The Cartoon Hero: Johnny Test

Johnny Test is an upcoming episode of the Cartoon Hero by Eli Stone.
==Transcript==
Eli Stone: Greetings, I am the Cartoon Hero. The following is a Patreon request courtesy of Zerex. There were actually good choices that he could’ve picked. Unfortunately, out of all the shows he requested me to do, he asked me to review this. I said it before in my Superjail! review that the 2000s have not been a very good time for animation. It's no doubt that Superjail! is one of the worst examples of animation during the 2000s, especially since it's about everyone literally getting killed. Superjail! came out before the likes of King Star King and Mr. Pickles, and unsurprisingly, none of the three shows were ever needed. Yeah, the 2000s were a time when crime was acceptable in animation. I mean, yeah, there were some good shows that came out in the 2000s, but if you take a closer look at the decade's roster of animation, you'll know just how horribly a majority of them have aged. And I tried giving Camp Lazlo another chance, and... it did not age well at all. You're just better off watching SpongeBob SquarePants or Rocko's Modern Life over Camp Lazlo!.
See, the mid-2000s were a time when Time Warner began to care more about money than they do quality content, even on Adult Swim. I mean, there were some good shows that came out like the original Ben 10, Robot Chicken, and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, but then you have shows like Superjail!, Frisky Dingo, Camp Lazlo!, My Gym Partner's a Monkey, Squirrel Boy, and Out of Jimmy's Head that just seem to age even worse than milk. Oh, and don't get me started on what happened to Sealab 2021, because season 4 is, by far, the worst season of the show yet. It's very similar to how all the episodes of Dexter's Laboratory and the Powerpuff Girls during the Chris Savino era have aged horribly.
And I think it's time I take a look at a show that deserves anything but another chance! Yes, we're going to take a look at Johnny Test. What is Johnny Test? Well, basically it's the kid-friendly equivalent of Superjail!. It was created by Scott Fellows, who was originally a writer for shows like the Fairly OddParents, and was the creator of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide. Have you ever heard of the YouTuber Zerex? He wanted us to do research on a cartoon we "unfairly hate". And yet, he criticized the Loud House and Hazbin Hotel for all that they're worth! Okay, Hazbin Hotel wasn't perfect, but I did enjoy it!! Upon doing research, you actually begin to hate the show even more than you already did, because Scott Fellows claimed that he based the show off of his childhood, and I don't buy that, since he wanted to rip-off other franchises.
Scott Fellows and David Straiton initially pitched this bootleg to Nickelodeon back in 1995, but Nickelodeon said no. I have watched "Quiet on Set", and it's a very good documentary, and the stuff Dan Schneider put out admittedly doesn't age well anymore; yet Zerex said that Johnny Test would fit well on Nickelodeon, and... no, it wouldn't. I believe Nickelodeon was absolutely right to reject Johnny Test as an original series, because had Johnny Test been picked up by Nickelodeon, Nickelodeon actually would've lost all their money, shut down, and Viacom would've even been sued by Cartoon Network for the show's concept being too similar to Dexter's Laboratory, which I will explain later. Unfortunately, rather than giving up on the concept of Johnny Test, Scott Fellows wanted a way to destroy animation, given the fact he hated story-driven action cartoons, and wanted a way to give the middle finger to the cartoon community. In doing so, Mike Lazzo, who ran [adult swim] at the time, admired Cartoon Network's CN City bumpers, caring only more about profit than quality. Yep, Cartoon Network wasted their money on the CN city bumpers than they did DVD releases on their classic shows during that time!
Mike Lazzo stated that kids shows should strictly be bright, colorful, and loud, and wanted shows for adults to have horrible animation. And the WB was on its way out during the time; so, in an effort to finally kill off the WB network, given that he loathed Animaniacs, Scott Fellows pitched Johnny Test to the WB television network in 2004, with the intention of killing off the WB network forever. And it worked. Johnny Test premiered on Kids' WB! on September 17, 2005. Remember that date, people, because that's also when Kids' WB! also premiered its two other murderers; Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island, and Loonatics Unleashed. So, much like Coconut Fred, Loonatics, and the time Warner gave Pinky and the Brain a sequel show with Elmyra, nobody was asking for Johnny Test to exist. You may have remembered Johnny Test more on Cartoon Network, but it originally started out on Kids' WB!. And by that, I mean it started out as one of the shows that destroyed Kids' WB! forever. Kids' WB! did have some good shows on, like Mucha Lucha, Batman, and Pinky and the Brain, but with shows like Da Boom Crew, Loonatics, Coconut Fred, Johnny Test, etc., you know when Kids' WB! was on the verge of death. Saberspark actually did a video on how Johnny Test was doomed from the beginning, and I highly recommend you check that out. But you all wanted MY thoughts on Johnny Test, and those who hated it wanted to bring the hate back. Well, I'm here to help bring back the hate that Johnny Test rightfully deserve. So, let's finally rip into Johnny Test, and see how creatively bankrupt it really is from the beginning.
The first thing you'll notice was that the show didn't originally have the American Idiot ripoff as a theme song for season one. No, it had the infamous rip-off of Rush's Bastille Day song. The season one theme song was performed by Aaron Molho, and written by-- Kevin Manthei?? HE WORKED ON JOHNNY TEST'S FIRST SEASON??!!! Oh, come on, Kevin Manthei!! You're better than this!! You made music for Invader Zim, and yet, you had to waste your talent on something as creatively bankrupt as Johnny Test!!
Aaron Molho: He's action packed, turbo charged, ready to blast.
He's got a flaming head of hair and likes to live fast.
His sisters like to use him for their wild experiments.
Check out a day in the life of Johnny Test! (Go, go, go!)
Eli Stone: It's nothing but mid-2000s cringe, and while I love the idea of rock music as the main soundtrack, the way it's executed here is just pathetic. So, our show is about a flaming-headed 11-year-old boy named Johnny Test who is used as a lab rat by his redheaded genius twin sisters Susan and Mary. His dad is a stay-at-home maid who cleans and cooks around the house, his mom's a workaholic, he has a talking dog for a best friend, and he's the nemesis of a million different villains. And this show is known for ripping off other popular franchises, like Jimmy Neutron, Fairly OddParents, Scooby-Doo, etc. But you wanna know the show they ripped off the most? Dexter's Laboratory! Yeah, remember the days when people said that Johnny Test was a rip-off of Dexter's Laboratory? That's actually true, considering the redheaded geniuses with labs in their bedrooms, an annoying blonde doofus for a sibling, and they gave the spotlight to Dee Dee. And yet, Zerex never understood how it ripped off Dexter's Laboratory, nor did even NICKtendo. And you wanna know what's sad? People said that season one was the show's best season! That's like saying 9/11 was good BEFORE the terrorist attacks!! No, seriously. Season one really is just as bad as the rest of the show. To prove how bad season one is, especially by today's standards, Scott Fellows wanted to create a hostile work environment, and nobody wanted to work on Johnny Test's first season, with one exception; Chris Savino. That's right, the guy who fucked up the Flintstones, Dexter's Laboratory, and the Powerpuff Girls.
When you have Chris Savino producing and directing the first season of Johnny Test, that's when things get even worse for the show, even before it became the crappy Canadian show we know today. I mean, we all know Chris Savino is a notorious sexual abuser, but has anyone ever learned that he's been doing sexual harassment during his time on Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Laboratory, the Flintstones: On the Rocks, AND Johnny Test?? I think it's time I explained the mindset of why the Loud House and Kick Buttowski do not get the same treatment. Johnny Test was made to be a rip-off of what made the last two seasons of Dexter's Laboratory so horrifically bad in the last two seasons, and the comparison is 100% valid, considering the fact that both shows had Chris Savino as their producer. The only times Chris Savino's involvement producing and directing a show worked were Kick Buttowski and the Loud House. How come both shows don't get the same treatment as Chris Savino's other works? Because there's more to them than just fan service and sexual references!! Both took the most mundane tasks, and execute them completely well. Plus, both shows happen to be team efforts. Despite what MrEnter said, the Loud House actually DID get better without Chris Savino, and yet people aren't convinced it has, and would rather watch Johnny Test instead. This actually makes anyone who hates the Loud House more toxic than those who defend it.
I actually did try giving Johnny Test another chance, because I too thought the Loud House would get worse in the later years, but even the first season of Johnny Test was so horrible, that it ended up making the Loud House's more recent stuff look good by comparison. Also, there's no doubt that I really hate the art style of Johnny Test. When it's not using cheap flash animation, it has hand drawn animation that's more on par with those horrible 1960s King Features cartoons of Popeye, Krazy Kat, and Beetle Bailey, and those nothing dark age Looney Tunes Cartoons from the 1960s, as well as those lazily produced shows from Hanna-Barbera, Filmation, Ruby-Spears, and DiC; all of which unsurprisingly influenced the animation style for Johnny Test season one. And based on Chris Savino's involvement with the show during season one, it unsurprisingly reminded me of those god awful last two seasons of Dexter's Laboratory and the Powerpuff Girls, especially if you took a closer look at those really thick outlines. You can tell that Johnny Test's first season is literally just a crappy Canadian show that's disguised like an American cartoon. Zerex said that every episode of the first season is really good, when in reality, he's just a delusional manchild who doesn't understand how Johnny Test is a complete rip-off of Dexter's Laboratory!! I mean, the idea was that Scott Fellows clearly wanted to rip off a show that Genndy Tartakovsky made that Chris Savino intentionally ruined. Because AOL Time Warner was impressed by Chris Savino's stupidity, they decided to give Johnny Test a chance, and allow Scott Fellows to rip-off Dexter's Laboratory by having the guy who ruined Dexter's Laboratory as the show's producer and director. It's further evidence that there's literally nothing good about the last two seasons of Dexter's Laboratory and the Powerpuff Girls, and this show clearly proves why.
I mean, I don't get why you would compare the Savino era Dexter and Powerpuff characters and writing to something like the Loud House, because that show is about redeeming Lincoln as a character. There's a reason why episodes like "Save the Date" are considered some of the best in the show's history, because Lincoln had every reason to get called out for his treatment towards Ronnie Anne. Not even MrEnter got that, yet I say it's a better episode than anything Johnny Test puts out. If anything, the Savino era of Dexter and Powerpuff are more comparable to Johnny Test than the Loud House, because they all occurred in the 2000s, and all of them aged horrendously by today's standards. None of the characters in Johnny Test are likable, as all of them are absolutely obnoxious. Zerex wanted us to do research; well, fuck you, Zerex! Johnny is what happens when you take Dee Dee, reverse her gender, and make her a worse character. And it actually makes sense to compare Savino Dee Dee to Johnny Test instead of Leni Loud, because Dee Dee acted more like Johnny Test in the Chris Savino era. And people say Leni Loud was more braindead than Dee Dee?? At least Leni has a heart! Some idiots will tell you that Johnny had a heart in many episodes of season one, such as with episodes about zits and a haunted house, and... no, I'm not convinced. He also has a superhero alter ego named "Johnny X", who has the ability to fart fire. Zerex, why do you have to expect us to find this funny?? Dukey is basically kid-friendly Brian Griffin, as he offers no character whatsoever; and I think it's safe to say that My Gym Partner's a Monkey was a better cartoon than this, because at least Windsor is the best character in that show.
Susan and Mary are basically Dexter from the Chris Savino era, because they're all redhead scientists with labs in their bedrooms, and have worse character than you'd expect. Not only that, but they happen to be creepy stalkers towards Gil Nexdor, who is just your typical pretty boy. They also tend to act like Judy from the Jetsons, because they only care about boys with good looks. I'm sorry to say this, but if you cited these girls as two of your childhood crushes, then that just makes YOU look like a creep, because Scott Fellows clearly wanted to make a hostile work environment where everyone is forced to work on Johnny Test, unless Chris Savino rapes them. Hugh Test is basically Dexter's Dad if he was a heartless version of Lynn Loud Sr., and I'd rather be watching the live-action Loud House right about now! Lila Test is basically Dexter's mom if you turned her into a careless Rita Loud, Bumper is basically Francis, just like every other bully character, Mr. Black and Mr. White are literally the men in black, and let's not forget Bling Bling Boy, real name Eugene. He's basically Mandark from the Chris Savino era, and has a creepy crush on Susan Test, and because Scott Fellows was happy about Chris Savino coming out a sexual abuser, he also based Bling Bling's creepy predatory behavior off of Chris Savino. This shows that Scott Fellows clearly did not care for the people Chris has harassed, did nothing to stop him, and just let him rape women anyways. Also, there's Sissy, a gender-flipped Johnny who's basically Cindy Vortex. She has a crush on Johnny, as established later in the series. And then you have Janet Nelson Jr., who is literally a totally useless character, because... wasn't it already confirmed that Sissy and Johnny are a couple?? I mean, what purpose does Janet have?? Nothing!! She's basically the discount Trixie Tang!! People would tell you that Janet was supposed to be the original crush on Johnny, but she already served no purpose. And stop saying that everything's a coincidence, because it's not!!
The General is just a nothing character, and you also have the Brain Freezer. Yeah, take Antoons and Chris Chan, and cross those with Snow Mizer. Tim Burnout is a totally useless character; in fact, none of these characters have any actual character. They're just joke machines. Unfunny joke machines. Zizrar is just a Kim Possible villain reject, the Extreme Teen Teem is a group of Wild Grinders prototypes, and the Moonsies are-- okay, WHY THE FUCK DO THE MOONSIES HAVE BUTTS FOR HEADS??!!! Let me guess, Pat Ventura storyboarded that episode? Figures. He did a better job with Phineas and Ferb than Johnny Test anyways. And don't get me started on Mr. Teacherman or Hank Anchorman, the latter of which is nothing but discount Chet Ubetcha. And do I have to explain how much I hate that mayor character? None of these characters have any personality!! You really think people had fun working on this show?? NOBODY had fun, except for Scott Fellows and Chris Savino. I cannot find one good episode in the first season of Johnny Test, because there's nothing good about this season at all!! I mean, really! What was Scott Fellows thinking??!! Not to mention, the girls tend to frame their own actions on Johnny in one episode, and Zerex expects us to find this writing charming!
(Cartoon Hero then gives the middle finger)
And I'm not gonna play the voice acting in this show, because it's just wasted talent here!! I'm surprised James Arnold Taylor was in this!! What's sadder is that Scott Fellows claimed that it was the merger between the WB and UPN into the CW that caused the show to suffer budget cuts. I would feel sorry for him, but upon revisiting the show as a whole, no. Scott Fellows actually was nasty to his co-workers, and with the exception of Chris Savino, nobody wanted to work on the show. Madeleine Paxson, Scott Shaw, Joe Horne, and others all hated working on the show, believing Scott Fellows and Chris Savino to be out of their minds. I can't really blame them for not wanting to contribute with this abomination. I mean, as I said before, season one's quality is very on par with the last two seasons of Dexter's Laboratory and the Powerpuff Girls. Just because Chris Savino was a producer for all of them doesn't make it a coincidence. This is exactly why Nickelodeon rejected your show, Scott Fellows. But you wouldn't let it die. Season one is very Chris Savino in terms of comedy and tone, and this IS something you would expect from him, especially during the 2000s. I know the WB network was already suffering from low viewership since 2003, but Scott Fellows clearly wanted to help shut down the WB by making this abomination. Yeah, thanks a lot for killing the network that brought us Freakazoid, Scott Fellows!!
Season one is literally the exact same show as the rest of the show, with the only differences being that there's no whip cracking sounds, no cheap flash animation, and instead, we has Chris Savino as producer, and Kevin Manthei as composer. None of those factors make season one any good at all, based on the fact that I had to suffer through Savino's episodes of Dexter and Powerpuff Girls. I was gonna hate Kick Buttowski, but it actually caught me by surprise. Season two began to show us what Johnny Test REALLY is in disguise as an American cartoon; a Canadian cartoon. I mean, Warner Bros. did a better job with Mucha Lucha than they did Coconut Fred or Johnny Test anyways, And Johnny Test is a perfect cross between a crappy Canadian show from Teletoon and a horrible Chris Savino production. Both aspects of which show how Johnny Test really is everything wrong with animation in the 2000s. And I don't care if Johnny Test got away with saying "sucks" in an episode, that doesn't make it funny!! The CW run of Johnny Test is just as bad as the WB run of Johnny Test, because nothing much has changed at this point. We now have the American Idiot ripoff as the new theme song, and it's no different. Also, new characters like Mr. Mittens, Albert, Whacko, Dark Vegan, Jillian, and-- Do I have to remind you that there are NO likable characters??
Season 3 was originally going to be the final season, but it moved from the CW to Cartoon Network by the time of 2008. Cartoon Network is no stranger to picking up content from Kids' WB!, which is something they actually used to do since the late 1990s. But couldn't you just not pick up Johnny Test at all??!! Although, given the fact that Johnny Test actually DOES share a similar quality to any Cartoon Network show that didn't age well, it never surprised me that Johnny Test would end up on Cartoon Network. Based on what Chris Savino did to Dexter's Laboratory and the Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Test clearly felt more like it belonged on Cartoon Network during the mid-to-late 2000s. There's a reason people consider Johnny Test as one of the worst Cartoon Network shows ever, alongside Problem Solverz, Secret Mountain Fort Awesome, and the Annoying Orange show. You can say Scott Fellows did better when he's working on KaBlam!, Fairly OddParents and Ned's Declassified, but part of me believed that those shows would've been even better without him. It's called "separating the art from the artist". With the case of Johnny Test, however, it's really hard to separate the art from him. It's actually sad that Doknot1999 actually liked this show, yet hated Superjail!, because they're both horrible!
It didn't matter if the whip cracks were never used in the Kids' WB! run, because they DID overuse the whip cracking sound effect as time went on. Remember the whip cracking sound? Scott Fellows chose to use that sound effect about a bajillion times in every episode. It's a very obnoxious sound effect, no doubt, but even then, it got drowned out by how god awful everything else in this show is. When Cartoon Network revived Johnny Test with season 4, it really shows how bad Johnny Test was from the start, other than the fact that Chris Savino used to be involved with this show. The use of flash animation isn't any different. In fact, I can't tell the "difference" between the Cartoon Network era and the Kids' WB! era, because they may as well be the same show, of which they literally are. You have episodes where the Test twins turn into babies for Gil, you have an episode about Johnny meeting his supposed parody, you have episodes about Avatar, video games, and-- Do I have to explain that EVERYTHING about this show is god awful??
Even without Chris Savino's involvement after season one, you can tell that this whole show screams 2000s Chris Savino. I'm pretty sure Christine Cavanaugh retired in 2001, because Chris Savino sexually harassed her before she dies. Yeah, you can blame Chris Savino for Christine Cavanaugh's death, which is why the Loud House is his only good actual creation, and one that seemingly got better after he was let go. If you add the whip cracking sound effect a bajillion times in Chris Savino's Dexter and Powerpuff episodes, they'd still feel more like Johnny Test. It didn't matter if there were no whip crack in the first season of Johnny Test, it's what the show's known for. Do I have a favorite episode? Well, no! ALL of the episodes are awful!! All of it!! There's not a single good episode in this whole show!! Like the Wacky World of Tex Avery, this show just wastes talented voice actors, like Scott McNeil, James Arnold Taylor, Ian James Corlett, and more. I still don't care if Mary's and Dukey's voices were changed, because the voice acting can really hurt your ears. We have episodes about fairy tales, Dr. Seuss, YouTube, dodgeball, and NONE of the episodes were any good! There was gonna be a 7th season, but thankfully Johnny Test never got renewed by Teletoon. So, you can thank Johnny Test for not only killing Kids' WB! and the WB network, but you can also thank Johnny Test for the closure of Teletoon! From Warner Bros. to Cookie Jar to DHX Media, now WildBrain, this show is one of the many children's cartoons that REALLY brought us back to the animation age ghetto!
Again, when you have Johnny Test premiering alongside Coconut Fred and Loonatics on Kids' WB!, you can definitely tell that animation was finally ready to get back to its age ghetto I was actually glad that Cartoon Network finally pulled the plug on Johnny Test in 2014, and reruns unfairly aired on Boomerang. That's also when Scott Fellows created other shows like SuperNoobs, Big Time Rush, and 100 Things to Do Before High School. Also, SuperNoobs isn't any different from Johnny Test. Thankfully, that show is over too. Zerex said we unfairly criticized Johnny Test. Well how about this, dude? YOU UNFAIRLY DEFENDED JOHNNY TEST, YOU ASSHOLE!!!! It was a blessing that Cartoon Network finally got rid of Johnny Test, and we were happy to never see it again. Unfortunately, that's what we didn't get. WildBrain brought back Johnny Test, not once, but TWICE!!! First time was a series of crudely animated shorts on YouTube, and yeah, it's the same show as before! It was for the better it remained lost media. Except that in 2021, we got a reboot of Johnny Test on Netflix. Just... why??!! WHY DID YOU HAVE TO BRING BACK JOHNNY TEST, NETFLIX??!! As for the reboot itself? Again, it's the same show as before!! Nothing is different. Even without the whip cracks, what's even the point of bringing Johnny Test back??!! This show may be one of the reasons why people are unsubscribing to Netflix anymore!! Not only that, but this show actually made NFTs and AI more popular! As if the Emoji Movie wasn't enough to fuel your hatred of emojis, they did episodes on emojis, Pokemon Go, Daft Punk, and so much more, they're not even funny at all!! That reboot got cancelled again in 2022, but has left a bigger stain on animation than ever before. Johnny Test's mere existence if one of the biggest reasons why creator driven animation is mostly dead at this point! NOW, do you see why we hate Johnny Test?
Johnny Test is... horrible! One of the worst cartoons I ever had to watch! Its animation was horrible, its dialogue was full of shit, its characters are all hateable, and just literally everything about this show proves why NOTHING about Chris Savino's work on Dexter's Laboratory and the Powerpuff Girls was any good. To think this was made by the same animation studio who did Animaniacs and Batman: The Animated Series! Johnny Test did NOT deserve a critical reevaluation at all! It's a show that deserves WAY more hate than you thought! I don't wanna be a jerk to anyone's opinions, but only a sick creep would find themselves enjoying Johnny Test! If you are a cartoon fan, and would know better than to be a sick pervert, then don't watch Johnny Test at all!! It's a pure nightmare!! It was doomed from the beginning, it was horrible when it was on Kids' WB!, it stayed the same when it was on Cartoon Network, and it's still the same show on Netflix! Congratulations, Johnny Test! You just hit the world record by being on THREE lists of the worst shows on these three networks!! Good job, Johnny Test!! You deserve a medal!! You guys seriously think this show actually USED to be a GOOD show on Kids' WB!?? Guys, this was one of the shows that DESTROYED the WB network!!! I don't think the WB will ever make a comeback after this show came to be! Johnny Test is, without a doubt, the WORST Kids' WB! show of all time!! It's no wonder that Saturday Morning cartoons are dead! By all means, stay away from Johnny Test at all costs!! It will rot your brain, and turn you into a toxic monster!!! If you wanna watch shows like Johnny Test, shows like Phineas and Ferb and the Loud House did stuff similar to Johnny Test, but done way better! And I'm sure our world would've been even better if we didn't have Johnny Test.
All in all, Johnny Test is a primary example of a show that doesn't deserve a critical reevaluation, and there's a reason why it's on the lists of worst Cartoon Network shows, even if it didn't originate from Cartoon Network. It's very much like why shows like Problem Solverz and Secret Mountain Fort Awesome don't deserve a critical reevaluation either. There's a reason all of those shows are on the lists of worst Cartoon Network shows, and if that's the case, then a critical reevaluation is never necessary in any point in time, especially today. By all accounts, don't EVER watch Johnny Test at all! You'll thank the haters for this, because if you end up like Zerex, you will be cancelled. I'm the Cartoon Hero, because I save the world from bad animation.