Wow! Three Whole Seasons of The Proud Family! (Another Double Feature)

5:25 PM · May 9, 2022 "things i have learned about proud family lore
-kyla pratt exists and she looks just like penny proud.
-god is real"
5:27 PM · May 9, 2022 "god is real and we don't know for sure if he's the christian god but he seems to accept worship from christians at this one church"

I feel like a lot of people talk about Proud Family. Just off the top of my head, there's a whole lot to say about this show. And these are just videos I've watched. There's a ton more if you just look up "Proud Family analysis" on youtube. I think it's worth noting that the Proud Family, and Louder and Prouder do have some serious issues with racism and colorism with characters like the Chang Triplets, Dijonay, the Gross Sisters, etc. Which. Yeah. It's bad, and I think it's worth knowing about. Though I'm not gonna go in a huge amount of details because I am the whitest white guy imaginable, and there are many video essays on these topics already by people who know a lot better than I do, so I would say check those out if you want discussion there.

Focusing on the show as a whole, when I watched it the first time around, I wasn't super fond of Penny's friends, preferring stories that focus on the family, or have Sticky in them.

9:49 AM · Jan 9, 2021 "man the start of this ep has the just prouds + sticky... the perfect episode...."

Naturally, one of my favorite episodes is "The Altos," where Sticky's parents get divorced and he falls into a bad group while Oscar tries to give him some man-to-man support. Unfortunately, Sticky uses this to cheat at a scavenger hunt Oscar is sponsoring. By the end though, things work out well and Sticky gets better. It's a very down to earth episode and has a really good dynamic between Oscar and Sticky.

I think a lot of the best episodes are the ones where people aren't unnecessarily rude to one another and can bounce off each other well. 

I noticed that a lot of season 2 episodes have characters treating each other a lot worse than in season 1, with episodes like "Pulp Boot Camp" and "There's Something About Rene" having members of the family pretend that other members don't exist (Penny in "Pulp Boot Camp," Trudy in "There's Something About Rene"). Ignoring the sad implications of that, I think it kind of hinders the interactions these characters can have.

I think "The Party" shows some pretty good character interaction. Penny and LaCienega throw two parties the same evening, and all of Penny's friends ditch, leaving Penny's party with only Myron, the Gross Sisters, and Lou Rawls. Dijonay and Zoey are assholes in this episode, but it makes sense for them to be and gives us some really fun dynamics as you can realize why each person does what they do.

9:57 AM · Jan 9, 2021 "man like i get that dijonay is childhood friends with lacienega too just as much as penny but you promised to go to penny's party wtf"
9:59 AM · Jan 9, 2021 "trudy's really calling penny a fake friend because she doesn't wanna hang out with the gross sisters or myron. the gross sisters bully her and myron wrecked her social status those are NOT friends."
10:01 AM · Jan 9, 2021 "nubia gettin along w suga mama and lou rawls is really great tho"

Penny's friends are selfish. Penny doesn't like any of the people who came to her party because of how they treated her in the past. Odd friendships are formed. The show doesn't have to be super nice, but I think the cruelty of it all has to make sense.

Kindness is a nice addition though, and "Hmmm, Tastes Like..." is one of the better examples of that. The episode has Oscar and Suga Mama putting aside their differences and selling Suga Mama's Get Up N Go bars together. They bound through a love of entrepreneurship and snack selling, and even deny a deal with Wizard Kelly after Suga Mama sings a song from The Wiz, a musical I had an opportunity to see, but ultimately didn't, as my friend opted to take me to see a Jerome Robbins anthology. I didn't like it. Anyway, the episode ends with Suga Mama telling everyone her "secret ingredient," and grossing people out. It's a very sweet and natural episode.

"Makeover" is another one I enjoyed a lot. The girls give Zoey a makeover, and Nubia, seeing this, makes them give her sister, Olei one as well.

2:22 PM · Jan 9, 2021 "i rlly like olei i wish she spoke" 

Though Olei doesn't speak as much (mostly Nubia speaks for her), we do see a lot of character in her silence, and a lot of kindness come through. The episode ends with her deciding to think for herself more and wanting to treat Penny and her friends with kindness.

This, unfortunately, does not stick. But they're middle school kids. Shit like that never sticks when you're in the 8th grade.

A lot of Proud Family episodes centered around Penny trying to respect people, like "Culture Shock," the episode where the kids swap families.

3:58 PM · Jan 9, 2021 "i mean LOGICALLY, the gross sisters and the chang triplets should have swapped"
4:10 PM · Jan 9, 2021 "whose idea was it to have a cultural exchange during ramadan"

Penny swaps with Radika Zamin, and while she clashes with the family at first, she learns to embrace their culture and the Prouds celebrate Eid al-Fitr with the Zamins, only to see the Zamins get hatecrimed (their home is graffiti'd on) when they returns home. It's actually an episode I remember watching as a little kid and thinking about after the fact.

"Who Are You Callin' A Sissy" also has this Penny doing the right thing, but this time with homophobia. Of course, this was the early 2000s, so Disney couldn't necessarily say gay, but we all knew about Michael so like.

11:13 AM · Aug 8, 2021 "i get lacienega being homophobic but sticky.... jfc"
11:25 AM · Aug 8, 2021 "i always forget how fantastical proud family is. it's a pretty chill slice of life show but just often enough something fucked up happens like penny learns how to talk to animals or michael turns into the hulk"

It's a lot less serious than "Culture Shock" especially considering Michael ends the episode turning into the heterophobic hulk, but I want to put a pin in the gay discussion and focus on something else the Proud Family does.

In my Doug post, I mentioned shows that are slice of life, but still very fantastical. A lot of the shows of this time stick with a gimmick. That's So Raven was a slice of life show about a psychic. Kim Possible was a slice of life show about a bond-style teen hero. Lloyd in Space was a slice of life show about an alien. Phil of the Future was a slice of life show about... Gee I wonder what Phil of the Future's gimmick was...

Proud Family didn't really have a gimmick so much as it had various fantastical things happening in it. I think the best comparison of this style is Quack Pack, where the show is very much about family and home life, but is absolutely insane. I think the main difference is the Quack Pack was a fantastical show first and a slice of life cartoon second, while Proud Family is a slice of life cartoon first and a fantastical show second. 

Proud Family will give you an episode about Penny going on a date with a boy or worried her father is having an affair, but it'll also give you an episode about how Penny can talk to animals or how her telekinetic great aunt is using her real telekinesis to con people.

Also there's Johnny Lovely.

4:51 PM · May 9, 2022 "johnny lovely is someone the girlprince crowd would look at and say "i wanna be him but a lesbian""
5:01 PM · May 9, 2022 "johnny lovely doxxed all the girls at school"
5:02 PM · May 9, 2022 "i feel like oscar is the only character who understands the rammifications of this"
5:13 PM · May 9, 2022 "your name is literally lacienega boulevardez you cannot be mean to the guy whose name is a street."

While I did enjoy Proud Family enough to watch the full series, I was absolutely stoned out of my shit when I watched the Johnny Lovely episode, and for some reason got it in my brain that there was an alternate cut of Johnny Lovely, which I spent more time than I would like to admit looking for.

Anyway let's talk about the reboot.

It's better.

It feels like they tackled some (but not all) of the issues people had with the original series, something I had not seen a reboot do other than Ducktales 2017. Penny's friends are somewhat kinder, especially Dijonay. The Gross Sisters are less thieves and more upcoming musicians. (Though this change is rather shallow. They're still doing the same thing they were.) The Oscar and Suga Mama dynamic feels a lot more balanced.

Sticky Webb was pretty much removed from the show and replaced with two new characters: KG and Maya Leibowitz-Jenkins. You'd think this would upset me, since Sticky was a character I really liked in the original series, but I actually really enjoyed these two. They're kind of like if you split Sticky into two new characters, KG being the helpful techie, and Maya being more of the cold straight man character (though like Sticky, not always) and actively in the friendgroup.

The Maya and Penny dynamic is pretty fun, as is the Maya and LaCienega dynamic. The former has the two butting heads, while the latter is an odd friendship as their parents are coworkers and they're both rivals to Penny. I hope to see Maya and LaCienega being friends in season 2.

Character dynamics are also a lot better in the reboot. One issue I had with Proud Family, especially later episodes was that the series oscillated between being about Penny or Oscar. This was fixed with the movie, as it was about both of the them, and it seems like the reboot is keeping this up, with their relationship (arguably the most important relationship in the series) being strong and allowing them and their stories in the episode to play off one another.

The reboot actually made Oscar more of an asshole, which I think was desperately needed. Of course Oscar has always been an asshole, but in the original series, he is the protagonist for a bunch of the episodes, so it feels more like you're supposed to root for him. This series makes it clear that he kind of sucks and deserves some of the shit he goes through.

"Father Figures" is the biggest example of that. This is probably the most infamous episode, being another anti-homophobia episode, this time about Maya and KG having two fathers. Oscar goes in to get a loan for an amusement park, and the man he's meeting with is his neighbor Randall. When he sees Randall's husband, Barry, his eyes break and he goes into full homophobic mode. This causes Randall to take back the loan, and Oscar's family to look down on him, especially Penny, who has learned to respect others. By the end of the episode, Oscar does learn the error of his ways, and gets what he wants. It's simple but I am simple myself, so I'm happy with Oscar not being homophobic anymore.

1:36 PM · Jan 9, 2021 "ignoring the one off comment by penny in the altos i think the proud family (all of them) are lgbt allies. i think oscar gives away proud snax at pride"

If this doesn't happen in season 2 now that Oscar got cured of homophobia I will riot.

"Father Figures" is a weird episode because 17 years prior we got "Who You Callin A Sissy," which focused on homophobia too, just not by name. "Father Figures" is also a pretty typical anti-homophobia episode, though taken more seriously than "Who You Callin A Sissy." I think after 17 years, I was expecting something a little more nuanced than being gay is bad. Especially considering a lot of the comments were about things like shipping. I actually thought the episode was going to be more about invading the privacy of gay people as a guise for allyship? Or something like that. A friend of mine commented that Louder and Prouder still feels like an early aughts relic and I think this episode makes it most evident.

Really, Louder and Prouder feels like a third season of the Proud Family, and it kind of is. It improved on things it needed to. It's still crazy and all over the place. Al Roker still grants evil wishes.. Lizzo is there singing a poorly censored version of Good as Hell.

Some of the background kids are different. Penny's got a new boyfriend: Kareem, but you don't see characters like the Chang Triplets or Omar or Duke. You see Frankie though, which is like. Okay.

I guess my biggest problem with the reboot is Michael. Like I'm happy to see a character actually say they're GNC and gay on a kid show, but at the same time, he's a lot meaner? And not in a fun way. I feel like every snide comment Michael says feels like he's punching down a lot, and really only gets flack for it once. I dunno. I think I liked him better in the original series.

Also, I may be crazy, but is Dijonay giving off bi vibes to anyone else in the reboot? I feel like she's gonna come out in season 2.

The reboot gave me a lot to think about for the Proud Family. Finishing the series I found the original wasn't as good as I thought (though it was still good), while the reboot landed in the place I saw the original as. But I've still only seen 10 episodes of the reboot, so I'll be coming back to it.

Overall Rating for the Proud Family: A Tier

Rating for The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder: A Tier also

Also the season three hype train for Amphibia slowed down a bit ending with a mid finale, so time for a new Tiermaker! Updating Proud Family and Amphibia and adding Louder and Prouder!