantly shipped Katara with Zuko, Sokka with Ty Lee, Suki with a painful and meaningless death because I hate her, and Toph with Appa, who wanted to snuggle . . . um, anyway, where I was going with this is that Avatar does the grand finale right, at least in the romance department (but don't get me started on those three deus ex machinas). In the show's last moment, after the kick-awesome action sequence and the defeat of the final boss, Aang has his big and slightly creepy romantic kiss with the girl who's too old for him, and I sit up in my easy chair and scowl and say, "Kids your age should not be kissing like that, and where's your father, young lady?" And then the final end credits role, exactly on cue.
The point I'm getting at is that, if the show is about getting the girl, then once the girl is already got, that particular storyline is resolved. It's over. The only thing to do, if the show is to continue, is switch to a new storyline, but that changes the nature of the show, which will in general contain less tension and therefore less interest for the viewer. That's why resolving romantic pursuits so often results in shark-jumps.
Meh.
Try CBS' Elementary. It's a reworking of Sherlock, except Watson is female.
Her and Sherlock's relationship is completely and utterly platonic. And it is AWESOME.
Let it be known, I love romance, so for me to say the male/female characters are completely platonic and are still awesome, is something.
:l
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The problem with Get Smart was that as soon as they got married the characters spent more time in their apartment than going around the world doing spy stuff.
It got silly...er
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Bwahaha!
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I'm very skeptical of all this updating Sherlock Holmes has been getting, but maybe I should give some of it a shot.
Whatever happened to Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century?
2261436 I think that ran awhile, but then either ended or got cancilled.
The BBC update (with Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch and titled simply Sherlock) was good...for only the first two seasons. The third season took all of Sherlock's ingrown jerkassery and turned it up to an eleven, with all the characters totally acting as if his behavior is just fine. Also, the character development is minimal at best. The only real reason to watch the show is because Freeman and Cumberbatch are just THAT DAMN GOOD in the parts that they're (for the most part) perfectly able to surpass the writing (which constantly fumbles the ending)
Ahh, I remember this show. Around that time, I found Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Laboratory, Samurai Jack, and so many more amazing shows. I wonder where they have all gone . . .
This dynamic is why I was initially against the idea of ponies and ships at all, canon or otherwise. I was worried it would take over, as so often happens in entertainment for young women. And it's really difficult to keep a show's momentum once you Resolve Unresolved Romantic Tension. Frasier did it right: they waited until they were going to bring the show to an end anyway.
I'm more into Kigo than Ron/Kim. Mainly because of the hero vs. villain aspect of the relationship. I mean how many villains falls in love with the hero and vice versa? Granted both sides will have to contend with the fallout but it's worth it.
Your grievances with Season 4 of Kim Possible are legitimate.
And another example of the scenario you described being done right would be Danny Phantom, cheesy as that show is.
The last season greatest crime is that the writters got lazy and reseted all the previous character development, specially Ron´s after So the Drama, which became even more immature than in season 1 (seriously, could´t he even recognize his long-time friend/girlfriend from a very obvious shapeshifter?) until his cheap Deus Ex Machina/Son Goku/Naruto moment in the last minute of Graduation.
Frankly, regarding shows and fiction in general, I don´t know if it is the writer´s fault for hating true character development (or being too lazy/incompetent to do it properly), or the viewers´ one who scream "RUINED FOREVER!" and whine because they can´t recognize the character they once loved and want everything to be again like in Season 1.
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Sadly it went where all cartoons too good to last went...into the cancellation crosshairs of some idiot executive.
The thing is... Kim Possible was supposed to end with the movie So The Drama. Disney Channel Policy at the time was that every show on the network gets 3 seasons max, regardless of how popular the show is.
This was so that the network could keep bringing in new shows, keep rotating the lineup, and keep viewers intrrested in the channel with almost constant new content.
Kim Possible shattered that rule by not just being the absolute most popular show at the time, but by also being the most popular show the network had ever seen up to that point.
Network executives saw how much money they were leaving on the table by not continuing the show... so it was decided to renew the show for a 4th season.
That decision was made after most of the original staff had moved on to new projects. Thus they had to scramble to get the season done.
Well, it's called "romantic tension" for a reason. The whole show goes limp once it's resolved.
Also, I'd like to note that, from the right perspective, Katara is both too old and too young for Aang, given the whole "frozen for a century" thing.
Did you know that there wasn't even going to BE a fourth season? It- DAMMIT Q! 2261831