Bratz (2005-08)

Bratz
The Girls with a passion 4 fashion aren't angelz, but are very bad.
Genre: Adventure Comedy Running Time: 21 minutes Release Date: September 10, 2005 – February 26, 2008 Network(s): Cartoon Network 4Kids TV Created by: Peggy Nicoll Distributed by: 20th Century Fox Television (season 1) Lionsgate Television (season 2) Starring: Season 1: Olivia Hack Soleil Moon Frye Tia Mowry Dionne Quan Wendie Malick Lacey Chabert Kaley Cuoco Charlie Schlatter Ogie Banks Josh Keaton Greg Ellis Season 2: Britt McKillip Britt Irvin Dorla Bell Maryke Hendriske Ellie Harvie Ashleigh Ball Kelly Sheridan Ian James Corlett Adrian Holmes Trevor Devall Alistair Abell Seasons: 2 Episodes: 40

Bratz TV, or Bratz for short, is an American computer-animated series, produced by Mike Young Productions and aired on Cartoon Network and 4Kids TV from 2005 to 2008. The show is based on the Bratz Dolls by MGA Entertainment. The series only lasted two seasons, and it was canceled in 2008 due to the low ratings for the 2nd season.

Premise

Set in the fictional city of Stylesville, the show revolves around four teenagers (Cloe, Jade, Sasha, Yasmin) running their teen magazine, titled "Bratz", while struggling with life at Stiles High School. Their rival magazine is "Your Thing", owned and run by the proud and demanding self-proclaimed "Reigning Queen of Fashion" Burdine Maxwell, and her mean identical twin interns Kirstee and Kaycee, known infamously as "the Tweevils". Accompanied by their friends Dylan, Cameron, and Eitan, the girls' issues are exploited throughout the series, both in and outside Stylesville.

Why It Suckz

1. The big problem with the show is that it's a bad influence on both girls and pretty much pre-teens and teens alike, due to the fact the series mainly revolves around the characters working on fashion and shopping.
   • In addition, the role models of the characters are pretty poorly portrayed, most of the characters are fashion freaks.
   • When it comes to morals, the show does try so hard to teach the viewer something, but it's poorly made, and often than not the morals end up being bad.
2. The characters are all annoying, stereotypical, and unlikable.
   • The main four girls are obnoxious in their rights: Cloe has portrayed annoyingly and her dramatic personality is way too over the top, to the point it gets annoying, and she is portrayed as your typical klutzy, dumb, clumsy blonde that has been overused by this point.
   • Dylan is portrayed as your stupid stereotypical boy who tries to fall in love with the girl not to mention, his voice can rather get annoying, and unbearable.
   • Burdine is your typical mean and strict boss, as she is short-tempered and extremely mean-spirited, and she gets angered just for the tweevils doing a simple mistake, and her voice is also laughable while she screams.
   • The Tweevils (Kirstee and Kaycee) are the typical mean and evil twins, and they constantly brag to each other; in addition, their voices are extremely annoying and ear-piercing.
3. The jokes are hilariously and unbarring awful, as they range from the characters breaking the 4th wall, underwear jokes, characters making unfunny puns, to some disturbing jokes like at one point you can hear a chicken exploding (thankfully not shown on screen). It doesn't help the fact that the show seems to forget its target audience at times.
   • The stupid running gag where the Bratz says Not cool also gets annoying and tiresome real fast, and at times it's used in inconvenient times.
4. Awful, choppy, ugly, weak and poorly made CGI animation, even for 2005 standards, as it looks like something out of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. It doesn't help that the show was animated by Mike Young Productions (who also made The Butt-Ugly Martians and Norm of the North).
5. With that being said, the character designs are also ugly to look at, the female characters all have exaggerated lipstick and have too much makeup, and the male characters don't look any better either. The worst offender is Burdine Maxwell who looks like a discount Cruella de Ville from 101 Dalmatians and a few of the one-time/side characters.
6. The show also has poor continuity, as sometimes the events from a different episode are mentioned at an inconvenient time or sometimes the events of an episode that hasn't aired, yet we're also mentioned, this won't help even if you watch the entire series in order, in addition, the events of the DVD movies are also mentioned which can also be confusing for especially those who haven't watched them and only have watched the show.
7. While the voice acting is decent (it helps that the show does feature some experienced and well-known voice actors), sometimes it sounds off-putting and odd and the dialogue is also pretty awkward for the most part, not to mention the over usage of valley girl accents get annoying.
8. Generic soundtrack that consists of nothing but generic pop and Hip-Hop music.
9. The plots of the episodes are either boring, nonsensical, or unoriginal. For example:
   • In Trading Faces, Dylan needs to dress up as a girl to impress Fianna with his dancing skills, so why did he need to dress up as a girl anyway? The show never explains.
   • In Manicuring Candidate, the story is generic, trying to become the class president story and defeating everyone else.
10. Certain characters from the doll lines do not appear in the show, instead they gave some of the outfits of those characters to one of the main characters that don't appear, which just shows how lazy the producers were.
    • For example, Meygan and Dana don’t appear despite appearing in a number of the lines.
11. The pacing of the series is all over the place.
12. The show has a lot of pointless scenes that are just filler and don't contribute anything to the story.
13. The final episode was pretty lackluster, as it was nothing but a clip show, not to mention there's another clip show episode.
14. Sometimes, the show doesn't seem to decide what genre does it want to be. For example, it can't decide if it wants to be a comedy due to the fact there are so many jokes put into the episodes.
15. Unfunny pop culture references such as The Matrix slow motion in "Slumber Party".

Redeeming Qualityz

1. The series is famous for its diversity.
2. While not perfect, some of the voice acting is pretty decent, due to the fact the show does have some talented and experienced voice actors.
3. Even if most of the moments are unfunny, there are some funny moments. For example, the running gag where Kaycee says "Ow My Nose!" whenever someone or something hits her nose is pretty funny.
4. The main characters can be a little likable in some instances, especially Cloe (Angel), Jade (Kool Kat), Sasha (Bunny Boo) and Yasmin (Pretty Princess).
   • The other characters can be likeable at times.
5. Some good/decent episodes.
6. Some of the dialogue can be hilarious, such as: "My cat died today! -Buy a new one".

Reception

Though the show has been liked by many fans of the doll line, the reception of the show was mostly negative from critics and audiences. On IMDB, it holds a 3.5/10.

PhantomStrider listed the show as the number 1 worst in his list of the top 5 best/worst girls cartoons.

 

Trivia

• Burdine Maxwell is supposedly a parody of Barbie and YourThing magazine is possibly a parody of MyScene, both of which were Bratz’s competitors.
• In 2021, the show spawned a lot of memes.

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