mission hill / late-90s animation explosion
Mission Hill (1999-2000) - I'm not going to say very much about Mission Hill, since most of you out there probably don't find the subject very compelling after being subjected to the nine millionth Adult Swim rerun. What's worth mentioning, though, is that Mission Hill is one of the few prime-time cartoon upstarts from the late 20th/early 21st century that could have actually grown and improved a lot with a second season. Simpsons writers Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein (who ran said show's excellent seventh and eighth season) admittedly created a watered-down version of Peter Bagge's alternative comic "Hate," but it is (and was) nice to see a prime-time animated show that actually looked nice and wasn't about a family. Mission Hill doesn't quite hit the high mark that Oakley and Weinstein achieved with their previous work, but towards the end of its only season, the continuity and actual character development they brought into the episodes hinted at what was to come, but obviously didn't.

I still find the little brother character a little too annoying for his own good; his voice is alarmingly cartoony, and the ubiquitous kiddie show voices of Tress Macneille and Tom Kenny playing other characters certainly don't help Mission Hill feel as different as it wanted to be. There's also the matter of the new age roommate, who's more of a ripoff of Pheobe from Friends than a comment about characters like her, but thankfully, she's only a minor player.  Sadly, Mission Hill was lost in the morass of prime-time animation known as the late-90s / early-2000s, when it was impossible for any animated show to stand out, no matter how different it tried to be.

3/5

But wait!  What of this abundance of animation that happened nearly a decade ago?  Inexplicably--possibly due to a good economy--many, many animated prime-time shows were made around 1999-2001.  Few survived.  You can mark the beginning of Adult Swim as the end of this trend, because it's been very rare to see such an overflow of animated product other than Cartoon Network since that crazy and profitable experiment started. 

Allow me to review the shows you probably missed, most of which you shouldn't feel guilty about missing.

Baby Blues - About as exciting and funny as someone telling you stories about their baby.  And for a show with awful character designs on a third-rate network, they somehow had really smooth animation.  Even stranger: Baby Blues got a second season.

Dilbert - Nice voice talent, but Scott Adams' characters are a little too bland (visually) for animation.  Not horrible, but as tepid as you'd expect a Dilbert cartoon to be.

God, the Devil and Bob - I don't know much about this show other than A.) it looks awful and B.) NBC pulled it very early over controversy so I never got a chance to watch it.  Around the time this show aired, I had an annoying friend who would point out that, much like the main character in this show, my name is also Bob.  Great job.

Stressed Eric - A completely one-note British show that was oddly re-dubbed and localized, making the whole experience very alienating.  I only watched one episode and that felt like enough.  Status: itchy.

Futurama - Actually canceled once the prime-time animation fad was over, but brought back, much like some other show.

Family Guy - See above.

Home Movies - See above again.  I'm probably the only person nerdy enough to have taped the original five episodes when they aired on UPN.  Or the only person to tape anything from UPN.

The PJs - Premise: the lighter side of inner city poverty.  While the humor was a little broad at times, it was worth watching just for the novelty of stop-motion animation, which was long dead even a decade ago.

Clerks - Probably the only Kevin Smith product I can still tolerate, and the best place for his cast of characters.  It's a shame that the animated version of Clerks wasn't a huge success, because then he would have probably quit making movies.

Sammy - I didn't think this show actually existed, but IMDB says it did so I'm just going to "roll with it" as the youths say.  Obviously, I've never seen it, but the Internet tells me that it was a vehicle for David Spade based on his own depressing childhood.  Did this even air?  Who cares.

Downtown - MTV had a lot of animation going on at the time, and Downtown was probably their most memorable show.  Very similar to Mission Hill (in fact, so similar that Mission Hill had to change its original title, "The Downtowners"), Downtown captured that same alternative comic spirit--with maybe a little more edge, what with all the MTV.  I've only seen a few episodes, but I'd love to watch more.

Undergrads - A bland and boring look at college life, notable only because it looks like they spent more money on digital shading than on the actual animation.  3-South was much better, even though it was pretty ugly.  I wouldn't mind seeing more of the latter.

Clone High - I've never watched it, but the amount of Clone High avatars on the Internet tells me that it's either very good or very bad.  I will never know.

Am I forgetting anything?  Please let me know.  Also, discuss animation in the comments section because it took me too damn long to write this.