Animated Episodes That Hit Me Where I Live
Bart Get’s an F Season 2 Episode 1
I have been watching The Simpsons since I could comprehend what television was. When I was a baby (and like a proper baby that can only scream and sleep) I would scream my head off if we were late to watch The Simpsons at 6 pm on weeknights. In hindsight, that kind of routine might have been an early trait of autism; but far more importantly, it was a love of The Simpsons. There is not a rational explanation for my love of The Simpsons but it is my comfort show, my safe space, the show where everything works out again in the end. If I was the Scarlet Witch my hex would have been a lot weirder.
Considering this episode came out over 30 years ago, it goes to show how little has changed about education. This is one of the few episodes where we see Bart Simpson, the renowned ‘El Barto’, genuinely afraid. Afraid of being left behind, afraid of never being good enough, afraid of being an embarrassment to the people he cares about. Bart begs, pleas, and bargains with God by his bedside to get another chance to change his ways, and when he well and truly tries… it’s just not good enough. Answering the questions on the test he still failed. Only when crying and pleading does Mrs K realise he really has been learning. She moves his grade up to a D- and he passes!! And although we all celebrate he won’t be held back a year the episode shows how limiting school can be. Bart knew the answers and numerous other episodes have shown that Bart is intelligent, resourceful, determined, and incredibly capable. But school doesn’t let him think the way he needs to. Seasons later he is diagnosed with ADHD and put on medication, a fact that pops up now and again through the 30+ seasons, building his issues with focus and his troubles in school into something more than underachieving.
As a kid I related to Lisa, I was smart and didn’t have a lot of friends. But as an adult I know that I wasn’t smart, I was just doing the only thing I could do to avoid social interaction at all costs. People are scary, and I’d rather watch cartoons. Eventually, others caught up, and by the time was seven, I had the reputation of being smart, and was put in the smart classes for years to come, but I was completely average. When my grades dropped it was because I wasn’t trying hard enough. “What do you mean you didn’t do the six hours of homework?? You spelt your name at three. Why would you give us those expectations?” Turns out this is a common experience; and thank the gods for social media, because it is called ‘Gifted Kid Burnout’ and I’m not just losing my mind.
American Dad After School Special Season 3 Episode 2
Body dysmorphia can be a difficult thing to portray in the media but nothing does it better than this episode of American Dad; which is pretty impressive considering the show focuses on a conservative family, hippy twenty-something and sexually ambiguous alien. In this episode, Stan is “traumatised” by seeing his son date a fat girl, Debbie, causing him to become insecure about his own body image. He begins to starve himself and exercise relentlessly, being helped by a personal trainer, Zack.
“I know. I’m a huge tub of lard.”
He quickly becomes paranoid that people are trying to sabotage his weight loss until he cannot complete a CIA obstacle course where Bullock says “I have no choice but to suspend you until you detail with your weight problem.” Throughout all of these scenes, Stan looks as if he is gaining weight until he is confronted by his family who believes he has anorexia. “I know. I’m a huge tub of lard.” When he goes into rehab he learns how to manipulate his family into thinking he’s getting better by getting rid of the food before he can eat any of it. Stan continues to believe that he is overweight and only begins to change his views when he sees Steve confess his love for Debbie.
Honestly, just the moment when we go from seeing the episode from Stan’s point of view, of him being overweight, to what’s actually happening, is so incredibly jarring. The episode addresses the mental aspects of anorexia, just as much, if not more so than the physical. We see Stan’s paranoia, his dysmorphia, even his hallucinated personal trainer Zack, who keeps reminding him that he is fat and pathetic. Somehow this little episode in this completely absurd (and wonderful) show has addressed eating disorders better than most and I am floored every time I watch it.
Boxing Daria Season 5 Episode 13
When the family gets a new refrigerator box she remembers playing in one as a kid, this stirs up memories of her parents fighting late at night. These familiar feelings toward the large box cause her to keep bringing the box in from the garbage and keep it close. Her father has left on a last-minute business trip, and memories of her parents fighting to begin to make her paranoid about her parent's marriage, their honesty about her childhood, and her relationship with her boyfriend Tom who has left town with his family.
When she brings Jane to the box she climbs into it, calling it “right”. Being inside the box leads her to remember her parents were fighting about Daria not being able to fit in, with her father asking “How much am I supposed to take?” before he storms out of the house. None of this is helped by her English teacher asking Daria to encourage others to be enthusiastic about high school because she is an “oddball” and a “misfit”, therefore encouraging other outcasts to see that high school can be a place for them as well
Throughout the episode she continues to have flashbacks; more of her parents fighting, other kids bullying her, realising she isn’t like other kids, doesn’t talk to other kids, and when she felt all this as a child she would crawl into the box and read. When her parents come to her about spending all of her time in the box do they tell her that she wasn’t the cause of their fight, just the topic, but this didn’t solve any of her problems. As great as it would be that we could blame all our problems on one bad memory, but it never works out that way. She explains to Jane that “ I didn’t realise is what a pain I’d been when I thought I was just being me.”
This episode is such a specific memory for me, even down to the cardboard box. I still sit in my wardrobe when there are people in my house and I need to hide. Daria is the teenage show so many people have been wanting, the show where the teenager goes home and studies after school instead of whatever the hell is happening in Riverdale now. It is so simultaneously emotional and completely monotone that it’s just calming. And maybe other people had a more ‘normal’ childhood than me, but when all teen media I saw growing up was about singing in High school and fighting vampires, it was really nice to see something that I could actually experience, and in this episode something I had actually experienced. To such exact detail. What was it about those giant cardboard boxes that made them so appealing?
Growing Pains Steven Universe Future Episode 14
For a show that genuinely aims at children, and has to survive all of the restrictions and censorship that children’s media has to endure, it is truly incredible that Steven Universe can so openly address mental health and PTSD; [of course who can forget Sapphire and Ruby’s wedding].
After all Steven’s experienced, losing his mother, his confusion about his identity as Pink Diamond, nearly dying in the centre of the earth, cookie cat being discontinued; none of those things was truly resolved, even with the conclusion of the original show. Through Steven’s powers, we see the physical representation of his anxiety and PTSD, something that could otherwise be unnoticed. I personally have had many panic attacks in public that I’ve managed to hide, or at least swallow until I can run into a dark corner to hyperventilate. When Steven is reminded of his proposal to Connie his body begins to change and turn pink. We see how erratic and uncontrollable his powers become. His body reacts at the slightest anxiety, such as talking to Connie on the phone or when Dr Maheswaran exclaims in surprise how he’s never been to a doctor.
Dr Maheswaran explains how the trauma in his brain has formed, and how physical healing does not equate to mental healing.
“You think there's something wrong with my brain?!”
“Not wrong! It's that adverse childhood experiences, or childhood trauma, can have a lasting impact on how your body responds to stress. This can affect your social, emotional, and physical development. When humans are in crisis, the brain releases the hormone cortisol. Your heart races, your muscles tense. I wonder if your body is reacting to a gem equivalent of cortisol. Steven, do you remember anything bad in your childhood that particularly stuck with you?”
At no point does Dr Maheswaran try to dumb down what is happening to Steven or the audience. She explains the hormones and development that Steven has experienced and asks him to reflect on his past and all of the stress and threatening experiences that he has had to endure.
“Cut yourself some slack. It's okay to be worried and make some mistakes when you're figuring out what to do with your life. That's not unusual. Uh— the magic swelling is a little unusual, but that's okay too! If you wanna be a giant boy, we can use the car wash as a shower.”
Stupid Piece of Sh*t Season 4 Episode 6 - Bojack Horseman as a whole is one of the most brutal and honest portrayals of depression and the myriad of addictions and mental health problems that can accompany it. The specific episode, Stupid Piece of Sh*t focuses on Bojacks inner monologue, with a change in structure and art style, it depicts his fears of his family conspiring against him, his guilt, and his time loss.
The episode concludes with Bojack by the pool with Hollyhock. She begins to describe the same experiences that Bojack has been having, describing the voice in the back of her head. “That voice, the one that tells you you're worthless and stupid and ugly? It goes away, right? It's just, like, a dumb teenage-girl thing, but then it goes away?” This quote brings the realisation that even if Bojack was to go away, even if he was to die young, his problems exist outside of him. His depression and his darkest thoughts have been passed onto Hollyhock. Throughout the show, he believed he was poison, that he infected the people he surrounded himself with, and this moment only helps him accept it.
With so much of the media avoiding the topic of depression and mental health, or even worse minimising it into an attractive trope. Bojack has become beloved and appreciated for it’s truthful and artistic portrayal the animated medium truly did it justice.
