(We start with a clip of Enter holding up the first three books in the Wayside School book series)
I remember the books Sideways Stories From Wayside School being a big part of my childhood. It's one of the many books that I read to my siblings growing up and we were delighted by the strange and surreal stories about a school that was built on its side...
(Pictures from the books appear)
...and the classroom on the very top thirtieth floor of many strange little kids. It had its own strange sense of logic. One of the more memorable chapters was that of Maurecia. In it, the teacher, Mrs. Jewls, brought in a special ice cream named after Maurecia because she had gotten tired of all of the traditional flavors. Everyone loved it except for Maurecia. That's because the ice cream tasted like what Maurecia tasted when she tasted nothing. It makes sense in a very childlike way and many people have asked similar questions like "Does blue look the same for me as everyone else? What if everyone else sees blue as I see red?"
Each of the three books had stories that tapped into a similar set of entertaining bizarreness. From a student named Sammy who wore a thousand smelly coats and when they were all removed revealed nothing more than a dead rat, the third one who had tried to sneak into Mrs. Jewls' class, or Joe who would always count using random numbers but would always arrive to the correct answer to a math problem, or Rondi who everyone complimented on having two beautiful front teeth, even though her two front teeth were missing.
The books were written by Louis Sachar, best known for Holes. He had started working on an idea about a mean teacher who turned her students into apples while in high school, but the idea for the Wayside series of books didn't really form until he worked as a teacher's assistant in college, and if I remember correctly, the names are based on kids he worked with, although their personalities are obviously very different. The prose of the books speaks to kids on their level without really talking down to them, making the series very easy for a kid to get into, and uses very fun and odd wordplay like, "The basement is where the dead rats lived."
(Footage of the show appears)
I bring this all up because this show, Wayside, was one that I was actually excited for. Much of what I reviewed on Animated Atrocities I've come across incidentally or went looking for it. This is one of those that came to me, even though it was getting towards what I'd consider to be the end of my childhood. Wayside, the show, originally aired on Teletoon in 2005, but it didn't make its way to Nickelodeon until the summer of 2008, and it was probably one of the first in my long list of disappointments from Nick, even though they're really not the one to blame with this one.
To put this to perspective, the original book, Sideways Stories From Wayside School, was written in 1978, and when reading the book, you'd get the impression that it would make for an absolutely stellar cartoon. It already had the logic that would grow into a cartoon starting in the mid-nineties with many characters that you'd love to know better and get more and more stories with, and the books were already episodic. Even better is that the books were absolutely timeless, with the exception of the names like Maurecia and Nancy, names that I don't think anyone's had in about twenty years. I first read the books in the nineties, and I did not know that the original book was written in the late seventies until I looked it up because it's one of the few stories that truly feels like it could've taken place at any time. I did have a lot of high hopes for this cartoon, and I watched it and....it wasn't the worst thing in the world, but it was definitely a very poor adaptation.
I gave an episode a review a couple years back to explain how poor of an adaptation I thought that it was. Recently, I tried to watch it again and view it on its own merits and I tried to like this show, I really did! Welcome to my first revisited marathon, where I take a look at some of the cartoons and episodes that I don't think I did proper justice the first time around, and I thought that I'd start with one of the easier ones first.
We're going to be talking about Wayside both on its own and as an adaptation. I think that it deserves to be looked at both ways and I want to be as fair as possible. And yes, I'm sorry, but we have to look at this as an adaptation. A lot of people who have never read the books really like the show and I'm assuming that they're very annoyed at people who keep hating on the show because it pales in comparison to the books. However, I want to be as fair as possible. So, this time, an absolute rarity, we're not going to be talking about one episode. I'm gonna do something new and try to give the entire series a review--not episode by episode, just the entire series in general. All the episodes are on a similar level of quality. There's nothing that stands out as, say, Wayside's "The Splinter."
(A Teletoon bumper is shown)
While Wayside is counted as an offical Nicktoon, Teletoon holds the responsibility for creating this show, and knowing what I know now that should of been my first red flag.
(Clips from Totally Spies, Braceface, and What's With Andy? appear)
I don't think that I stated this before, but I really don't like Teletoon. I mean, that should be obvious with how many Teletoon shows I've reviewed up to this point and how many I will review in the future, and I think that Teletoon may be the single handed reason why Canadian animation has such a rock bottom reputation this day and age. I mean as bad as Nick and Cartoon Network had gotten, they've never managed to basically create a bad impression of an entire country's animation department because Canadian animation isn't as bad as many people claim it to be. Ed, Edd 'n Eddy was a Canadian show. Friendship is Magic is a Canadian show. ReBoot! and Canadian animation tends to be even better when it's an international effort like with Clone High or Cybersix.
(Clips of Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs, Carl², and Gerald McBoing-Boing appear)
No, the problem is that Teletoon, a Canadian network, generates a lot of shit and they export a lot of shit. Teletoon shows tend to be people's first impression on Canadian animation. They started in the late nineties with a stellar line up of....
(Clips from the following appear, as well as a brief clip from George of the Jungle (2007))
...Caillou, Donkey Kong Country, Bad Dog, Mega Babies, and Angela Anaconda. This is the network behind the perennial classics Johnny Test, My Life Me, The Day My Butt Went Psycho, Rocket Monkeys, and Looped. With that pedigree, who wouldn't trust them with their franchise? They create a lot of garbage because best that I can see that's their strategy: Give a little bit of money to a lot of people. Even their better shows like Total Drama have a very "we made this quickly as possible in Flash to get this out as quickly as possible" aesthetic. Teletoon shows tend to use very simple shapes and little else, not really focusing on any details. They almost universally look lazy, especially with the advent of Flash and computer animation.
I mean, their most recent shows, like Looped, look far worse than their older shows like Totally Spies! or Caillou. Cartoons from a network should look better than the ones from the past, not worse. Wayside started off as hand-drawn and eventually moved on to Flash, but it's honestly hard to tell the difference, especially because they do reuse a lot of animation. I really don't like the look of the show.
(A clip of Fraidy Cat is shown)
I mean, it does look better than what it would have if it came out 1978, but that's not saying much considering the animation of 1978, and Wayside kind of came out in the second-worst possible time it could have, the mid-2000s, a time where almost everything looked really cheap.
Now, the books had several editions with several illustrations from various different artists. The one I grew up with was illustrated by Julie Brinckloe, and goddamn do I wish I can find another copy of this version. The current versions out now are illustrated by Adam McCauley and while the newer drawings do fit the tone of the series better, I prefer the original. I think that the surreal nature of the books hits a lot harder when it's coming from people who look like actual people. So there really is no canon version of what the characters look like. Well, there is, which the Wayside show does occasionally screw up like Sharie's overcoat being red and blue and Stephen having green hair. I'm not too flustered about the choice in appearance. What I don't like is that the characters seem overly simple, and they can't be expressive without their entire body going berserk.
Speaking of which, the actual expressions of the show do look uncomfortably uncanny. This is noticeable even from the theme song. Look at how constipated this cow appears! And Myron's expression here it just looks wrong! Half the time, it seems like they're confusing the key frames for the in-betweens. And if you marathon this show like I have, they reuse a lot of animation. There's a montage of Maurecia hitting Todd that they reuse for instance. But speaking of the theme song, credit where it's due, I like how this sounds.
(The upbeat theme song is played)
I mean speaking of not giving things the credit they were due, I seriously think that this should have been more than an honorable mention on my Top Twenty Best Theme Songs of All Time. It's just so cheery and upbeat and it never fails to put me in a good mood and it also one of the theme songs I listen to detached from the show. It's outstandingly catchy. The only bad thing about it is that it's used for the Wayside cartoon. That wasn't really a joke; it ends up delivering a promise that it can't live up to. From a really energetic theme song to really stilted animation. And my praise for the sound direction ends there because pretty much all of the background music seems to be stolen. Whenever they do something action packed, like say Maurecia or Jenny do a stunt, the show will play an instrumental version of "Eye of the Tiger". Not something that sounds like "Eye of the Tiger," but actually an instrumental version of "Eye of the Tiger."
(Exactly that happens as Jenny uses her motorcycle to jump over Todd)
Which makes this show seem even cheaper. This happens so much that I'm honestly surprised that no one got sued because... it's not the only song they use instrumental versions of. What we have so far is a show that doesn't use its own plot, premise, or characters, it reuses animation that it doesn't put much effort into, and it steals music. Forgetting that this is based on a book, I expect better production values on cartoons in general. This honestly feels like it's in the Johnny Test area.
The series follows Todd, who was a new student in Mrs. Jewls' class. In my original review, I had a problem with this and I still do. Todd's main gimmick, if you will, is that every day, he gets in trouble three times and is sent home on the kindergarten bus. This is a problem in the show for two reasons: one is that it sends him away from the wackiness early when the show is about Todd experiencing the wackiness of Wayside. The other reason is that it leads to the show being a lot more one-note. Much of the humor is just beating on Todd. For example, in "Age of Aquarium," Todd isn't allowed on a field trip because he didn't get a permission slip signed, which was given out after he was sent home on the kindergarten bus the previous day. So, instead of Todd experiencing the school becoming an aquarium, he spends half the episode in a lifeboat in a very boring-looking scene. It's blue on the ground and a yellow background; that is it, and he ends up stuck with Maurecia, who we will get to.
Out of twenty-eight choices, I have no idea why they picked Todd. If you wanted a new student, the books already had one. In the second book, Benjamin Nushmutt is introduced. His thing is that everyone thinks his name is Mark Miller. He's a clean slate and he's very easily the straight man in the books that you wanted. If you wanted a character who's more normal than the rest of the gang, who wasn't Todd in the book, that would be Allison. If you wanted a male main character who could be considered the straight man, honestly... you could've picked Myron.
The Myron in this cartoon is an insult to the character from the book. The only thing that they got right is that he used to be a class president and they overblew one tiny little episode into his basic entire character. Do you know what caused him to lose that position in the books? He was walking home one day when Dana's dog got hit by a car. And so, he walked two miles to the vet carrying the dog all the way there. He was only late the next day and lost his position because he took the extra effort to check on Dana's dog and make sure she was okay. In the Wayside television series, Myron is selfish and lazy, to the point where not even fans of the show seem to like him. While he's not the worst character I've ever come across, there's not much redeeming about him. I seriously do not know how they made this connection or why they did this to Myron's character. It doesn't have any benefit for this show. Literally every episode about Myron is focused on him going on some kind of power trip or trying to obtain power. It does get repetitive and old quite quickly. In fact, he seems to have taken on the personality of another character from the book: Joy; just a more stupid version of Joy, who was basically one of the classroom's stock assholes. And Joy was Maurecia's friend in the series, so it would make sense that at some point that was the original inception.
Dana's personality they invented from whole cloth and I'm not too fond of her character either. I've seen this personality type frequently before; stuck to the rules to the point of obsession. I mean, her catchphrase is ,"Enough with the fun," which isn't something you should be saying in a cartoon, let alone a cartoon based on the Wayside books.
And finally, we get to Maurecia to round out our main cast. In the books, she was a girl who liked ice cream. They went from that to a tomboy on roller skates that punches Todd a lot. I mean, the books did say she could beat up any boy in Mrs. Jewls' class, but they didn't say that she actually did it. Her most shining moment from the books is when she returned $20,000 to its owner out of the kindness of her heart. In the show, her most defining moment is when she hit Todd. Yeah, apparently Wayside follows the Miss Teacher Person brand of logic where you're supposed to hit the ones you like. I wouldn't be surprised with Maurecia grew up to be Miss Teacher Person.
While the books weren't about the morals and frequently told stories that ended on a bizarre note, they never thought or shown anything that's quite honestly this abhorrent. In the first book, for instance, one of the characters, DJ, gives the eternal message that "You need a reason to be sad. You don't need a reason to be happy," which is why he was always smiling. The relationship between Todd and Maurecia isn't funny or endearing, not even through warped Wayside logic. It's just off-putting watching Maurecia be an asshole and Todd getting hit around.
Mrs. Jewls' class had twenty-seven and later twenty-eight students in the book. In the show, she has about... twelve and some of the characters made me think that they were only skimming through the book. The only one that they got 100% right was Sharie. John doesn't stand on his head. In fact, in the books it's explicitly stated that he couldn't stand on his head. He could only read things that were upside-down until he flipped his brain and everything became upside-down for him. Stephen only wore a Halloween costume to school once, and that was the Friday before Halloween. The series has this odd habit of taking one tiny joke from one chapter and ballooning it to eclipse who the characters actually are. Jenny didn't ride a bike everywhere, she just wore a motorcycle helmet and had an odd habit of coming to school on a Saturday. I wouldn't mind so much except... Ed Edd 'n Eddy came out around the same time and she's basically a nicer version of Kevin. The bikes almost look the same! And anyone who's read the books knows that having Bebe without Calvin is like having Mr. Burns without Smithers.
Yes, when transferring something to a new medium, you do need to make changes, but these are almost random and haphazard and the lack of benefit you get from these changes don't outweigh losing the charm of the original books. I cannot stress this enough; these changes only make the product worse. If you want to talk about effort, if we're just counting the amount of characters who've made it in the show based on the characters from the book series, even if they're just sitting in the background, this show has gotten fourteen of the twenty-eight students. That is half and in school, 50% is still a failing grade.
These characters have very simplistic designs; I'm sure you could've spent another two hours making more background characters. The show had twenty-six episodes, which is fifty-two cartoon segments. The original book managed to convey twenty-seven students in thirty chapters that are all much shorter. So, what did Wayside the show, decide to use to fill its time?
Principal Kidswatter: (ice skating) What a turnout to witness their principal break his own personal record of a triple salchow twist!
Ah, yes, Mr. Kidswatter. The guy who wasn't even in the first book. Not that he's a bad character, but he takes up so much screen time in the show! I think that he gets more screen time than Mrs. Jewls, which is the classroom teacher! If we're talking adaptation points, in the books, he was mean and intimidating and the students actually feared him. While he still made absurd demands like banning the word "door" because he kept running into them, half the episodes seem to involve him or give him a subplot while sacrificing half of the students from the books, and the books were about the students. This would be like cutting Alice from Alice in Wonderland entirely to tell the epic story of the dormouse. But I think I know why they did it. It's easy. For starters, he's basically a grown up Myron. A joke coming from Myron could work coming from Kidswatter. Make Myron act like a dumbass and you're done; make Kidswatter act like a dumbass and you're done. What you focus on is what your work is about and the Wayside books were not about Principal Kidswatter; he was a secondary character at best. He may have been a catalyst for a chapter like "Stalling the Elevators," but he was rarely, if ever, involved in the plot. In one episode based on a book chapter, "Music Lessons," all Kidswatter did was tell Mrs. Jewls that her music was so loud that no one could hear. Mrs. Jewls decided to fix that by playing louder so that everyone could hear. In the cartoon episode, "Music Lessons," beyond being another Myron power trip episode, it's a quest for Kidswatter to get to the thirtieth floor to stop Myron's instrument from hypnotizing the students.
The biggest difference from the books is that in the show, the environment drives the weirdness. In the books, the characters drive the weirdness and if it wanted to go that route, that would have been fine, but they shouldn't have done that if they didn't want to put any effort into their characters. I've seen the Kidswatter type character before; the childish authority figure. It's been done, a lot! When half of your episodes, and half the screen time in all of the other episodes, is focused on a character type that has been done to death, it doesn't look good for your show. A lot of the episodes do have good ideas that I can imagine being in the books like "Teacher Parent Conference." Like "Age of Aquarium," where they flooded the school to experience what it's like to be in an actual aquarium. The issue is the execution--they focus on the wrong characters that they've reduced to one-note jokes. Maurecia being sent to Wayside Honors Class would be pretty interesting with Wayside logic, but because they don't have a budget to make it interesting, they have it taught by Miss Mush, who is not very interesting. And this is just a side note: if you want to keep her country of origin vague like say, Rolf, you can't be referring to things that actually exist like pierogis, for instance, which are decidedly Polish. Actually, you could throw her into the Kidswatter problem as well; she also gets more screen time than she should. The Wayside students protesting something could lead to some interesting interactions between the students, but way too much of that episode is focused on Kidswatter being Kidswatter... oh, wait. He's not being Kidswatter, he's just being a dumbass.
Many of these stories are pulled from the books. Not anything as intense as Dana's dog getting hit with a car, or Myron contemplating sacrificing security for freedom, or a substitute teacher contemplating on throwing a baby out of a thirty-story window, or Maurecia having a moral dilemma on whether or not to keep a large sum of money, because taking kids seriously isn't part of the job here. The books could occasionally get very dark. One chapter was about a substitute teacher who would steal the children's voices and use them to make calls to their parents to insult them and threatening the children that they would never get their voices back. In the first chapter of the first book, someone is turned into an apple and eaten. At times, the Wayside show feels like the opposite of those obnoxiously gritty reboots, except still obnoxious. And when they do decide to go with something from the books, they seldom get it right. There's even an example in the title of the first episode called "Pull My Pigtail," and the episode is about Principal Kidswatter doing something stupid!
Principal Kidswatter: Hey, what's with the shouting? (sees Myron dressed as an angel hanging from a tree branch);; Who are you? Wait, no no no no, don't tell me! I know! You're my guardian angel!
Myron: Your what!?
Principal Kidswatter: Guardian angels protect people. That means I can do anything when you're around and you'll save me! I got it! I'll go jump off a tree and you'll save me! (dashes up the tree) All right, here I go, guardian angel. Come now and save me
(Kidswatter falls off the branch as Myron stares in disbelief; just before he hits the ground, a Mario game over screen appears with appropriate soundtrack)
But it's also about Dana trying to get Todd to pull Maurecia's ponytail. Ponytail in an episode called "Pull My Pigtail." Leslie is one of the characters you decided to keep and... this is all very aggravating to me. The episode is called "Pull My Pigtail" despite having nothing to do with pigtails because in the book, one of the characters, Paul, struggled not to pull Leslie's pigtails. It's okay if we get rid of him and give everything he does to another character. "Cabbage, My Boy" is based on Bebe getting away with everything because she lies about her fake little brother is doing things. The episode is about everyone thinking that Myron's cabbage is his little brother as it continues to rot in one of the few times that I'm glad this show has piss-poor animation.
One of the main deciding factors on whether or not you like the show seems to be whether or not you read the books, and yes, a good chunk of my complaints are adaptation based. But I don't think I'd like the show even if I've never read the books because... it's all very stock at best. Characters that aren't horrible like Myron are like Dana; character types I've seen a billion times and they don't do much new with them. Like I said, I've seen the childish idiot authority figure a million times. Then, there are the plots. While there's some interesting and surreal episodes, there are a lot of plots that have been done before to the point of being clichéd. Adult needs to go back to school to graduate? Never seen that before! A weird person giving up their eccentricities for an episode? Never seen that before! A Christmas episode where someone learns not to be a selfish prick? Whaddaya know!
The animation reminds me of Johnny Test and I can't stand the main characters. Todd is just a butt monkey, Maurecia's gimmick of punching him gets old, and Myron is lazy and selfish and every episode about him is the same.
(Cut back to Enter holding the books; his voice is heard behind the camera)
I will admit, it's hard for me to separate my feelings on the show from these book. These books were a part of my childhood and were actually a very big inspiration to me. Inspiration for eventually writing my own book. (briefly holds out a copy of his book Growing Around) This series really inspired my own children's literature tone and style. And where I'd be would be a lot different if these books didn't exist. They're rather unique in their own style. But what gets me a lot is that in my original review, a lot of people said that they've never read the books, but they like the TV series. That's fine and good... but if you do, I implore to you to at least check out the books. You might like them, you might not, but I find them better in pretty much every way. They're unique and funny and rereading them for this review, they still do hold up quite well. They're not perfect, but they have effort and passion and take kids seriously... unlike the TV series, which seems to be trying to get a quick buck while spending absolutely nothing to do it.
(Back to the cartoon clips; regular recording voice)
The Wayside book series was the first to truly leave an impression on me as a kid. It may have been the first chapter book that I've ever read. It was definitely the first series that inspired me, even before the likes of Harry Potter. It is most likely the first domino in the lineup for my decision to be a writer and the kind of writer that I'd eventually become. Wayside, the animated series, is also an inspiration to me, but it's a different kind of inspiration. The "I must never be this bad" kind of inspiration. The "I have to do better than this" kind. I don't want to do this. I don't want to be like this. I don't want to make something like this. I don't want to make something that takes these amazing characters and ideas and creates something awful or even mediocre and never realized the full potential of the idea. And that may sound like it only applies to adaptations, but what is a book, a movie, a video game, or anything creative but an adaptation of one or more ideas? Everything that I've ever written is an adaptation of an idea; everything I will write is an adaptation of an idea; same with you.
To tell you the truth, the series makes me more sad than angry. The books seem to be more obscure than they have any right to be. The series has reportedly sold around six million copies, which in the grand scheme of things, isn't much since 1978. It's not bad by any means, and I myself would be lucky to achieve something like that in thirty thousand years, let alone thirty. But the Wayside books don't seem to have punctuated the consciousness as, say, the works of Roald Dahl like Willy Wonka or Mathilda. And yes, I am holding the show partially responsible for that.
A good or bad adaptation can make all the difference. Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. While they were successful in their own right beforehand, they only broke out into the mainstream when their respective movie franchises took off. And after say, the failure of The Last Airbender, I wouldn't say that the Avatar franchise is being treated with the upmost respect. Imagine if that movie was good. Avatar would have had the same cultural holding as The Hunger Games and Nick might not have been tempted to shuffle around the episodes, screw over the creators, and shove the rest of it over to video streaming.
To get it out of the way as quickly as possible; adaptations have an effect on the original product. I won't say that people don't read books anymore, but it's generally not what they do first. People will go to the easiest consumed version of the work first. People will watch a movie before they'll watch a television show, and they will watch a movie or a television show before a book or graphic novel, and that can paint their overall view of the franchise. All of these movies; Harry Potter, Lord Of The Rings, Jurassic Park, The Shining, Rambo, Roger Rabbit, The Neverending Story, Willy Wonka. How many of these things do you only know from their adaptation? And in some cases, you might not realize that they are an adaptation.
Would Wayside be an Animated Atrocity if it was its own thing? That's hard to answer. I'd put it "Better than Johnny Test, but only because of its concepts and premises, which it didn't come up with." And even beyond that, there's a higher bar when it comes to adaptations. Bad adaptations do disastrous things to studio, network, and public perceptions of a work, and it's even worse when they're mediocre rather than outstandingly bad. When something bombs as bad as The Last Airbender, people tend to think that there's no way what it's based on is that bad. When it's mediocre like the Silent Hill movie or Wayside, people don't have that question and not many people see it, and it leads to networks thinking that the product doesn't have an audience.
As much as I complained about the differences, I wouldn't be angry if the show did its own thing and did it well. It's not always about sticking as close as possible to the source material. Compare the two Shining movies, King's to Kubrick's. King's is much closer to the book, but Kubrick's is considered much, much better. The job of an adaptation is transcribing that special something from the original and making it resonate with a new medium, not obscuring what made the original great. I honestly feel that with another try, with someone who knows what they're doing or actually cares about the books and is not copying someone else's homework, a Wayside television series could seriously work out. It really does lend itself with the medium of animation. And like I said earlier, it has a cartoon-like tone and is already episodic. But because this show got mediocre reviews and was canned two seasons in, good luck finding anyone who will think it's a good idea. And from what I heard, Louis Sachar, the writer of the books, didn't like the series very much and might be hesitant to sign up for this song and dance again, which is sad.
But, who knows? There's always hope. Wayside isn't the only series of his with an adaptation and he's still writing. From what I understand, the movie Holes, based on another book of his, turned out well, so who knows? We can only hope for the best.