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Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

I genuinely had no idea they were still making Arthur.

I thought it was just a circle of reruns like how I watched Mr. Rogers as a kid.

Seems to me like you'd only need to make a couple seasons worth of any kids show, you've got a continuing cycle of aging out and brand new audience.

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I remember when my youngest sister was watching it in the late 90s. My daughter started watching it in the last couple of years. I was a little taken aback that it was the same show.

There's at least one episode where a reference is made to the non-passing of time in their universe. We got some DVDs of the older episodes from the library. I found it interesting, and a little spooky, that technology in the "Arthurverse" updates while the ages of all the characters remained the same. It's like some kind of twisted "groundhog day" scenario.

Eh, the Simpsons have been dealing with that for longer.

It's not just technology either, the character back stories get updated too. There's an episode from the 90s where Homer feels old because he doesn't understand grunge rock. Then, more than a decade later, they made a flashback episode where his backstory was updated to show that he basically started grunge, and Kurt Cobain ripped him off.

Boy, I hope somebody was fired for that blunder.

There's no blunder. That's how The Simpsons handles ageless characters on a show that's almost old enough to run for president.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTxw5nQX7SA

Whoever downvoted my comment must admire Comic Book Guy. I remember the scene, but not every single line.

> Boy, I hope somebody was fired for that blunder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_timeline

Yeah, I remember when "young Homer" drove a 1970 Cuda.

Homer is about to become a millennial in the next coupe years and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

"Wow, I wish I had an elephant."

"You did. His name was Stampy. You loved him."

"Oh yeah..."

Jacob Geller has a neat video essay about what the passage of time means in a timeless animated show: "The Best Simpsons Intro Is About Losing Everything You Love"

https://youtu.be/1f5Xt5pZZZM

I think to maintain relevancy shows like to stay up to date with drawing style and current technology, though. I think kids would find it funny if Arthur were still using a typewriter and didn't own a computer, for example.

This is one of the reasons why we still make movies.

And music.

Any art.

Just to update the set pieces?

To keep things relatable. Most stories may at their core be a rehash or Aesop, Shakespere and the hero's journey but that doesn't mean they are relatable to the audience. At some point Beowulf must turn into Siegfried and Siegfried must become Luke Skywalker.

>I think kids would find it funny if Arthur were still using a typewriter and didn't own a computer, for example.

Not if you play it off as a period piece.

Sazae-san story is now basically like that. Their lifestyle is frozen at around 1980s. The anime production also had been used analog cel rather than digital until about 2010. It's last TV anime show uses cel (oh I must put this word: "at least in Japan").

Perhaps even more surprisingly Mr. Rogers had more episodes and seasons over more years than Arthur.

Now that's impressive because it means Mr. Rogers (the show) is almost 60 years old. The show feels so timeless though and I can imagine kids in 10 years still watching the show.

Even though the audience cycles, the context of modern times changes so the show needs new episodes to stay relevant amongst competition.

There was a recent episode about car culture and fake polling that was probably less relevant in 1996 for instance.

Yeah I remember watching it as a kid and seeing the same episodes over and over. I thought I had watched them all. And that was around 10 years ago.

This much-discussed episode aired in 2019: https://arthur.fandom.com/wiki/Mr._Ratburn_and_the_Special_S...

Have you ever watched Arthur? They cover current events in every season, and have done episodes about social media and the Internet.

There's a value to staying current, even when your target audience nearly completely refreshes every few years.

Yet we still write books.

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