I Love Time Travel - Part 13 - The Animated Variety

I was a Saturday morning cartoon kid.  So many were absolute garbage, but a select few stuck in my brain and helped form a sense of humor and an imagination that decorates my daily life.  Somewhere in there I found the beginnings of timing and outsider attitude and the will to do the right thing.  Yes, it happened that way.  I watch them still, although I am much more selective.

Ok, so there is a Mr. Peabody and Sherman movie out. My kids are too old to care and I’m sure Mr. Peabody will make sassy comments and probably have a rap battle with Galileo or something.  That is the world we live in.  I loved the cartoon as a kid which is not surprising.  Sandwiched in the middle of Bullwinkle cartoons, I‘m sure it was my first time seeing time travel put to use.  I don’t remember much about it other than horrible puns at the end of each episode, and I always love the acronym WABAC for a time machine.  (Who are we kidding?  I’ll end up seeing the movie.)

If you withhold the classic era of Warner Brothers cartoons and a handful of others that came out in the 60’s (including the aforementioned Bullwinkle), the cartoons of my kids’ era are superior in every way imaginable.  There, I said it.  Among those was a short-lived series called Samurai Jack, by Genndy Tartakovsky, the creator of Dexter’s Laboratory and Powerpuff Girls.  The premise was so simple, but I am not sure if I was ever exposed to this use of time travel before.  Jack is a warrior and has to face the evil (sorcerer?) Aku.  In the first episode, Aku throws Jack through a time portal to the future, where Aku has already taken over the world.  Instead of fighting Jack, Aku instantly created a world without him, one that he could control. I just loved that idea.   Jack’s quest is to find a way home and defeat Aku. The episodes were wildly imaginative and beautiful; it was the animation style that carried the show and I’m sure it ended too soon. 

I’m not sure why the writers at Family Guy decided to let Stewie Griffin invent a time machine.  The old Stewie, the one who wanted to kill his mother was long over with, and the more mature Stewie had better places to go.  The time travelling in this long-running and controversial animated series both celebrated the genre and satirized it; which is what you want a genius baby in suspenders and a talking dog to do.

There are 5 or 6 episodes that feature the time machine over the past few years: “Road To Germany”, “The Big Bang Theory”, “Back To the Pilot”, “Yug Ylimaf”, “Life of Brian” and “Christmas Guy”.  There is also a small bit in a viewer mail episode where Stewie, just to kill some time before he is put to bed, goes back in time to save Kurt Cobain before his suicide.  He tells Cobain, “There is another way.” and hands him a pint of Haagen Dazs.  Stewie transports back home to find a live LP of Nirvana and still living, but obese Kurt Cobain.  He concludes: “You’re still alive, you fat fuck.”

Because time travel is an invention of fiction it is begging to be satirized.  I think I’ve seen enough of horror, vampire and dramatic satire out there.  The first line when Stewie and Brian travel to 1939 Poland is a great dig at bad time travel fiction:

“Where are we?” asks Stewie.

“You mean, when are we?” Brian adds.

“That’s such a douche time travel thing to say.”

Stewie and Brian inadvertently destroyed and created the universe in “The Big Bang Theory”.  When Stewie’s arch-nemesis Bertram discovers the time machine he tried to go back in time to undo Stewie’s existence, but since he was the impetus of the Big Bang, Bertram would be undoing the universe itself.  They traveled to multiple universes.  Brian prevented of 9/11 but inadvertently ended world.  I think they covered both loop and single string time travel plot devices.  Each adventure tackled a separate trope. They also reversed time, and recently, Stewie saved Brian’s life. (Such a strange story arch.  Brian was replaced by a new dog and then returned again.  But, truthfully, no one misses the new dog anyway.)

Family Guy used the device in different ways to explore different angles of time travel fiction.  The show does not get enough credit for clever writing because 50 percent of it involves fart humor and dumpster babies.  With these later time travel episodes, the writers found interesting wrinkles for the characters to exploit and satire. So much fun stuff.