100 Favorite Shows: #69 — Rugrats
“Who’d want to be growed up if you could be little forever?”
Plenty of Nicktoons were popular during the 1990s, but none had as far-reaching a legacy as Rugrats did. Created by Arlene Klasky, Gábor Csupó, and Paul Germain, Rugrats was a simple story about a group of babies (led by Tommy Pickles (E.G. Daily)) and their slice-of-life adventures. The original tenure of Rugrats stretched from August 1991 to August 2004, but there were many stop-and-starts along the way, resulting in “just” nine seasons and 172 episodes. In addition, though, Rugrats’ initial run did result in a sequel series, All Grown Up, and three films, The Rugrats Movie, Rugrats in Paris, and Rugrats Go Wild (which crossed over with another Nicktoon, The Wild Thornberrys). Since then, numerous attempts to revive the series have been non-starters, including a live-action film produced by the original trio of creators that has been postponed indefinitely. No matter the future, Rugrats is firmly rooted in the history of animated television.
(Even if you’re all grown up, you might still be irked to read Rugrats spoilers, which are “definibley” included in this essay.)
When I began this project, I made a list of all the shows I wanted to re-evaluate and the episodes I’d use to do that. Many of them were met with deliberation and revision, but from the beginning of my return to Rugrats, I knew I’d be taking notes on “Chanukah,” my favorite episode of Rugrats and one of my favorite episodes of television ever. Written by J. David Stern and David N. Weiss and directed by Raymie Muzquiz, “Chanukah” is the first Chanukah special episode of any children’s television series ever.
There are plenty of Christmas specials out there, children’s series or otherwise, so it was very eye-opening when I was a child watching “Chanukah” for the first time. I’d been exposed to other holidays before (“Blue’s Big Holiday” on Blue’s Clues served as an intro to Chanukah and Kwanzaa), but never had I considered the enormity of the Jewish culture before. Chanukah had a background just like Christmas and, even though the story of Christmas has been told from a slew of perspectives, it was still nice to experience at least one holiday installment that was removed from Santa Claus and Frosty the Snowman (over time, more would come, as well).
The bit of cultural edification present in Rugrats’ “Chanukah” comes from a story that is rich with specificity (it’s a first exposure to dreidels, the Torah, and Maccabees (referred to as “Maccababies”)) and also spreads across generations of an authentic Jewish experience in the United States. The history of Chanukah is told to the babies through a Princess Bride-esque framing device of Didi and Grandma Minka (Melanie Chartoff), Grandpa Boris (Michael Bell), and Shlomo (Fyvush Finkel) relaying the story of the miracle. At once, “Chanukah” feels entirely lived-in (I could almost smell the frying oil of the latkes at the episode’s outset) and still within the overarching tone of Rugrats (Tommy considers his forefathers, as well as his “five-fathers” and “six-fathers”). It’s not only a masterclass in efficient storytelling, but also in a juxtaposition of historical fantasy, religious identity, and Angelica (Cheryl Chase) just trying to get home to watch television. I love revisiting “Chanukah” every year, just as much as I do with the SpongeBob and Billy and Mandy Christmas specials. It remains one of television’s best celebrations of the eight miraculous nights in the winter.
The misunderstandings (so vital to the identity of Rugrats) don’t stop with the forefathers, though. There’s a lengthy discussion between the babies when Tommy questions the purpose of the menorah, which has been lit nightly. “Maybe it’s your birthday,” Phil and Lil (Kath Soucie) posit. “Every night?” Tommy asks before his friends suggest that they’re getting all of Tommy’s birthdays out of the way at once. “Maybe you’re all growed up now and you gots to get a job,” Lil offers with the concept of Tommy putting on a suit and tie all of a sudden (despite still being just one year old) humorous enough to sustain the imagination beyond the simple and delightful dialogue in which the babies engage.
Rugrats was always expert at portraying this type of A.A. Milne “kid logic” in the characters’ misunderstandings. At once, children are able to relate to it and adults are able to laugh at it, hopefully remembering their own behavior as young kids as not being too far away in the timelines of their lives. “Chanukah” experiences a moment like this when the babies become hellbent on getting Shlomo (whom they believe to be the “Meanie of Chanukah”) to take a nap so Grandpa Boris doesn’t have to play with him. But misunderstandings are also present in “Mother’s Day,” another holiday check-in, when they try to find Chuckie (Christine Cavanaugh and, later, Nancy Cartwright) a new mom, as well as in “Kid TV” when they sincerely believe that a television is a box with miniature people inside of it.
These misconceptions are always positioned as the ones frequently experienced by babies, fictional and real. Angelica asks, regarding “Mother’s Day,” why there’s no “Kid’s Day,” for example. It’s a question all kids ask, considering they’re unable to conceive of their own preconceptions yet, but it’s played for a major narrative thrust in the “Mother’s Day” episode because the issues raised by the babies are the focus of each episode; they’re the leads on the series, after all.
Through Angela’s superiority complex and Tommy’s positioning as a de facto leader of the group, the babies are often depicted as capable of guiding their own decision-making processes across the episodes’ conflicts. Frequently, the leadership they exhibit is built on an utter lack of wherewithal, but the stakes are kept low enough that elements like these, dialectal verb and adjective mis-conjugations (“onliest”), and a general cluelessness hardly have any bearing on the consequences of their misadventures. (Fortunately, these consequences are limited to the homes and yards of the neighborhood, save for the trilogy of Rugrats films, which bring grandiose journeys and surprising heartache to the franchise.)
Rugrats knew you didn’t need to venture too far outside the sandbox (or, in the case of “Kid TV,” outside the cardboard box) to have fun. It was an incredibly effective series when it came to capturing the imagination that came in tandem with playtime during childhood. Through infantile characters and a balanced tone that appealed to kids and adults (like most Nicktoons of yore), Rugrats embodied the attributes ascribed to television by Tommy and the gang. For them, they see it as a “window to the world” and the “source of all joy.” In “Kid TV” (scored by Mark Mothersbaugh, as all episodes were), we understand the appeal of television to a child, but also the appeal of playing in a box with friends.
The child-adult hybrid appeal is present in the succession of shows parodied by the babies through their own conceptions of the world. Like the outer space interstitials in “Mother’s Day,” the setting morphs throughout “Kid TV,” showing us exactly what the babies are experiencing through exhilaration and creativity. Chuckie slicks his hair back to deliver the news. Angelica sells perfume in fake advertisements. Phil and Lil argue over who should receive a brain transplant in a reductive (yet somehow accurate) send-up of a soap opera that would go over kids’ heads, but appeal to the adults watching alongside them.
Lovingly, the adults on Rugrats were never keen to disrupt the fun had by their children. “Kid TV” ends with Stu (Jack Riley) electing to let the kids keep the box, rather than use it to return the television for a new one, for example. The Pickles parents (there’s a ton of pickle-based humor on this show, like the existence of Dil Pickles (Tara Strong)) are always striving to provide the best possible childhood for their kids. They spend a lot of time around their own parents and the neighborhood adults (including Angelica’s mother, Charlotte (Tress MacNeille), Phil and Lil’s mother, Betty (Soucie), Chuckie’s father, Chas (Bell), and Tommy’s grandpa, Lou (David Doyle and Joe Alaskey)), partially because they’re a close-knit group and partly because they’re all experiencing newfound parenthood simultaneously.
For the kids, they’re mostly interested in playing with the family dog, Spike (Bruce Willis), or with Reptar toys and Cynthia dolls. They’re not always aware of the experiences of their parents, but they’re attuned to the core emotions behind them and they do what they can to help. Collectively, they’re as supportive of their caregivers as they are with one another (Tommy is an endless vessel of loyalty to Chuckie), proving that a story that is basically Baby Blues from the perspective of the children can still be just as empathetic and just as wise. Even if in a roundabout way.
Much of the support and empathy palpable amidst the group is depicted in “Mother’s Day.” Over the course of Rugrats, the show’s creative team got better at providing representation to their audiences of children. (Susie (Cree Summer) and Kimi (Dionne Quan) helped expand the world of Rugrats beyond the original group.) But sometimes, representation came simply in the specific experiences of the child subjects of Rugrats. Chuckie being a child who lost his mom before he could form non-dreamlike memories of her is a subtle form of representation, but also one that could be cathartic for young viewers who also couldn’t remember their mothers.
Kids who are Chuckie’s age can’t quite articulate the feeling they get from seeing their friends have moms and not having one themselves. There’s streaks of sadness in Chuckie when his group crafts Mother’s Day gifts (as Angelica tells Phil and Lil, these gifts for their mother are “to say you’re sorry”), but he’s not sad about the death of his mother (he doesn’t really know what happened to her). Rather, Chuckie is resigned to being excluded from the Mother’s Day activities his friends participate in. There’s a piece of him missing and he doesn’t even know it yet. It’s a stunning display of thoughtfulness and respect given towards infantile viewers that has always stayed with me.
Chuckie’s friends, ever the helpful crew, try to find him a new mom, testing out both Spike and Angelica. (“Looking back on it,” Tommy says after Angelica screams at Chuckie and locks the babies in a closet. “Spike was a pretty good mom.”) There’s nothing they’re able to do to help Chuckie, though. Ultimately, that responsibility lies with Chas, who was wary of introducing Chuckie to mementos and photographs of his mother because he didn’t want Chuckie to miss her. It’s an honest depiction of a parent struggling to figure out what the right thing to do is when his parenting style is suddenly left all alone. Yes, it’s a mistake, but it’s an emotionally understood mistake. He’s only trying to shield the already-fearful Chuckie from a potentially crushing reality of the rest of his life. The actions are as earnestly depicted as the breast feeding sequence in the same episode. Rugrats was always genuine, even if the subjects were tricky to bring to Nicktoons.
“You can miss her together,” Didi advises Chas, finally convincing him to relent and share memories of Chuckie’s mother with his son. The episode concludes in tearful fashion as Chuckie takes in the beauty of the world around him (rather than cowering from it), bragging to his friends about how his mom is in the flowers she planted in the garden and in the wind that blows through the backyard. The episode works as a sort of liberation for Chuckie, allowing him to become freer to understand all that came before his birth and all that works to develop him across his infancy and toddler-hood.
Many times, stories like these would end with the babies not quite comprehending all that their parents shared with them. But when the message got through to a child, it made the episode all the more heartwarming. Watching Chuckie beam with pride over the newfound understanding he possesses for his mother was just as touching as watching Tommy’s pride manifest as he hears the conclusion of the Maccababies story in “Chanukah.” For the adults, it’s not about just wanting the babies to be proud of who they are and where they came from, but also about finding ways to share stories with the youngest generation — even if they don’t always care.
The stories passed down through Rugrats are what shape the babies to become more thoughtful members of the household setting. In so doing, it felt that the stories of Rugrats were passed down to me. They’re how I learned about non-nuclear families and about the origins of a Jewish holiday. They’re how I learned about names like Angelica, which is still connotative of a bully in my own head (sorry, Renée Elise Goldsberry). They’re how I learned that adults in the world were in sync with the experience of a child and willing to depict that on television for families to witness together. Rugrats shared its own traditions with me. How lucky I am to share them with you!
