The Looney Tunes Show or Jellystone!

[powerjake]

Ok, so what cartoon did you like better between these two. The 2011 sitcom-inspired The Looney Tunes Show which at the time overlapped with a similar Cartoon Network series Regular Show and fans felt really mixed about it though it has managed to get its own fanbase. Now the 2021 HBO Max cartoon Jellystone! was made to be a return of the classic Hanna-Barbera characters in a new modern style of animation and humor with half of Yogi's Gang gender swapped, the cartoon is from C. H. Greenblatt best known for Chowder and Harvey Beaks.

So how would you rate both cartoons and which one was more controversial among the fans.

 

[Pooky]

I like(d) The Looney Tunes Show more than Jellystone, I would argue it was more controversial too. As soon as the Looney Tunes Show was announced, there was already a lot of misgiving about the "domesticated sitcom" direction they were taking things in, and that continued throughout the show's run and to some extent to this very day. It was a very high profile project too; Jellystone has been too low profile to really attract any major controversy. While I personally value characters like Huck and Yogi highly, the HB characters in Jellystone have also lost a lot of their pop cultural cache*, unlike the WB staple who, though they had fallen in popularity somewhat by the end of the 00s, were still seen as somewhat sacrosanct within pop culture by the time The Looney Tunes Show launched.

*Possibly exception Top Cat, who is very popular in Mexico and very fondly remembered here in the UK.

 

[JMTV]

(sighs) Oh, lovely doo....

I don't like either of them, but if I had to choose, I'll slightly go to Jellystone. Only because the art style is really cute. Plus, I do like some of the changes in that show. Everything else, I didn't really care for it.

Looney Tunes Show 2011? I don't like then, I don't like it now. Looney Tunes Cartoons is much better, IMPO.

 

[Goldstar!]

Looney Tunes is my preferred franchise overall. However, since this comparison is only for these 2 particular series and we're not including later LT incarnations such as New Looney Tunes (which I enjoyed more than some others that I've spoken to about) or Looney Tunes Cartoons (which I think is great), then I'd have to give the nod to Jellystone!, though I enjoyed both series.

I realize this is premature, since only the initial 10 episodes of Jellystone! have been released as of this writing, but if forced to choose, I have to say that Jellystone! is closer my type of humor. Yeah, J! is more than a little reminiscent of Chowder, which hardly comes as a shock, since J! was developed by C.H. Greenblatt, the creator of Chowder. I tend to prefer wacky, zany cartoon humor to the more subdued style of The Looney Tunes Show, although the latter gave us the best version of Lola Bunny to date. Jellystone's humor is wacky and is at a rapid fire pace. J! took The Looney Tunes Show's initial concept (all of the characters from a single franchise residing in the same town), but did it 10 times better than TLTS did. Plus, each J! episode tells a very simple story and is packed with gags. Whereas TLTS' half hour length stores often felt padded out. Also (and I realize this is me nitpicking), I like that J! has background music playing throughout as opposed to TLTS' characters interacting to dead silence. It was jarring and just a tad eerie. Ironically, Jellystone! is the type of show that I thought The Looney Tunes Show was going to be.

So yeah, it's Jellystone! for me. However, I think that a J! type of show starring the Looney Tunes characters could totally work. The LT characters work best in zany shorts.

 

[Silverstar]

While Looney Tunes is my favorite classic cartoon franchise of all time, I definitely prefer Jellystone! over The Looney Tunes Show (though I say this with a degree of caution since J! is only 10 episodes in).

Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate TLTS or even dislike it; I remember back in '11 on this very site I was one of the few folks who defended TLTS while most of the internet was hating on it, but I'll be the first to admit that TLTS wasn't what I was expecting from a Looney Tunes series or what I would've preferred overall. What I saw and heard of Laff Riot, the show that TLTS eventually became, appealed to me more, but the higher-ups at WB didn't like the "Casa de Calma" pilot and fired most of the Laff Riot crew, leading to the show getting revamped into TLTS. The whole time I was watching these first 10 episodes of Jellystone!, I kept thinking to myself, "This is what The Looney Tunes Show should've been!"

J! is the Looney Tunes Show I was anticipating back in 2011, but with Hanna-Barbera characters. The stories are shorter, the style is zanier and more manic, the gags just keep on coming, there are tons of cameos, callbacks, references and allusions; J! is pure insanity despite the suburban setting, unlike the quieter and more subdued LTS.

Now I'm not delusional, I acknowledge that there are things about Jellystone! that don't sit well with some fans: the Chowder-esque art style isn't for everyone and some Hanna-Barbera devotees aren't wild about how several of the characters have been gender-flipped, but these things don't bother me personally because I'm used to Greenblatt's style and the humor makes up for the former and as for the latter, well, folks are free to disagree with me but I personally enjoy some of the now female characters (Jabberjaw, Loopy de Loop, Augie Doggy, Yakky Doodle, Chopper, Choo-Choo, Spooky and Brain from Top Cat's gang) funnier and far more interesting as ladies, plus Cindy Bear finally has an actual character instead of just being Yogi's potential love interest. I like the idea of Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har being an old married couple more than them just being vagabonds whom everyone seems to hate for some reason (I only possess fuzzy memories of their original cartoons, but I remember the intro to their shorts where everyone and everything was trying to kill them for reasons I can't recall).

So of the two shows mentioned, Jellystone! gets my vote, though later Looney Tunes projects like New Looney Tunes and Looney Tunes Cartoons made up for the stagnation of TLTS. (I even kind of enjoyed Space Jam: A New Legacy; not a great film, but as a Looney Tunes geek I got almost the right amount of Looney Tunes stuff to still dig it, except that I wish we could've gotten the screwball version of Daffy and the funny version of Lola for that film, and it bugged me how we didn't see whatever TV show or movie planet Gossamer was on; a companion graphic novel adaptation had Gossamer in Scooby-Doo!; I wish we could've gotten that on screen, but I digress).

 

[Pooky]

I kind of wonder how I would have felt if Looney Tunes Show came out now and Jellystone came out in 2011. At the time I found TLTS fresh and funny, perhaps Jellystone suffers for me from coming on the heels of somewhat similar shows with the same kind of humour?

I also have seen a couple of clips of The Looney Tunes Show recently which were selected by detractors purely to make the show look bad, but I've got to admit they kind of worked. I also recently watched the Rabbits Run movie and for the most part it wasn't great (although Rachel Ramras does a good job filling in for Kristen Wiig), although I understand even the biggest fans of TLTS aren't generally that keen on Rabbits Run.

But I felt like The Looney Tunes Show stayed fairly true to the characters established traits while placing them in new situations and presenting them with new twists (except for Lola who was essentially a new character, and for good reason), a lot of the characters in Jellystone really feel like name only characters, and personally I prefer the former approach.