Should "The Weekenders" Have a Revival?

Note:

This was originally posted on DeviantART on August 29, 2021. Yes, that far back. The fact that I reference Afghanistan 🇦🇫 in this journal should clue you into that. This is the first journal from 2021 that I'm reposting on here. I'll see if I want to post any more from that year. But anyway, I really don't know when I originally wrote it. It's not stored on my laptop 💻, on the app that I use for writing, Drafts. I'm starting to think that I may not have even written on Drafts ahead of time, and that I may have just written on DeviantART. And if I did write it on Drafts, I may have deleted it in order to make space because I was started to run space on iCloud ☁️. The only way to get more space on iCloud ☁️ is to purchase more, but I don't have the money 💵 to buy more space and keep paying monthly for it as if it were subscription or something. So, in order to prevent my iCloud ☁️ from running out of space, I have to delete some stuff on the Drafts app and on the Notes app. So, this could've easily have been one of the ones I deleted. So, I'm reposting it directly from DeviantART. 

Now, I was inspired to write it by the iCarly revival that premiered in 2021, and was canceled in 2023 after three seasons. Yes, that show was pretty short-lived. I have a feeling that a similar fate awaits the Rugrats reboot as well since Paramount hasn't really been making a push for it, and they've only been releasing the episodes incrementally. The interest just isn't there for it, and everyone has kind of just moved on from it. I mean, when was the last time you saw a cartoon reviewer on YouTube talk about the Rugrats reboot? Probably not since 2022 at least. And I don't even think they've posted a new episode since April 2023. That's a pretty long time. 

So, I have a strong feeling that the Rugrats reboot will be next on the chopping block. It's not like it will be particularly missed either since a lot of the older fans of Rugrats didn't even like it all that much, and it hasn't seemed to have gained any new fans. The kids of today (late Gen Z and Gen Alpha) just aren't that interested in watching Rugrats, even if it is more catered to their tastes and sensibilities. I have actually watched a lot of episodes of the reboot, and it really isn't all that bad. It's an alright show. Fairly inoffensive and pretty watchable. But, it's nothing that will blow you away, like there's nothing uniquely great about it. That's probably the reboot's biggest issue is that it doesn't entirely stand out, and it's not something that really grabs your attention unless you're already familiar with the Rugrats brand.

I thought this when the Rugrats reboot first premiered, but I'm starting to think about it now again. They probably would've been better off just doing another spin-off to the original Rugrats, but with the kids as adults. All Grown-Up! showed them as preteens and teenagers (though 13 barely counts as being a teenager), so the logical next step would've been to show them as fully fledged adults with their own lives and problems. Some of them have kids of their own, some don't. 

They'd be Millennials, and not having kids and being childless became more normalized with the Millennial generation due to the increasing cost of raising a child. Most Millennials just can't afford to have kids. Same goes Gen Z at this point since Gen Z can't afford to have kids either, and a lot of them have decided along with their Millennial brethren not to have to kids. Keep in mind too, Gen Z was also the generation that completely ended the teen pregnancy trend. Gen Z teens weren't getting pregnant and have kids while they were in high school like their Millennial, Gen X, and Baby Boomer predecessors did. 

Gen Z and Millennials are also not becoming smokers 🚬 either, as both generations had it drilled into their heads by years of PSAs and parents telling us that smoking 🚬 was bad and can cause cancer. So, a lot of Millennials and Gen Zers ended not becoming smokers 🚬 and becoming smokers 🚬 at a young age, since most people who are smokers 🚬 became smokers 🚬 when they were young, like teenagers. 

Why do you think the Camel cigarette company 🚬🐪 created the Joe Camel 🐪 character in the 1980s and 1990s? To sell cigarettes 🚬 to kids and teenagers. Sure, Millennials and Gen Zers do have a problem with vaping, which is just as bad as smoking cigarettes 🚬, like e-cigs are not actually safer than regular cigarettes 🚬, despite what some were led to believe when e-cigs came onto the scene. But, the rates of Millennials and Gen Zers smoking actual cigarettes 🚬 are pretty low, which is a good thing. Cigarettes 🚬 are horrible, and e-cigs too, they're just as bad.

The same would be the case for our Rugrats characters, although, in the description on Paramount+ for some of the episodes of All Grown-Up!, they refer to them as just Rats since they're no longer babies. But, I don't really like just calling them Rats. It kinds of feels wrong. It could've been really interesting, and it would've built upon the characters in a similar way that All Grown-Up! did, but they would've going further since they'd actually be adults, and this hypothetical show would've been more geared towards adults. Just make it for the older fans, and don't even bother trying to capture the kids of today. But, no, they decided to just reboot Rugrats all together, and just have them be babies again. After everything, despite what I think of the show personally, I'm not entirely sure that it was worth it. 

But, back to the iCarly revival. What's funny about that is that they canceled the show just as many people were saying it was getting good. Like, I remember last year, everyone who was still talking about the iCarly revival were saying that the show had finally found it footing in Season 3 after Season 1 and Season 2 struggled to find their footing. The show kind of had an identity crisis during the first two seasons, and wasn't entirely sure what it wanted to be, who it was actually made for, and what they should even focus on. 

But, with Season 3, they finally figured it out, and had finally gotten their shit together, and were putting out episodes that most people felt were of more consistent quality. And then they just canceled it. You were finally getting good, and then Paramount just decided to pull the plug 🔌 on you when you least expected it. I mean, I guess some people expected this show to get canceled since a lot of sitcom revivals and reboots don't last for very long, but it was still kind of surprising for me at least when it happened. I just hope that Jerry Trainer gets some work after this. That man truly is the Millennial Jim Carrey. BTW, did you know that they're making a third Sonic the Hedgehog movie, Sonic the Hedgehog 3? And Jim Carrey is coming back to play Dr. Robotnik/Eggman (the character goes by two different names)? 

He said was going to retire from acting after starring in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but I guess not. I guess he was lying, or he had a change of heart because so many people were all sad when he announced that news, and were begging him not to retire. Or maybe, he's just coming back to slum it for a paycheck, like he's just in it for the money 💵 for the third time around. But, even if he just phones it in in the third Sonic movie, he'll still probably be good because he's just that talented.

But, anyway, I was inspired by the iCarly revival to write a journal about the possibility of reviving or rebooting The Weekenders with a continuation with the characters from that show as adults since I like The Weekenders. I liked what I've seen of it of the episodes that were uploaded to YouTube by some people, and I wanted to see more of it. Even if I personally never grew up with it like some people did, and thus, don't have that nostalgic attachment to it. It's just a show I discovered as an adult in my 20s and really enjoyed. 

And the iCarly revival showed that you could do a sequel/spin-off to a kid's show that is more geared adults, and yet, not be completely vulgar and raunchy. The iCarly revival was more adult, but it wasn't like entirely adult if that makes sense. Like it wasn't a TV-MA show, it was more of a TV-14 or TV-PG type of show. More adult than the original, but not exactly Euphoria if you know what I mean. Making it more adult would help in having the series age with its audience, rather than regressing and trying to appeal to the kids of today. It would also add a new element, and give a reason for continuing it in the first place. 

TV show revivals need to have a justification, they need to justify their existence, as to why they're bringing back this older show and making more episodes for it. The reason why so many want a Jimmy Neutron revival for instance is so that it could get a proper finale since the show was canceled before it could ever get a proper series finale, and any and all loose ends could be tied up. Like, Evil Jimmy for instance, who they kind of teased would return even though he was trapped in that dark matter dimension along with the Evil Duplicate Earth 🌎 that he created. 

He could've easily have found a way out, since he is a genius just like the real Jimmy, only he's an evil genius, and he did say he'd back. So, they'd have to resolve that if they ever brought back The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron. But, with a show like The Weekenders, there really isn't as clear of a reason to bring it back other than the fans miss it, and want more. So, what better way to justify doing a Weekenders revival than to make it more for adults and age up the characters to being adults with a huge time jump or time skip in-between the original and the revival. Maybe have it take place in real time 20 years after the original, since it's been 20 years since the original Weekenders ended.

I was also inspired by the rumors of the scrapped Lizzy McGuire revival that Hilary Duff was trying to get off the ground. She apparently wanted to make the show more geared towards adults, with Lizzy McGuire trying to navigate through adult life as a 30 something year old just like Duff is herself. She's in her 30s, and is very much a Millennial. So, her take on a Lizzy McGuire revival would've been adult life through the lens of a Millennial woman ♀︎ in her 30s. I imagine her take would've been something like a Millennial Sex and the City if that makes any sense. But, Disney didn't want that. They didn't want to do an adult version of Lizzy McGuire. They still wanted to have the reboot/revival be for kids like the original was. You know, something closer to the That's So Raven revival, Raven's Home. So, that project fell through, and there never was a Lizzy McGuire revival. 

And the Lizzy McGuire revival example or comparison or inspiration is more applicable here since it was a Disney show, and The Weekenders very much was as well. Even though, it isn't on Disney+ even now. I know that Pepper Ann is on Disney+ now, but this isn't about Pepper Ann, although a more adult continuation of Pepper Ann would also be pretty interesting. And I think I do mention the unmade Lizzy McGuire revival in the main journal itself. But, the fact that is a Disney show probably means that this more adult revival/continuation of The Weekenders that I proposed in this probably would never happen. 

I mean, if Disney was unwilling to do a more adult version of Lizzy McGuire, a predominately live-action sitcom (except for the cartoon version of Lizzy that narrates the show), what makes you think they'd be open to doing a more adult version of The Weekenders, an actual cartoon show? But then again, they did put out the Marvel show, Echo on Disney+ and Hulu, and they made it TV-MA in order to generate publicity and generate interest because the MCU is kind of a dying brand, a dying franchise, and more and more people are starting to lose interest in it. 

So, they felt that they had to do this in order to generate buzz, and lure people into watching. Like, "Wow! an MCU show that's rated TV-MA on Disney+? I gotta check it out." But, it didn't work, as Echo ended up becoming one of the lowest viewed MCU shows, replacing Ms. Marvel as the MCU show that has the least amount of views on the service. It also apparently had a low Rotten Tomatoes score 🍅 when it first premiered, but I just it got bumped up because according to Wikipedia, it currently has a score of 70%. 

Which isn't particular bad, but it's not the best score ever. Like, it isn't Certified Fresh. And I checked the Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes 🍅 itself, and it's only slightly lower at 61%. Those are middle of the road scores on Rotten Tomatoes 🍅. Those score indicate to me that the reaction to Echo was mixed, rather than being unanimously positive or unanimously negative. A lot of critics liked the show, especially as it went along, while others didn't like it. Same goes for audiences, some liked it and some didn't. But, whatever, I don't know why I'm even giving credence to Rotten Tomatoes 🍅. I don't even like that website. 

Anyway, the fact that Disney was willing to do that. The fact that they were willing to put a TV-MA show on their main streaming service rather than on Hulu kind of opens the door for more adult revivals or reboots of their older shows on Disney Channel and Toon Disney/Disney XD. Like, maybe an adult Weekenders revival could actually happen and it could actually go on Disney+ if there was an actual push for it. Same goes for the Lizzy McGuire revival if that's ever pursued again. Though I think Hilary Duff has since given up on that project due to Disney not letting her make it in the first place, and not giving her the level of creative control she wanted to have over it. But hey, if it never happens, I could always use the ideas that I came up with for it in an original project of my own, whatever it would be. 

Like, having a Cambodian-American character 🇰🇭🇺🇸, and then doing an episode that was from their perspective or the perspective of their parents and was about their experience during the Cambodian Genocide 🇰🇭💀. Or having Lor's father be a Gulf War veteran. I don't know if they even really delve into Lor's parents, and explore their backgrounds, but I thought it would be an interesting idea to have Lor's father be a Gulf War veteran. But, if an adult Weekenders revival never happens, then I could do my own adult cartoon show with a character who has a father who is a Gulf War veteran, who served in Desert Storm, and has Gulf War Syndrome. 

Since you really don't see Gulf War veterans represented in media all that much. You see a lot of World War II vets, a lot of Vietnam War vets 🇻🇳, and even a few Korean War vets 🇰🇵🇰🇷 here and there, but no Gulf War vets. Even when you do see veterans of wars in the Middle East, they're usually vets from the Iraq War 🇮🇶 (2003 to 2011) or from the War in Afghanistan 🇦🇫 (2001 to 2021). Never one from the Gulf War, which was the last war in the last 30 or so years that the US 🇺🇸 definitively won, and had all of its dignity and respect left intact. 

I mean, I saw a children's book 📖 (or graphic novel I guess) at Walmart that had a character who's mother was a Gulf War veteran, and that was about it. Oh, and I guess the president in Independence Day, President Whitmore was technically a Gulf War vet, but they never explicitly say if he served in the Gulf War or not. They just say that he was a fighter pilot who fought in some war before he became president. So, it'd be nice to see Gulf War vets be represented in media more. And I can be the one to do it. 

The same sort of applies to that Cambodian-American character(s) 🇰🇭🇺🇸. Cambodians 🇰🇭 are a pretty unrepresented group in media as well. Filipino, Vietnamese, and Thai people 🇵🇭🇻🇳🇹🇭 get more representation than Cambodians 🇰🇭 do. Even Indonesians 🇮🇩 get more representation than Cambodians 🇰🇭 do. And the Cambodian Genocide 🇰🇭💀 is a historical event, a historical tragedy that's very underexplored and not talked about that much in media either. The most the Cambodian Genocide 🇰🇭💀 has been explored in Western media is in that Angelina Jolie movie on Netflix, First They Killed My Father, which I wrote a review of, and will repost on here at a later date. 

My guess as to why the Cambodian Genocide 🇰🇭💀 isn't discussed that much compared to other historical genocides like the Holocaust or the Armenian Genocide 🇦🇲💀 or even the Rwandan Genocide 🇷🇼💀 is that not a lot of people in the West know about it, Cambodians 🇰🇭 are already an underrepresented group, and it really didn't involve America 🇺🇸. Sure, the Cambodian Genocide 🇰🇭💀 was indirectly caused by the United States 🇺🇸's actions during the Vietnam War 🇻🇳 AKA the Second Indochina War, but the United States 🇺🇸 was not at all affected by the genocide or by the disastrous leadership of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, other than the millions of Cambodians 🇰🇭 who fled the country, and came to the United States 🇺🇸. But, this would be a great opportunity to educate Americans 🇺🇸, especially those in the younger generations (Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha) about a horrible event in history that rarely gets talked about in this part of the world.

But, before I let you get on with the actual main post, there are few things that I would like to address that I didn't mention in the main post. First off, I don't remember if I mentioned the voice cast of the show. The show has a pretty stacked and stellar voice cast. You got Jason Marsden, the voice of Max Goofy in the two Goofy movies, A Goofy Movie and An Extremely Goofy Movie, as the voice of Tino. You got Grey DeLisle, a legendary voice actress who needs no real introduction, as the voice of Lor. You got Kath Soucie, the voice of both Phil and Lil on Rugrats (the original and the reboot) and All Grown-Up!, as the voice of Tish. And you got Phil LaMarr, the voice of Jack on Samurai Jack and various characters (too many to count), as the voice of Carver. 

Oh, and Cree Summer is in this show too, I'm pretty confident that I didn't mention that in the post. She voices Carver's older sister and his mother. If you don't know who Cree Summer is, she's the voice of Susie Carmichael in Rugrats and All Grown-Up!, Numbuh 5 on Codename: Kids Next Door, Tessa and Vanessa on Pepper Ann, and Foxxy Love on Drawn Together, just to name a few. They really did just hire her to voice nearly all the black female characters ♀︎ in cartoons, didn't they? I mean, I love Cree Summer, she's fantastic, but it's good that there are more black female voice actors ♀︎ in the industry now, and she isn't the only one or one of the few anymore. She doesn't have to carry that weight all by herself anymore.

That was the first thing that really stuck out to me when I first started watching the show, was the incredible voice talent they got to voice the four main characters on this show. You could have them all return to reprise their roles since they'd be playing actual adults this time, so their older sounding voices wouldn't that jarring. Especially, Jason Marsden who was pretty young when he voiced Max in the two Goofy movies and voiced Tino on this show. I believe that he was an actual teenager when he voiced those characters in those projects, which is why he sounded so authentic, especially when he voiced Max, who was supposed to be a teenager and a young adult in those two movies. And he was still young enough to where he could convincingly voice a kid who's like 11 or 12 years old like Tino was. I think he was the youngest member of the main voice cast at the time. 

I talk a lot in this post about how Tish is of Greek and Ukrainian descent 🇬🇷🇺🇦 and is Jewish ✡️. I wrote this in 2021, one year before Russia 🇷🇺 invaded Ukraine 🇺🇦, or 5 months to be exact. But, the fact that she is at least, half Ukrainian 🇺🇦 does make this show more pertinent, like it gives it more weight. It means that this show was sort of ahead of its time by having a character with Ukrainian blood 🇺🇦🩸, even if it's just half. There honestly hasn't been a huge increase in Ukrainian representation 🇺🇦 in the media since the Russian invasion 🇷🇺 happened, but at least we could have Tish back to fill that hole if we accept what ToonrificTariq said, that gap in Ukrainian representation 🇺🇦 in film and TV, even if again, she's only half Ukrainian 🇺🇦. 

I also talk about the idea of adding a Muslim character ☪️ into the mix, and how it would be an interesting dynamic to explore to have a Muslim character ☪️ and a Jewish character ✡️ be apart of the same friend group, to see how they would reconcile their differences in religion and ethnicity, and see them disagree with each other on certain things, but still be friends at the end of the day. And I specifically mentioned Palestine 🇵🇸, and the idea of the Muslim character ☪️ being a Palestinian Arab 🇵🇸. 

Well, as you no doubt well know, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 🇮🇱🇵🇸 flared up again about four or five months ago. It flared up in 2021, but this more recent flare up is bigger and more consequential. Now, there is currently a war in Gaza with the Israelis 🇮🇱 trying and so far failing to eliminate Hamas for good in retaliation for attacking them on October 7. In fact, the whole Middle East is on fire 🔥 right now, and it all stems back to that horrific attack on Israel 🇮🇱 by Hamas on October 7, 2023. So, the line where I mention Palestine 🇵🇸 and the idea of the Muslim character ☪️ being Palestinian 🇵🇸 takes on a whole other meaning now that there's currently a war in Gaza as well as a war in Ukraine 🇺🇦. Such a thing would probably be pretty incendiary 🔥, probably so incendiary 🔥 that no studio or network would even want to touch it. They'd probably demand that the Muslim character ☪️ be a different nationality than Palestinian 🇵🇸. But, that's why it's more needed now than ever. 

Keep in mind, the original Star Trek featured a Russian character during a time when the US 🇺🇸 and the USSR ☭ were in the middle of a cold war with each other, and the Cold War was the worst it would ever get as far as the possibility of it escalating into nuclear war ☢️ is concerned. The 1960s were the closest the Cold War ever got to escalating into nuclear conflict ☢️. The original Star Trek came out just 4 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis 🇨🇺 when the US 🇺🇸 and the USSR ☭ almost blew up the world. So, tensions are high, and hatred is in the air, sometimes you need a character who represents a group that's seen as the enemy or seen as the "other," in a positive way to lower the temperature, and perhaps even influence real change. 

Even though, the inclusion of Chekhov really didn't have any affect on American and Soviet relations 🇺🇸☭, and didn't change the outcome of the Cold War. Including a Palestinian character 🇵🇸 in this hypothetical Weekenders revival probably wouldn't change the direction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict 🇮🇱🇵🇸, and probably wouldn't influence either side to reconcile and embrace peace. But, it change some perceptions by showing people that Israelis 🇮🇱 and Palestinians 🇵🇸, and Muslims ☪️ and Jews ✡️ overall, are capable of becoming friends on a personal, individual-to-individual level, and don't have to be enemies and hate each other. 

Another thing that I didn't realize at the time when I originally wrote this back in 2021 until I started watching The Loud House last year (in 2023), is that this show has a lot more similarities with The Loud House beyond just Lor and her family. In the journal itself, I mentioned how Lor is the only girl ♀︎ living in a huge family, with a whole bunch of boys ♂︎, like she only has brothers and she has a lot of them. They never say how many exactly she has, but it's a huge number. Like, I think she has more brothers than Lincoln has sisters. And I said that it was a reverse Loud House since it was a girl ♀︎ living in a household full of an indeterminate amount of boys ♂︎. But, The Weekenders actually does have a couple of other similarities with The Loud House beyond just Lor being in a huge family with a whole bunch of siblings, and being the only girl ♀︎ (besides her Mom and Grandma) in that family. 

They both break the Fourth Wall with the main character stopping to talk directly to the audience, and sort of introduce the main conflict and plot of the episode. In The Weekenders, it was Tino, and in The Loud House, it is Lincoln. The difference between the two is in The Weekenders, they indicate whenever Tino is supposed to just be talking to audience, and no one else. The background will turn black and white, while Tino will stay in color. That's how they indicate that what Tino is saying can only be heard by us the audience, and not the other characters in the show. In The Loud House, they don't do this. They don't really indicate when Lincoln is talking directly to the audience, and when what he is saying can only be heard by the audience and no else. 

Like, he'll just start talking to the audience in the middle of a scene, and you'll have no idea if what he's saying can be heard by the other characters in the scene or not. I'm surprised that they haven't done a joke in the show where a character looks at Lincoln when he's talking to the audience, and asks him, "Who are you talking to?" It's like the easiest and most obvious joke in the world. And just like how the first couple of seasons of The Loud House focused entirely on Lincoln Loud and all the episodes revolved around him, the first couple of seasons of The Weekenders focuses exclusively on Tino with him as the main protagonist, and all of the episode plots revolved around him with his friends, Tish, Lor, and Carver playing nothing but supporting roles. 

But, then, at some point, they started doing more episodes focused on Tino's friends and having them be the protagonist for once, and having episodes revolved around them. Just like how, at some point, The Loud House started doing more episode focused on Lincoln's sisters, and giving each of them a time in the spotlight, giving them all their own episodes where they get to be the main protagonist and have episode plot revolved around them. The only difference is that in The Weekenders, Tish, Lor, and Carver actually get the chance to break the Fourth Wall and talk to the audience, whereas the Loud sisters never get the chance to. Only Lincoln can do that. 

Oh, and Grey DeLisle is in both shows, and she voices tomboys or tomboyish characters in both shows too. That's another connection that this show has with The Loud House. Oh, and both shows feature brainy girl characters 🧠♀︎ who wear glasses 🤓, only Lisa is exclusively into science 🧪, whereas Tish is also into history, math, and other topics. She's a more general intellectual, whereas Lisa is pretty much just a scientist 👩‍🔬. She also has a lisp, whereas Tish doesn't. I just started noticing these things when I starting watching The Loud House more and more. Because when I wrote this, I hadn't actually seen anything from The Loud House. 

I didn't know anything about it beyond just the basic premise that it was about a boy ♂︎ living in a household full of 10 girls ♀︎, that he was the only boy ♂︎ in this huge family, and he was the middle child. I mean, in a family that large, there's more than one middle child, but Lincoln was the middlest of the middle. Oh, and I knew that the show had gay characters 🏳️‍🌈, and a lot of people on the Internet were upset about that, especially if they were of a more conservative or right-wing persuasion. 

But, once I actually started watching The Loud House, like really watching it, and I started thinking about The Weekenders again, I really started to notice a few of these similarities. I don't even think I named all the similarities between these two shows. Did Chris Savino rip off this show? Did he work on this show, and get the idea to create The Loud House from it? With a couple of these, it's hard to say that it's a coincidence. 

One last thing about The Weekenders that I learned a bit after writing this journal is that the Disney CEO at the time, Michael Eisner really hated the title. And so did everyone else who worked on the show. They all hated the title. But, the name just kind of stuck because they couldn't come up with a better title. To be fair, The Weekenders is a pretty weird title for a cartoon show, even one that's about the weekends. 

Maybe, they could have called it Having Fun for the Weekend, sort of like a play on the title of that song, "Working for the Weekend," but it's Having Fun for the Weekend because the kids aren't working on the weekends, they're having fun on the weekends. Or maybe, My Friends and the Weekends, Or maybe, On The Weekends. Or better yet, why not name the show after the title of the theme song, "Living for the Weekend?" Living for the Weekend would've been a perfect title for this show. Just a few ideas. But, The Weekenders is the name we're all stuck with. 

Anyway, I just thought that was a funny little tidbit that Michael Eisner hated the title for the show. I know a lot of people like to make fun of Eisner, and make jokes at his expense, but I honestly think he was a better leader than Bob Iger. I mean, at least he didn't try to turn Disney into a monopoly by buying up the competition, and gobbling up as much IP as they can. I find it interesting that even the creator, Doug Langdale and everyone else who worked on the show also didn't like the title. It's one of the few examples I can think of where the creators of a show and the executive(s) were actually on the same page about something. But, they couldn't actually do anything about it because the thing they were on the same page about something, even if that something was already set in stone, and couldn't be changed at that point. Now, onto the main post.

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(This is a screenshot from The Weekenders. It shows all the four main characters, Tino, Carver, Lor, and Tish. Tino is the one wearing the red and blue shirt. Carver is the one wearing the green shirt. Tish is the one wearing purple. And Lor is the one wearing that t-shirt with the red star ★ in the middle. I don't know which episode it's from. I haven't watched that many episodes because this show isn't on Disney+. So, I had to watch whatever episodes were available on YouTube, even if they weren't in the best quality. And not all of the episodes are available on YouTube of course. So, this could be from an episode that I've never seen, and isn't widely available because the show itself isn't widely available. The only way you can watch this show in actual good quality is on DVD 📀, but the DVDs 📀 are out of print, and are hard to find too. This is yet another thing that Disney is trying to bury and make people forget about it seems. But, it won't work. We remember. We all remember!)

 

I've been watching the early-to-mid 2000s Disney cartoon show, The Weekenders, a lot recently, and I've been watching the YouTuber, Jordan Fringe's weekly video reviews on the recent iCarly revival on Paramount+. And that got me thinking, should The Weekenders have a revival too? And also, Jordan Fringe should totally do a video on The Weekenders, if he's not already planning to; I would also like to see him talk about Pepper Ann, which is another funny and underrated cartoon show from Disney, except it was from the late 90s-to-early 2000s whereas The Weekenders was all 2000s. For those of you who don't know what The Weekenders is, basically it was a cartoon show that aired on ABC (Disney's One Saturday Morning), UPN (Disney's One Too), and later Toon Disney from the year 2000 to the year 2004. It had 4 seasons, and had around 38 episodes comprised of 73 segments in total. The basic premise of the show is it's about these four 12-year-old 7th grade kids who are all best friends and each have different personalities and different traits. You have Tino, who's the neurotic, nervous one of the group (though he's not a completely anxious and nervous introverted wreck, he's pretty extroverted, witty, and sarcastic in his own right), as well as the main character and narrator of the whole series. He's also sometimes the voice of reason whenever the other three do something stupid that causes them issues throughout the whole weekend. You have Carver, who's the cool one of the group, or at least he tries to be cool, but his ego and his selfishness often get the better of him. He's also into shoes and has dreams of being a shoe designer (maybe, kind of).

You have Tish, who's the brainy, booksmart one of the group (you know, the more educated and cultured one of the group), and is usually the voice of reason whenever Tino isn't; though she's not immune to making stupid mistakes or going off the deep-end with her overbearingness, and her need to always be right, and always be in the right. She's also a vegetarian, but that aspect of her character is hardly ever brought up, except in certain instances.

 

The most attention her vegetarianism gets in the whole series is in the intro oddly enough. And finally, you have Lor, who's the tomboy/athletic one of the group who's into all the cool boy stuff that Tino and Carver are into; except the comic book superhero character and series, Captain Dreadnought, that everyone in the show seems to hate or dislike except for Tino and his mom's boyfriend, Dixon, who's also a cool character. Similar to Carver, it's often her selfishness, and her lack of common sense or book smarts that gets Lor into trouble in episodes. They're also each different races/ethnicities and even nationalities, in the case of Tish. You know, Tino is an Italian-American 🇮🇹🇺🇸 (his first name, and his last name, Tonitini should clue you into that), Carver is an African-American or Black American (depending on which term you like to use), Tish is a Jewish-American ✡️🇺🇸 who comes from an immigrant family with a Greek and Ukrainian background 🇬🇷🇺🇦 (which is what I meant I said nationalities), and Lor is a Scottish-American 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇺🇸. How important you think this detail about their characters is, is up to you, but it is cool to have some diversity in there rather than them all just being unspecified, generic white people.

You know, there are huge differences between the European ethnic groups and cultures, they're not all homogeneous. There are differences between a Scottish person and an Italian person, there are differences between a German person and a Nordic person, there are differences between a Irish person and a Greek person, there are differences between a French person and a Spanish and Portuguese person, and there of course differences between an Anglo or English person and a Slavic person from Russia 🇷🇺 or Belarus 🇧🇾 or any of the Balkan countries 🇷🇸🇧🇦🇭🇷🇲🇪🇸🇮🇲🇰🇽🇰.

The group's also perfectly balanced, with two boys ♂︎ and two girls ♀︎; perfectly balanced as all things should be. And they're all voiced by an all-star voice acting cast, consisting of Jason Marsden (the voice of Max Goofy from A Goofy Movie, and An Extremely Goofy Movie) as Tino, Phil Lamar (the voice of Jack from Samurai Jack and many other characters from other cartoons that I cannot think of at the moment) as Carvar, Kath Soucie (the voice of Phil and Lil on Rugrats and All Grown-Up!) as Tish, and Grey DeLisle (the voice of Vicky from The Fairly OddParents, Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender, Sam from Danny Phantom, Frankie from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Kitty Katswell from T.U.F.F. Puppy, Daphne on several Scooby-Doo shows and movies, and many more; she's just as prolific of a voice actress as Tara Strong) as Lor. They also each have their own families, who are all supporting or side characters in the show. You have Tino's mom, who gets the most focus and screen time out of any of the parents in this show, and is almost always the voice of reason when Tino and his friends do something incredibly stupid or bad (which they usually do). She has this almost supernatural ability to accurately guess what Tino and his friends' problem is before he even tells her (which they point out and joke about constantly throughout the show), and she always seems to know the right thing to say, and just generally gives the good advice to her son and his friends. The running joke with her though is that despite being a great wise and caring mother who gives her son good advice whenever he and his friends make mistakes or need help with a particular issue, she makes weird or terrible unappetizing food that no body likes, including Tino himself.

She's also divorced, and is a single mother raising an only child basically, and this is big point of contention for Tino as he's trying to cope with having divorced parents, and not seeing his dad all time. But, she gets a boyfriend during the series named Dixon who's like the coolest guy ever. You know, he's charismatic, he's charming, and he's into all the cool stuff that Tino's into like Captain Dreadnought for instance. He's the kind of guy who you would want to be your stepfather, or at least, be your mom's boyfriend. You have Carver's family, who we do see much less of than the other four characters' families. You have his parents who are pretty cool and good caring and supportive parents, and you have his two siblings, his younger baby brother, and his older sister, Penny, who gets the most screen time and most focus out of Carver's whole family. She and Carver has this sort of sibling rivalry type thing going on where they always bicker, tease and pick on each other. You know, like Carver finds her annoying, and she finds him annoying; typical sibling type stuff. You have Tish's parents, who are these quirky and odd Eastern European immigrants who happen to be Jewish, and have these thick accents that no body really understands except Tish (in fact a few of the conflicts in episodes involving Tish and her parents are due to misunderstandings caused by Tish's parents' thick Eastern European accents and their weird pronunciations of English words), and they aren't entirely accustomed to American culture. We don't see Tish's parents a lot, like they're hardly ever the main focus of an episode, and they usually just have brief appearances. And then you have Lor's family, who's by far the biggest out of all of them. She lives with her two parents, her grandmother (who has a thick Scottish accent), and over a dozen or so brothers; at least a few of them are or one of them is older than her, some of them are around the same age as her, and most are younger than her. Basically, she's the only girl in a household filled with boys, which would partially explain why she's such a tomboy and is into a lot of stereotypically boy things like action movies, horror movies, monster trucks, and of course sports (specifically basketball 🏀). Her brothers all kind of portrayed as being super rough and rowdy, and they're like this force of nature that just kind of wrecks everything in their path. It's basically a reverse Loud House, except this show came out way before Loud House was even a thing. So, this show technically did the whole one kid living in a household with dozens of siblings of the opposite sex first; maybe this is what inspired Loud House in the first place. And the show's basically just about these four having fun and hanging out together on the weekends, hence why it's called The Weekenders. We hardly ever see their school life, we just see the end parts of it on Fridays, and the beginning parts of it on Mondays sometimes, and then it's off to the weekend where they embark on all kinds of misadventures, usually initiated by either Carver or Lor. But, Tino and Tish initiate quite a lot of the misadventures and funny situations as well. A lot of these misadventures and funny situations are usually due to mundane everyday problems that kids their age would deal with. A lot of them are caused by misunderstandings by one of or all four of the main characters, from them just not not understanding a particular situation or not understanding the world around them and how it works due to them being 12 year olds and not having much worldly knowledge; despite how booksmart and well educated Tish herself is.

They're also caused by one of or all four of the main characters' shortcomings and flaws, like Tino's nervousness, insecurities, and just general aversion to change, or Carver and Lor's selfishness and lack of booksmarts/worldly knowledge; as well as Lor's crush on a boy from their school named Thompson Overman, which completely blinds her to common sense as she constantly tries to impress him, even if that means changing aspects about herself. 

 

Whether it's making herself seem more girly or making herself seem more brainy 🧠, since Thompson is a brainy and academically accomplished boy 🧠♂︎ (he's in the Honor Society along with Tish), or making herself seem more "romantic" after she totally misunderstands Thompson's reaction to a romantic movie that they all happened to have watched at the theater at the same time. She thinks that he liked the movie, and therefore thinks that he's into romantic stuff and tries to be more romantic and dress more romantically (even copying a dress from the movie they watched). When in actuality, he hated the movie and isn't into all that romance stuff at all.

Or it's due to Tish's overbearingness and her need to always be right and always be in the right, and always be in control. Like she'll often prioritize her studies and her academic pursuits over what her friends want. Like in the episode, "Radio Drama" where she signs them all up to a radio play contest without asking them, knowing that they wouldn't agree to it if she asked them. And then, when they actually start rehearsing the play that she wrote (based on a story from her homeland, but reinterpreted or re-imagined as a story in the American antebellum south 🇺🇸), she becomes a complete control freak, bossing them around constantly and berating them for every little mistake they make. All so that she can be gain some extra credits points on her portfolio to get into the college or university that she wants to go to, as well as be some kind of auteur playwright and director. Or in the episode, "Dinner Party," where she forces them all to attend a dinner party that she hosts at her house because she wants to feel more mature and sophisticated.

After each of these misadventures, they usually learn some type of life lesson at the end once they've realized their mistakes, like don't judge your friend's preferences in girls or boys, or don't interference in your sibling's or friend's relationships, or don't choose a club over your friends, or don't start petty fights that ruin your friendships, or your friends are much better when they're different from you and not just carbon copies or it's okay to let your friends have alone time to themselves. Things like that. It's a pretty fun show, it's very grounded, there's nothing super wacky or weird in the show like actual aliens, actual zombies, talking animals, or magic or anything like that. A lot of the humor in the show is dialogue based rather than being visual based like there's no slapstick humor in this or any other visual type gags. You could say The Weekenders is more of a script driven show than a storyboard driven show, since script driven shows are usually dialogue based. Especially live-action comedy and sitcom type shows like Seinfeld, Friends, Frasier, Two and a Half Men, Full House, Everybody Loves Raymond, Everybody Hates Chris, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Malcolm in the Middle, Modern Family, George Lopez, Martin, Reba, and many more.

Though, that's not say that there aren't any visual gags in this show at all, there is the pizzeria that always has a different theme and even different name whenever Tino and the other three visit and eat there. Like in one episode, it'll be themed like a Mission: Impossible-type spy movie, in another episode it'll be themed like a Roman Colosseum complete with Gladiator references, in another episode it'll have a Shakespeare theme with all kinds of references to his most famous plays, in another episode it'll be themed like barn, in another episode it'll be themed like a gym, and in another episode it'll be themed like a desert island complete with all kinds of Lord of the Flies references.

The reason why they made the pizzeria like this is because according to the creator of the show, Doug Langdale, they couldn't think of a name or a single theme for the pizza restaurant,so they just decided to give it a different name and a different theme every time. Keep in mind, it was originally supposed to be a tea shop but they changed it to a pizza place at the behest of Disney execs who felt that a pizza joint would be a more relatable hang-out/eating place for 12-year-old kids than a tea shop. I guess, this was before Boba Tea Company was ever a thing, which it was after doing some minor research on Wikipedia. Boba Tea Company was founded in 2005, the year after this show was canceled, and it was founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the city where I grew up.

The show is much closer to something like Rocket Power or As Told by Ginger, two cartoon shows from the 2000s that were also very grounded and very dialogue based, though it's considerably less dark and serious than As Told by Ginger. As Told by Ginger is much more of a dramatic show that explores the more serious issues of growing up in American suburbia 🇺🇸 and American middle class society 🇺🇸 as a preteen kid in middle school, and eventually high school; it's a coming-of-age series basically. The Weekenders is much more playful and is really just trying to be funny, while teaching its audience some basic, but valuable morals and life lessons along the way. I guess, the weird thing or the wacky thing that sets it apart and makes it a cartoon is that it breaks the fourth wall, like each episode starts with Tino or one of the other guys talking to the audience and kind of introducing the conflict of the episode like giving the basic setup before the episode really gets into it. And each episode is book-ended by Tino or one of the other characters talking directly to the audience again, summarizing the lesson of the episode, and saying "Later days." Anyway, enough of my mini-review of the show, let's get into the main topic or question of this journal. Should The Weekenders have a revival? I kind of think so. I mean, even though the show lasted four seasons and had 38 episode comprised of 73 10 or 11 minute long segments, it never got a proper conclusion of any kind. It just kind of got cancelled in 2004 after the episode, "Tino's Dad" where we actually get to see Tino's dad for the first time in the series, after we've heard Tino talk about him constantly in the series up to that point. Even though that was a pretty big episode (we finally saw a character who was only ever alluded to up until that point in the series), you could tell that it was never meant to be the last episode of the series. So, it would be cool if they did bring it back somehow to maybe give it a proper conclusion of some kind like with a movie of some kind, sort like Hey, Arnold! with that Jungle Movie 🌴 that completed the story of that show. Or if they could just continue it on as a new series kind of like the iCarly revival. If they did bring it back, I would love it if they made adult and mature show where the four characters, Tino, Carver, Tish, and Lor all adults in their 20s or early 30s; basically the same age as the fans of the show who grew up with it would be today.

I like the idea of characters in a show growing up and maturing with their audiences, so that they aren't stagnant and frozen in time like a lot of cartoon characters are like Ash Ketchem from Pokémon for instance, like Ash never aged past the age of 10, 11, or 12 years old (however old he's supposed to be in the Pokémon anime) in the past 20 or 30 years that the Pokémon anime has been running. Rugrats kind of did this with All Grown-Up!, except they didn't make it an adult or mature show, they still kept a kid show, as they only aged up the characters to preteen/middle school age; so the title, All Grown-Up! is technically misleading since they're not "all grown up," they still got plenty of growing up to do, both literally and figuratively. What I'm proposing is more like The Weekenders characters (who were kids in the original series) being fully fledged adults with jobs and careers, houses or apartments, and families of their own (maybe) in this hypothetical revival. It would keeps the show fresh and bring something new to the table, so that it isn't just the same show, but in higher definition and with crisper and cleaner animation.

You also tell jokes and do scenarios that you would've never been able to do in the original series due to the restraints of it being a kid's show. Obviously though, it wouldn't be as adult as something like South Park, Family Guy, or even Rick and Morty, but probably much closer to things like The Simpsons, Futurama, or even King of the Hill. That's probably about as adult and mature as it would be, King of the Hill, but perhaps a bit more, maybe. I even have an idea on how you can do that with The Weekenders. You have it focus on their days off. You know, The Weekenders focused on the four when they were not in school and were just hanging out on the weekend, so a revival focused on them as adults would focus on them when they're not at work and are just hanging out and enjoying their days off; going to the movies, going to the bar, going bowling, or just having fun at home and just chilling, watching Netflix (or whatever fictional equivalent they come up with to stand in for Netflix) or something.

You can episodes where they're on paid vacations or unpaid vacations, and go travel some place to fun together like Las Vegas, Nevada or New York City or Miami, Florida or Washington DC or Roswell, New Mexico or Santa Fe, New Mexico or Albuquerque, New Mexico (can you tell I'm from New Mexico yet?). Or maybe, they could even travel to an entirely different country like Japan 🇯🇵, South Korea 🇰🇷, China 🇨🇳, Thailand 🇹🇭, the Philippines 🇵🇭, Vietnam 🇻🇳, India 🇮🇳, Australia 🇦🇺, New Zealand 🇳🇿, South Africa 🇿🇦, Morocco 🇲🇦, France 🇫🇷, Germany 🇩🇪, Italy 🇮🇹, Spain 🇪🇸, the Netherlands 🇳🇱, Sweden 🇸🇪, Denmark 🇩🇰, Norway 🇳🇴, Iceland 🇮🇸, Canada 🇨🇦, Brazil 🇧🇷, Mexico 🇲🇽, Argentina 🇦🇷, Puerto Rico 🇵🇷, American Samoa 🇦🇸, Hong Kong 🇭🇰, and Macau 🇲🇴. Yeah, I know, those last four are not countries, but are territories apart of larger countries, but you get the point.

Of course, I'm not saying that every episode of this hypothetical revival should be a travel episode, or that the show should become a travel show. You can still have, and you should have, plenty of episodes that take place in the US 🇺🇸 where the characters mainly live like Bahia Bay, which is the fictional Californian town that the original show mainly takes place in; it was heavily inspired by San Diego, California, because that's where Doug Langdale grew up, and the show is largely based on his own childhood experiences. Or you can have the show take place in a different city (real or fictional), you know, people don't always stay in the town or city where they grew up. Sometimes, they move out, and move to go live in a different city or town, usually because of their job or career.

In fact, if the show was only brought back for one last single movie to conclude everything, my idea is that the four protagonists are all scattered across the country, living in different cities or towns because of their work, and they reunite and meet in the place where they all met and grew up, which is of course, Bahia Bay. And even if they did bring back for a full series, you always have the same concept, with the characters all being scattered and reuniting and meeting back up in Bahia Bay to live in the same neighborhood and town together once again.

But, what I am saying with all that travel stuff is that you could shake things up, and have the four characters go to different places in the US 🇺🇸 or even travel to different countries entirely, since that is something adults often do for vacations, and this show would be all about the days off and vacations. Especially if one or two, or three or all four of the characters are rich and well-off due to their jobs and careers, and therefore have the money to travel around for vacations. You know, the ones who I think are most likely to be rich as adults are Lor and Carver.

You know, Lor would more than likely grow up to be a professional athlete of some kind, probably a female basketball player in the WNBA or something. Carver would grow up to be a highly successful shoe designer or maybe a successful podcaster (like a Joe Rogan-type of podcast or Breakfast Club type podcast) since he has expressed an interest in being famous, and has showed interest in radio talk show hosting throughout the original series. Of course, radio isn't as big or prevalent now as it was back then during the show's original run. So, it would probably have to be podcasting, since the Internet has fully taken over society, and more people listen to podcasts nowadays than they do actual radio shows on the radio.

Tish would either be a scientist or a science communicator akin to Carl Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye, or maybe a professor working at a university in academia or something, so not like super rich, but pretty accomplished all things considered. Tino's a bit of a toss-up, because they didn't delve into what he wanted to do as a career or a job when he grew up. The only times it really came up were in the episodes, "Careers," and "Best." So, Tino's future is uncertain, and there's more room to do things with him as an adult. I'd imagine that out of the four, Tino would more than likely be the one with just an average middle class lifestyle, you know, not super rich or famous, but still doing well for himself. What does he do as a job? I don't know, maybe he works as a manager for a fast-food restaurant, maybe he's an electrician, maybe he's working a desk job at some big company inside of a cubicle, maybe he has an online sales or advertising job, maybe he's a cars salesman at a car dealership, I don't know, but it would probably a middle class job.

I also think that he's the one out of the four who would mostly likely have a family of his own or just have a kid or two. Carver, I could see being a womanizing, playboy bachelor just casual dating and having sex with any woman he meets and deems attractive by his admittedly shallow standards; perhaps using the excuse that he's just trying to find the "right one." Tish would probably go childless, even if she did marry. Lor would probably be married, more than likely to her middle school sweetheart, Thompson Overman (of course, who else would it be?), but I doubt they'd have kids by the time the show starts. Maybe, her getting pregnant and having a baby would be a story arc within the revival series, I don't know.

But, Tino, Tino would probably more than likely be married and a kid or two by the time the revival show begins. I was even thinking of the possibility that Tino was married, but then had a divorce kind of like his mom did, and when we meet him again in the revival, he's living with his daughter (or son, whichever they choose, but I kind of want it to be a daughter), raising her as a single father. You know, Tino's the protagonist, we root for him, so it would nice for him to get custody of his kid rather losing custody like so many court battle between a couple and their children go.

Plus, we hardly ever see single fathers represented in media, and represented positively, so it would be nice to see Tino be a single father, and be a good one. Maybe, they could even make Tino's child, a prominent character in the revival series, and maybe have her be a huge a weeaboo, who's into anime and Japanese pop culture in general 🇯🇵. You know, explore that aspect of modern American society 🇺🇸, since there's a lot of younger people today who are obsessed with anime and Asian stuff than there ever were in the 1990s or 2000s.

You can add in some new characters as well, including some to the main group. And obviously, there would have to be two characters and they would each have to be a man and woman to keep the group balanced between boys and girls, or men and women in this case; making a four-person group into a six-person group. Maybe, you could have an Asian character, or a white American southerner 🇺🇸, or a South African character 🇿🇦, or an Australian character 🇦🇺, or a Russian character 🇷🇺 or something. Or maybe you can a Muslim character ☪️ in there, to really balance the group out since Tish is Jewish ✡️.

You know, you would have a Jewish character ✡️ and Muslim character ☪️ co-existing together, and being friends. Heads would definitely explode if they did this, but I think it would be worth since it would show that people can be friends no matter what religion, nationality or ethnicity they are; even if they're members of ethnicity groups that hate each other for one reason or another. That would just send a positive message, despite any controversy it might cause.

You can have this Muslim character ☪️ be a Bangladeshi-American 🇧🇩🇺🇸, a Pakistani-American 🇵🇰🇺🇸, an Algerian-American 🇩🇿🇺🇸, Libyan-American 🇱🇾🇺🇸, Moroccan-American 🇲🇦🇺🇸, Sudanese-American 🇸🇩🇺🇸, Egyptian-American 🇪🇬🇺🇸, Syrian-American 🇸🇾🇺🇸, Yemeni-American 🇾🇪🇺🇸, Jordanian-American 🇯🇴🇺🇸, Kuwaiti-American 🇰🇼🇺🇸, Lebanese-American 🇱🇧🇺🇸, Iranian-American 🇮🇷🇺🇸, or maybe even an Iraqi-American 🇮🇶🇺🇸, or Afghan-American 🇦🇫🇺🇸, to keep up with current events/issues. You would make heads explode if you made the Muslim country a Saudi-American 🇸🇦🇺🇸. I mean, a Saudi Muslim ☪️, and an Eastern European Jew ✡️ co-existing together as friends? That's outrage (to a lot of people)! Or even worse, a Palestinian Muslim 🇵🇸✡️ and an Eastern European Jew ✡️ co-existing together as friends, that would cause riots in the streets.

Or maybe, you can have a Native American character (or American-Indian, whichever term you prefer), just saying. It would be nice to have an Native American character in there, since Native Americans don't really get a whole lot of representation in American fictional media, especially Pueblo Indians. My picks for a Pueblo Indian character, if they went that for one of the two new characters, would a Laguna or Acoma tribal member, since those are two the main tribes that I have the most personal ties to here in my home state of New Mexico. Or you can maybe it a Hopi character, Hopis are popular choice since they're one of the most well known Native tribes in America 🇺🇸 besides Navajos, Apaches, and Cherokees. I mean, my grandma is half-Hopi (or a quarter Hopi, I'm not exactly sure), so it could work.

I was thinking that if they did have an Asian character, they could have her be the new female added to the group, and they could have her be of Cambodian descent 🇰🇭. We hardly ever see Cambodian characters 🇰🇭 in shows and movies that feature Asians. They're usually Chinese 🇨🇳, Japanese 🇯🇵, and Korean 🇰🇷🇰🇵, now that Korean culture 🇰🇷🇰🇵 is becoming more popular in the west. Sometimes they'll have a Vietnamese character 🇻🇳, but they're even less frequent or prevalent than Koreans 🇰🇷🇰🇵 are in American media 🇺🇸.

Plus, they could use that as an opportunity to have a character with a more tragic family background than Tino by having this Cambodian character 🇰🇭's parents and/or grandfather living the extremely oppressive and brutal reign of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the mid-to-late 1970s. You know, communism ☭ and Pol Pot's brutal dictatorship in Cambodia 🇰🇭 (which was known then as the Democratic Kampuchea) is a huge part of modern Cambodian history 🇰🇭, and it's a history that most Americans are unaware of, which is a shame because Cambodian and Southeast Asian history 🇰🇭 in the Cold War era (like from 1946-1993, or 1999 if you want to include East Timor 🇹🇱, or Timor-Leste 🇹🇱 as it's officially called now, and Indonesia 🇮🇩, and the whole issue between them 🇮🇩🇹🇱) is extremely fascinating and tragic.

(This is the flag of the Democratic Kampuchea, the infamous communist regime of the fanatical Pol Pot and the communist insurgent militia group ☭ known as the Khmer Rouge. It was also the flag of the Khmer Rouge themselves before they took power in 1975. The reason why the Democratic Kampuchea, as well as Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, are so infamous is because during their 4 year reign over Cambodia 🇰🇭, they killed around 1 million or 2 million people, 1/3 of the total population, with their collectivist policies, in what some people call the Cambodian Genocide 🇰🇭. Though some historians don't want to call it a genocide since it wasn't based on ethnic hatred like the Holocaust or the Armenian Genocide 🇦🇲, but was based on extremely reckless collectivist policies and harsh brutal and sometimes murderous punishments.

Most of the people who died in the genocide died from starvation, exhaustion or disease. Pol Pot tried to turn to his country into some utopian agrarian society free of western influence of any kind, and he did this by first evacuating all of the major cities in the country, including the capital, Phnom Penh, until they were all empty ghost towns, and forcing everyone to living in the undeveloped countryside; anyone who didn't leave the cities after the evacuation order were immediately killed on the spot by Khmer Rouge guerrillas. Then, he forced everyone to work in the fields as farmers and such, 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. They were not paid for their work, money was completely abolished, they just worked for the government without any pay or leave or breaks.

They were basically slave labor, with little-to-no freedom whatsoever, and they basically worked until they literally dropped dead. On top of these disastrous bad collectivist policies, many people were subjected to brutal torture and execution by the Khmer Rouge in makeshift prisons such as the infamous Security Prison 21, which was originally a secondary school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison for political dissents and other people they deemed as criminals or against the state. Just imagine if your middle school got turned into a prison where the government would basically torture and murder people if they didn't go along with their policies or criticized them openly.

It truly was a dystopian nightmare, an apocalyptic hell hole beyond anything that modern 21st century people living in the developed first world could ever imagine. And the ones who ended up saving the Cambodians from their tormentors were the Vietnamese 🇻🇳, who invaded Cambodia 🇰🇭, took down the Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge government, and began occupying the country while also setting up a friendlier government called the People's Republic of Kampuchea, in 1979 and for the entirety of the 1980s. Sorry to get all morbid and depressing on you like that, but I wanted to explain the history of the Democratic Kampuchea since I'm showing their flag and I talk about Cambodian history 🇰🇭 in this section.)

 

 

So, having a Cambodian-American character 🇰🇭🇺🇸 with that background would be a great chance to sort of educate people on part of Cold War and Southeast Asia history that westerners today are kind of unfamiliar with. I mean, I know, this show's main purpose is not to educate people, other than maybe teaching basic life lessons, but it would be cool if that was included if The Weekenders was brought back, was more adult, and had a new character who was of Cambodian descent 🇰🇭. If they didn't do a Cambodian character 🇰🇭, they could do a Filipino character 🇵🇭 instead, it would be cool to have a Filipino character 🇵🇭 in a cartoon show like this.

The only major hurdle that a more adult/mature revival of The Weekenders would face in getting made is Disney itself. The original of course is a Disney cartoon show, and Disney has this thing about not making anything too mature or too adult on their main networks or their theme parks, or their main movie lineups or their main streaming service, Disney+. That's main thing that has stopped that Lizzy McGuire revival that Hillary Duff has been wanting to make from getting off the ground. She wants to make it a more adult/mature show just like the iCarly revival is, and like what I'm proposing for a potential Weekenders revival, since she's now in her 30s and not a teenager at all anymore. So, if Hillary Duff couldn't get a more adult Lizzy McGuire revival off the ground, what chances does a more adult Weekenders revival have? The only thing that I can think of is if they put it on Hulu, Disney owns a percentage of that streaming service and are working to acquire more and more of it until they own the whole thing. And it's obvious that Disney wants to acquire Hulu so that they can use that as a place to put all their more adult content onto, just like they did with studios like Touchstone, Miramax, Dimension Films, and Hollywood Pictures. In fact, this could be the solution for the Lizzy McGuire revival as well, just put it on Hulu, so that you can separate it from your more kid-friendly/family-friendly content on Disney+. Another solution, and a less likely one, is if Doug Langdale acquired the rights to The Weekenders from Disney, so that he would own it, and he can make a revival on Netflix or some other streaming service and make it as adult as he wanted. The only thing wrong with that potentially is that there would all these rights issues where they wouldn't be able to show certain things or use certain names, or whatever. But, what do you all think? Should there be a revival to The Weekenders? Should be more adult and mature to reflect the age of the original fans? And if so, what are your solutions to making it happen considering Disney's aversion to adult/mature content? What are your thoughts on The Weekenders, the original in general? Whatever your thoughts, post them down below in the comments. I'll try to read and respond to them, as long as they're not too mean and nasty. 

 

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Note:

I made a significant change to the text in this journal. In the section talking about the Weekenders' ethnic background, I changed Tish's background from being from an "unspecified Eastern European country" to being of Greek and Ukrainian decent 🇬🇷🇺🇦. This first came to my attention when I watched a review of The Weekenders by a YouTuber called ToonrificTariq when he mentioned that Tish and her parents were of Greek and Ukrainian decent 🇬🇷🇺🇦. I wasn't sure how true that it is, so when I was re-watching an episode this morning (September 24, 2021), that thought slipped back into my mind again, and I decided to look it up on Wikipedia.

So, I went to The Weekenders Wikipedia page, and looked at the Premise section where they talk about characters, and wouldn't you know it, it does say that Tish is of Greek and Ukrainian decent 🇬🇷🇺🇦. I read that Wikipedia page numerous times before this, and I know that it didn't always say that. It said "unspecified Eastern European country," which is why I put that in this journal. That and the fact that the show itself didn't specify which Eastern European country that Tish and her parents come from, because while Tish is an American 🇺🇸, she was not born in the US 🇺🇸. In the episode, "Brain Dead," it's explained that Tish was born outside of the US 🇺🇸 and was born in whatever Eastern European country her parents were living in, and after she was born, they immigrated to the US 🇺🇸.

But, if Tish is Greek and Ukrainian decent 🇬🇷🇺🇦 then that would mean that her parents are either Greek or Ukrainian 🇬🇷🇺🇦. Either her father is Ukrainian 🇺🇦 and her mother is Greek 🇬🇷, or her mother is Ukrainian 🇺🇦 and her father is Greek 🇬🇷, one of those. But, if that's the case then why does the show insist on referring to their country as "The Old Country?" Why wouldn't they say Greece 🇬🇷 and/or Ukraine 🇺🇦? Of course, we also have to consider that despite their ethnic background, Tish's parents aren't actually Greek or Ukrainian citizens 🇬🇷🇺🇦. You know, just because someone's of Greek or Ukrainian decent doesn't mean that they're actually from Greece 🇬🇷 or Ukraine 🇺🇦. By that logic, every Irish-American person is from Ireland 🇮🇪, or every Italian-American person is from Italy 🇮🇹.

It is pretty confusing, and I think they kept it vague and ambiguous to not offend anyone or stir up controversy. Tish's parents are admittedly portrayed in a very stereotypical way. So, if they did specify what country they were from, whether it was Greece 🇬🇷 or Ukraine 🇺🇦, then people might've accused them of perpetuating ethnic stereotypes about Greeks 🇬🇷 or Ukrainians 🇺🇦. So, they just kept it vague and just referred to their country as "The Old Country." That's my theory at least, I'm not sure how true it is. 

 

And I'm not sure how to confirm that besides asking Doug Langdale himself, which I can't do since I don't have Twitter 🐦 anymore, and I don't wish to acquire it again. If it were me, running this show or writing it, I would just up and say that they're Greek 🇬🇷 or Ukrainian 🇺🇦, you know, cut out all the bullshit. Anyway, that's all I wanted to say, I wanted to clear all that up in-case any of you are wondering how the journal has different wording in some parts. I mean, I've been editing this journal on and off every since I published it, but those were all minor changes to fix grammatical mistakes. But, this is a huge change, so I felt like writing a note talking about it. That and I just wanted to discuss this topic and give my take on it.