Originally posted at the DL December 2015
With my last breath, I blame Grefter.
Okay so it's not actually that bad, but it's not good. I'm working from an incomplete set, which sorta cobbles 8 season 1 episodes (of 13 as I understand it) into two movie-like things, and although the stops for each episode are visible I'm going to forego evaluating them individually.
In part this is because I don't think I could actually pick a weakest episode. The trouble is that the weak parts of the show are the exact same issues over and over. I can't remember if I've ever talked about this issue? Eh, oh no maybe I repeat myself. So a lot of people insist on avoiding the word "cartoon" in all its forms, because the term reinforces the whole notion that animation is for children (or so they think). Because there was a time between roughly the mid-50s and the mid-80s where animation went through some dark, dark times. The House of Mouse was barely holding it together, Warner Bros. had actually closed shop for several years in there, and the face of animation was folks like Filmation and Hana-Barbara. And adults with their self-respect rightly turned up nose at 90% of their output. It's part of a whole package; kids are dumb and will watch anything, these are just vehicles to keep them occupied and sell them crap so we want to spend as little money as possible.
Nowadays you don't suffer that, at least not in the mainstream. Those shows do exist, but are largely relegated to direct-to-dvd mockbusters or toddler-tier programming. But the stigma is there. And with that comes the whole thing about moral guardians and blah blah won't somebody think of the children. This too has dimmed over time, but it left a mark. Between it and the previous, there's an idea that if you're designing a show for the youngest audiences, you have to talk down to them. You have to keep conflicts simple, use certain stock hardships and interpersonal conflicts, and so on.
I generally sum up all of this mess as "being limited by the audience"; the show is for five year olds, and in talking down to the five year olds you make the material somewhat insulting to a more sophisticated audience. While you can't necessarily call it bad, it is dumb and not enjoyable. And that's what Ewoks is suffering from, in every episode available. It's limited by the audience and spends inordinate time teaching small kids the same lessons about being nice and owning up to your mistakes that every cartoon ever has to cover. The recurring bad guy faction, the Duloks, are also about as insufferable an 80s Cartoon Villain Group as I'm been exposed to, which is not to be taken lightly. Bleh.
When the show isn't doing all that nonsense, it's got some decent things going on. like, compare to something actually in its weight class (I dunno, the Smurfs, say) and it stands out well! The internal mythology makes a modicum of sense and their interactions with the many other sapient races on Endor are kinda neat. The animation itself isn't total balls, certainly above average for 1986 anyway. But it's a long walk in the desert for those tiny oasis.
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