Animated Atrocities: Lights Out!

Show: The Fairly Odd Parents
Episode: 118a
Year: 2011

Writer(s): Kevin Sullivan
Director(s): Ken Bruce, George Goodchild (art), Guy Moon (music)

Holy fuck! What the fuck is wrong with this show!? I thought it couldn't get any worse than Timmy being told to his face that everybody would be happier with him dead; at least his fairies kind of cared about him, but not really. People saying “having Poof made Cosmo and Wanda better characters”? You're all FUCKING WRONG! If anything, Poof made them more apprehensive towards Timmy. For proof, just watch the episode “Bad Heir Day”. While “Bad Heir Day” is a great episode, their treatment of Timmy isn't at all justified there, and it isn't here in “Lights Out”!

 

Ok, so Timmy decides to read Poof a scary story and this makes him cry, causing it to rain inside; wait a sec, I thought Poof getting the rattle at the end of “Fairly OddBaby” gave him better control over his magic, so it DIDN'T tie to his emotions? Not even one minute into your episode and you already fuck up! Ok, so maybe Cosmo and Wanda have a right to get on Timmy's ass about this, but how have Timmy's parents not discovered them which all the weird shit that goes on around them? They weren't always this stupid, and a WHALE dropping into your living room is very suspicious! Timmy is very tolerant of Poof needing a night light, until it turns out to be BRIGHTER THAN THE MOTHERFUCKING SUN! Ok, THAT is horribly absurd! I know there are plenty of people who need to sleep with the lights on, maybe the TV, but WHY do you need it to be brighter than the sun!? Once more, Timmy's parents don't suspect a thing! And this has all been nitpicking; now we get into the REAL SHIT!

 

Because Poof is, well, a baby! Timmy makes a very reasonable request, to have a few hours of darkness so he can get some sleep! And Poof retreats into the castle when the light goes out, so, JUST HAVE HIM SLEEP WITH YOU FUCKERS! This insanity causes Timmy completely miss sleep the whole night; he gets literally 12 seconds of sleep! So he wishes for total darkness for 12 whole hours! And this is the episodes fatal flaw; for most of it, all we see are EYES IN THE DARKNESS! That is ABSOLUTELY LAZY! This sort of thing works for brief gags like in Looney Tunes or Disney shorts, NOT FOR THE ENTIRE PLOT OF THE EPISODE! You might as well be staring at still images for the most part. Even in episodes that take place in darkness, WE CAN SEE WHATS GOING ON! The Super Secret Secret Squirrel episode “Doctor O” did this plot a whole lot better! But that's not even the worst part!

 

To get back at Timmy for being reasonable and wanting some fucking shuteye, Cosmo and Wanda lie to him about a condition where fairies exposed to more than 8 hours of darkness become horrible monsters that try to EAT their godchildren! I suppose they're trying to replicate those gags in any Looney Tunes shorts where characters keep nearly getting eaten. But in Looney Tunes, those gags work because a REAL VILLAIN is trying to do the eating! Cosmo and Wanda LOVE TIMMY, why would they ever try to pull such a cruel malicious prank on him!? They've never been this cruel before or since this episode. And as the episode goes on, they get even more hideous and evil looking until they become, THAT! And quite honestly, 12 hours of darkness in the daytime would be catastrophic for the world at large; a lot of people could get seriously hurt or die with not even electric light to guide them. We don't know whether this affects Dimmsdale alone or the entire world either!

 

Alongside Cosmo and Wanda trying to eat their charge, Mr. Crocker gets shoehorned into the plot because I guess they think he makes anything funny. The same goes for Tootie who is now as relentless as Vicky! Mr. and Mrs. Turner also get beaten up really badly in this episode, and for once, they actually don't deserve it because they never did much of anything here. Also, saber-toothed tigers with night vision; they shouldn't even be alive! Come on! If they were brought to Dimmsdale by magic, it makes some sense, but they came from a circus! The sight gags might actually be funny if we could fucking see anything! Comedy is based on reaction and we can't see the characters react to anything mostly, just their expressionless eyes!

 

Each of the "Scary Fairies" attempts at killing Timmy because that's what they're trying to do, gets more and more cliché as much as they get more grotesque. I should also mention that this thing feels like it should be 5-6 minutes like in the Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts, but this has been extended to 10! Normally, The Fairly OddParents doesn't even have a problem doing 22-minute episodes, and here they are barely able to pad out an 11 minute one! They just have to keep shoehorning bullshit! And I know Cosmo and Wanda weren't joking about eating Timmy because they MAULED MR. CROCKER! Timmy shouldn't have had to apologize to Poof about scaring him or needing sleep! What his fairies did went beyond karma or schadenfreude! What they did makes them no better than Vicky!

Cringe-Inducing Audio: 8
Cringe-Inducing Visuals: 6
Lackluster Writing: 8
Annoyance: 10
Disturbing Content: 8
Unnecessary Cruelty: 10
Rancid Morality: 4
Low Production Values: 8
Unfortunate Implications: 6
Character Derailment: 10

Final Score: 78/100

Fairly Oddparents is owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom.

Animated Atrocities is from

Regulas314