It's a Wishful Life (The Fairly OddParents)

It's a Wishful Life
Why would an average kid that no one understands wish he was never born to make a better life for everyone?
Series: The Fairly OddParents Part of Season: 5 Episode Number: Season: 10 (FOP-229) Overall: 112 Air Date: November 5, 2004 (foreign) May 10, 2005 (USA) Writer: Jack Thomas Director: Sarah Frost Tom King Previous episode: Timmy's 2-D House of Horror Five Days of F.L.A.R.G. (FOP-228) Next episode: Escape From Unwish Island Timmy's 2-D House of Horror (FOP-230)

"It's a Wishful Life" is the tenth episode in the fifth season of The Fairly OddParents, and the one hundred twelfth overall. It's a parody of the 1946 American Christmas movie It's a Wonderful Life (hence the title).

Summary

Timmy tries to do many good deeds for people, but nobody appreciates his work. Angry, he wishes that he had never been born, but then he finds out that everybody will love their life without him.

Plot

The episode opens with Timmy Turner doing good deeds for various people hoping to get praise, including painting scenery for one of Mr. Bickles' stage plays, giving A.J. a new high tech computer, cleaning Mr. Turner's and Mrs. Turner's garden and cleaning Cosmo's and Wanda's fish bowl.

Instead of praising him, or even thanking him, every person complains that it's not good enough and in fact several times heavily criticize the job he's done, with the fishbowl actually justified as it's still very dirty indicating laziness.

Angry over the treatment, Timmy wishes he was never born. Wanda reluctantly grants the wish, sending Timmy to an alternate timeline without him.

Jorgen Von Strangle appears in this alternate timeline and shows Timmy that everyone is indeed better off without him.

For example, Chester now lives in a triple-wide trailer and has Cosmo and Wanda as his fairy godparents (and uses their magic for many selfless acts, unlike Timmy), A.J. has a full head of hair, and graduated from high school at the age of 5 (mainly because Timmy is not there to drag him down), the Turners had a daughter who is better than Timmy alongside wealth, Vicky has a job supplying laughing gas to Dr. Bender's patients, Mr. Crocker is not obsessed with fairies, became Harvard's most valuable professor, has a full head of hair and a muscular body (while his ear is still on his neck), and Francis is no longer a grey-skinned bully, but a tan skinned football player who actually helps weaker kids instead of bullying them.

Jorgen tells Timmy that unless he can find someone whose life is worse off without him, Timmy will have to go to "a place where all kids who wished they were never born" go. Timmy at first tricks Jorgen to throw him in (even though Jorgen wishes to further humiliate Timmy by showing him other people better off, even Elmer, who no longer has his boil), but Timmy returns with Vicky's laughing gas and makes Jorgen laugh so hard he falls into the pit.

Timmy is able to grab Jorgen's wand, however, upon reflection, he does decide that everyone is better off without him, and offers to voluntarily go to the place Jorgen describes. It is then that Jorgen reveals this has all been a test, or rather a lesson, to teach Timmy that good deeds are not done for praise, but because it's the right thing to do.

Jorgen, then, returns Timmy to the correct timeline with Timmy taking Cosmo and Wanda's fishbowl to clean it up. Cosmo and Wanda note that his attitude seems to have changed for the better.

Why We Wish that this Episode Never Existed

1. This episode is infamous for being very mean-spirited towards Timmy Turner, as he learns that everyone would be better off without him.
2. At the beginning when Timmy tries to do good deeds for his friends and family, they criticize him for stupid reasons, causing him to wish that he was never born.
3. The episode tries to paint Timmy as an unlikable and selfish character by wanting to do good deeds for appreciation (which isn't even THAT selfish in the first place), which it's pretty much clear he isn't.
4. It's obviously a parody of It's a Wonderful Life, but this episode instead teaches the opposite of the movie's message.
5. TERRIBLE Moral: The message this episode says is that if you are feeling unappreciated, then it means that your life has no meaning and everybody's lives would be better off without you, which is extremely nihilistic and a very dangerous message to teach unappreciated and badly treated kids in real life.
   • The secondary moral is that you shouldn't do good deeds for appreciation, but because they're the right thing to do. But that massively fails as well because that was what Timmy was originally doing in the first place.
6. Jack Thomas (the writer) made the dimension of kids who improved the world by wishing they were never born literally look like hell.
   • Speaking of which, why does such a place exist?
7. Apparently, Timmy's existence is the reason AJ is bald, Vicky is torturing kids, Francis is a bully, his parents are poor and live in a suburban house, Chester lives in a run-down trailer, Elmer has a boil, and the Chicago Cubs haven't won the World Series since 1908 (they eventually did in 2016, but still). How does his existence affect someone's lack of hair, make someone an abusive person, let someone bully others, cause someone to live in either a suburban house or a trailer, having a boil, or even affect a baseball team's perpetually poor performance? Not to mention, Timmy was born decades after 1908, so that one is the most confusing. He may have cost them a recent World Series, though, like the one in 2003.
8. Puzzlingly, none of Timmy's love interests, like Trixie Tang, Veronica or Tootie and even his alien friend Mark Chang (the latter two of whom are characters who would've been miserable if it wasn't for Timmy), make an appearance.
9. Jorgen is extremely unlikeable here, as he encourages Timmy to literally kill himself, which is extremely out of character for Jorgen to do, as much of a sadist as he is.

Redeeming Qualities

1. In the end, Timmy learns that good deeds aren't done for appreciation; they are done because they're the right thing to do, which is a positive message, despite the poor execution.
2. The scene where Cosmo mistook Jorgen Von Strangle for a cactus was pretty hilarious.
3. Some allege that due to some inconsistencies, the episode's events don't really represent how life would be if Timmy had never been born, but it serves more as a method to teach a lesson to Timmy and not to be taken seriously.
4. Timmy is the only likable character in this episode, and it's easy to feel bad for him after what he has gone through in this episode.
5. The concept of The Fairly OddParents doing one of those It's a Wonderful Life plots like shows like Rugrats did is an interesting concept but the same can't be said for the execution.

Reception

This was one of the most hated episodes of the series for it implies that everybody's lives are miserable and bleak due to Timmy. As a result of the negative reception revolving this episode and its implications, series creator Butch Hartman and his staff have since apologized for the unfortunate implications of the episode. This might be why this episode rarely airs in reruns.

It was also was heavily panned by many Fairly OddParents fans and critics alike and is considered the worst episode of the classic era and one of the worst episodes of the show (if not the worst.) It received a 5.2 on IMDb.

Even if this episode was very bad, it's not the worst in the series, the worst episode of the series is The Big Fairy Share Scare!, the first episode of season 10 with a rating of 3.1/10 on IMDb.

Trivia

• The episode was so bad that even Butch Hartman, the creator of the show, admitted he hated this episode.
• NyxWuff, a YouTube reviewer, thought this episode was the worst episode in animation history.
• Mrs. Turner goes to her own shrub-bush replica of herself made by Timmy, approaching it with a pair of pruning shears and complains by saying "and my butt is not that big!" as she frantically trims it down. This is a quick jab at her hip/butt area changing size is every episode from slim to curvy.

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