Why Regular Show Means so Much to Me


Old promo art from before they decided Margaret needed to be wearing clothes

Regular Show is like a trip to your favorite video rental store after an arcade pit stop. It’s a late-night 80s movie marathon and delivery pizza with your best friends. It’s got the promise of an Every Meat Burrito with the payoff of a Death-Kwon-Do Sandwich of Death. There are a lot of things I love about Regular Show. It’s funny. The characters are talking animals, living and breathing intermingled with humans, but they’re real and relatable. They’re allowed to be flawed, and then allowed growth. Regular Show takes the confinement of being a kids’ show and turns it into a limitless school playground equipment, letting the depths of its exploration of humanity reverberate within its walls. Watching the characters hang out under Outdoor Dining Canopies adds to the sense of whimsical freedom. The restrictions of children’s media opened up the show and gave it freedom to explore deeply. Nothing else can be so simple and still travel the distance of universal emotion. Nothing else can be so bizarre and still simply be a regular show. For more insights on the benefits of creative play for children, you can check out this similar sites at https://specialeducationalneedsanddisabilities.co.uk/benefits-of-creative-play-for-children/. If you want to learn more about active travel, you can check out this helpful resources at sites like https://active-travel.uk/blog/cycle-routes-for-active-travel. For additional information on school playground ideas, click here. If you’re looking for quality playground surfacing, consider to check out this site at https://en1177playgroundsurfacing.co.uk/.

After 264 episodes and 8 seasons, there’s not a single moment that wasn’t quite as good as the rest. Regular Show kept its sensibilities without ever getting stale. It was allowed to evolve within itself without ever evolving out of it. In the beginning, hot-headed gumball machine Benson plays to a singular role: typical boss and definitive antagonist. Further along, he’s flung to the top tier of engaging, accessible characters as a dorky, misguided, and pretty lovable guy. His character really comes into being when he’s alone and insecure and shows that when he’s acting out of anger, he’s really acting out of fear.

In fact, the theme of perception of self-worth runs so strongly throughout Regular Show that I feel feel more congruent with my sense of self just by watching it. The full, rounded personalities of all the characters are allowed to absorb as much space as necessary and shine through in whatever form they take. And this is huge: even the female characters are given room to be unapologetically true to themselves, and they’re rewarded positively for it. Margaret, Eileen, and Starla act from their natural state, diversified within the group and within themselves. They show something that should be commonplace but is unfortunately so rarely seen in media: just like male characters, women have instinctive and intuitive natures that are required for exploring the scope of humanity on screen. Place your bets and win big with UFABET เว็บแทงบอล.

As a show so nuanced in its depiction of relationships, this concept of self-worth plays a huge role, as characters struggle to maintain a balance within themselves and in relation to others. For Regular Show’s most central relationship, the lifelong friendship between Mordecai and Rigby, this meant jealousy and fights and misplaced aggressiveness, only to result in a higher level of understanding and respect that anyone should strive for. Regular Show wasn’t afraid of confrontations, and more importantly, it wasn’t afraid of dragging out the vulnerabilities that were shrouded behind them. Mordecai and Rigby are also confronting adulthood, and with that struggle, confronting the ripping velcro of their shifting identities, and what that detachment from the past means for their friendship in its current state.

Television shows aren’t perfect. They’re written by humans and produced by networks run by humans, and sometimes after the clash between those groups of humans, there’s not much authenticity left. But this is not one of those shows. It’s a show that made me feel the real love and connection between two lost and wandering cartoon birds who finally found each other. So when Mordecai and Margaret, my perfect vision of true love anthropomorphized, broke up, I was nervous, but trusting. I doubled up on my faith that this show that meant so much to me knew what it was doing, and with every step of the story I was rewarded for it. Regular Show let Margaret go so it could go places it couldn’t have gone with her around. It let both Mordecai and Margaret explore what it was like to find stability after loss and heartbreak. It let them establish themselves as whole, worthy people. Children, the show’s target audience, got to witness this and feel it for themselves. This show proved it knew what it was doing, and I would never for a second doubt it again. Margaret’s departure and subsequent return weren’t merely plot devices, although they did propel the story to unexpected heights, and they did it with force. They were real, natural, and frustratingly complicated developments for all of the characters and the relationships between them. They were deep expansions in story and emotion that most adult shows either shy away from or just can’t handle and desecrate entirely. This is a kids’ show, and it succeeded because of the freedom it found within its boundaries and knowing when to push against them.

Kids will watch anything, so why spend the effort to create something for them that’s actually good? There’s no evidence that subtlety and character growth will sell more advertisements. This makes every drop of genuine emotion 1000x more impressive. I will always be in awe that this show got made. It’s clear on screen that a commitment and love for character and story motivated everyone involved to put in the work. It’s funny – a smart, goofy, uproarious funny – and it’s the most realistic depiction of a current everyday experience that I’ve ever seen. Regular Show was simultaneously surreal and grounded in reality, which created a space for extreme permission. Anything was allowed to happen, most significantly, characters were allowed to be vulnerable and unapologetically authentic. Because of it they could grow in their relationships and their sense of self. In turn, Regular Show gave viewers, or at least me, permission to give their own identities space to breathe. It proved that within boundaries there’s an infinity and within insignificance there’s freedom.

Cheese Chips and Music of the Month: This Week in Nerdery

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Earlier this week I finally picked up Paloma Faith’s A Perfect Contradiction at Half Price Books after finding it but putting it back a few weeks earlier. $7 felt like a little much to pay for a format no one wants sitting on their shelf anymore. It’s been more than worth the 64 cents per song to have such a great go-to album parked in my car’s CD slot. I have a lot of trouble getting into new music and often end up listening to the same five artists. This wasn’t a problem with Paloma Faith, at all. I knew a few songs and liked them a lot, but wan’t totally sure what to expect when the car stereo kicked on. Instant connection. Also, I’m amazed and thrilled by who Paloma Faith is. Bold and unforgiving, classic elegance, and a beautiful, brilliant weirdo. She’s all these things. Everyone is a multitude of things.

Much of my week was taken up by the tracking down, winning, and use of Bon Jovi tribute band tickets, a story that doesn’t have much of a logical fit in my life, but that you can read about fully in yesterday’s blog post. All I can say with certainty is that it was an experience.

I also got to meet my amazing friend Lupe at Cafe Brazil to drink diet soda and eat cheese-based excuses for dinner – cheese fries for her and nachos for me. We talked about how important representation is in media and what shows are doing it right (shoutout to Adventure Time, Regular Show, and just Cartoon Network in general). We talked about being critical of the things you love and making sure that what you’re consuming is in line with what you believe, or at least being able to separate yourself from what isn’t. I ate too many nachos and far too few nutrients.

I’m putting forward the new Loose Tapestries track for official Christmas song of the rest of our hall-decked lives, but I’ll settle for cementing it on repeat for the rest of December, at least. (If you don’t know Loose Tapestries, check them out for sure, but on Can’t Wait For Christmas that’s Idris Elba rapping at the end.)

What Even Was Space Ghost Coast To Coast?

I remember being young, maybe four years old, and loving Space Ghost Coast to Coast. My mom didn’t like it, or maybe she didn’t get it, but for me, there was nothing to get. Space Ghost had a talk show. I don’t remember heavily edited interviews with miscommunication being the main joke. I’m not sure I remember there being interviews at all – maybe I didn’t get the show either. But I definitely remember liking it. I was only four, so I didn’t know why. It had a feeling that other shows didn’t have.

It’s been a long while since I’ve seen Space Ghost Coast to Coast. I want to go back and watch them all, partly for the nostalgia, but also to give words to the feeling that a still slightly toddling version of me couldn’t describe. Also, I have a hunch it was honestly just a really good show.

I may be holding it in too high an esteem – especially since I can barely remember it – but the case for Coast to Coast’s genius has spread around at least a few other corners of the internet. This article from The AV Club puts the show forward as pop art and satire, but also a text made exclusively for people on drugs. I was not that demographic.

If it’s not even a little bit for kids, how can you explain this cassette tape I found in a forgotten cardboard box in the back of my childhood closet?

Also, who knew this exists? #cartoonnetwork #spaceghost #cassette

A photo posted by Emily Rose Denton (@solarbeat) on

Plus, can you imagine being on the writing staff for this thing?