Johnny Test (2005, seasons 4-6)

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Johnny Test (2005)
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Johnny Test Season 6.jpg
Don't wanna be a Canadian idiot? Then don't make later seasons so bad that the entire show becomes universally hated and say "Woah, didn't see that coming."
Genre: Science fantasy
Comedy
Action
Adventure
Running Time: 22 minutes
Country: Canada
Release Date: November 9, 2009 - September 12, 2011 (Season 4)
June 13, 2011 - August 15, 2012 (Season 5)
April 23, 2013 - December 25, 2014 (Season 6)
Network(s): Cartoon Network (United States)
Teletoon (Canada)
Disney XD (Poland, Scandinavia, South-East Asia, and the Netherlands)
Disney Channel (Spain)
Nickelodeon (Germany, Italy, France, Israel, and the Netherlands)
Created by: Scott Fellows
Distributed by: Cookie Jar Entertainment (Seasons 2-6)
WildBrain (Season 6)
Starring: James Arnold Taylor
Louis Chirillo (Season 4)
Trevor Devall (Seasons 5 & 6)
Brittney Wilson (Season 5)
Ashleigh Ball (Seasons 4 & 6)
Maryke Hendrikse
Kathleen Barr
Ian James Corlett
Seasons: 3
Episodes: 26 (156 segments) each
Next show: Johnny Test: The Lost Web Series (2020)
Johnny Test (2021)


Johnny Test (2005) is an American (For seasons 1 & 2)-Canadian (For seasons 2-6) cartoon that originally ran from 2005 to 2014. It airs on Teletoon, Family Channel, and WildBrainTV in Canada, and the first season aired on The WB, reruns of that season, and seasons two and three aired on The CW, later reruns of those seasons and the final three seasons then aired on Cartoon Network in the United States, it also airs on Disney XD in Poland, South-East Asia, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia, Disney Channel in Spain, and Nickelodeon in Germany, Italy, France, the Middle East, and the Netherlands. A web series known as Johnny Test: The Lost Web Series was released on YouTube on May 2, 2020, though none of the voice cast returned. Two days later, however, the video was taken down. Two new seasons of the series and a 66-minute interactive special have been announced, with a new art style, and they premiered on Netflix on July 16, 2021, with creator Scott Fellows returning as executive producer.

While the series was decent in the beginning, it went downhill a little bit by its second season when Cookie Jar took over the show (thanks to the unnecessary merger between the WB and UPN into the CW, making the show suffer budget cuts) and received a bigger dip in quality once its channel hopped over onto Cartoon Network in the fourth season.

Why These Test Experiments Failed

  1. The main problem with these seasons is that they lack the charm and cleverness of the first season, and to lesser extents, the second and third seasons as the series progressed the writing in these seasons have gotten more indolent and repetitive, resulting in a lot of episodes ranging from average to downright catastrophic and non-sensical.
    • Examples include but are not limited to:
    • In a similar manner to the current seasons of Family Guy, these seasons destroyed the reputation of the entire show and made it hated so much.
    • To make things even more baffling is that the show was originally planned to end at its third season, due to high ratings for the reruns on Cartoon Network, the show was renewed for more seasons of 26 episodes each and the crew is rushing production just to get those seasons finished off.
    • Some episodes are unoriginal parodies of other media, such as:
      • "Tom and Johnny" (while decent) references Tom and Jerry.
      • "Good Ol' Johnny Test" references Charlie Brown,
      • "Sleepover at Johnny's" references The Cat in the Hat
      • "Johnny Test's Day Off" references Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
        • Before that, "Runaway Johnny'' is also a rehash of the aforementioned episode and references the same movie.
      • The title card for "Sleepover at Johnny's" references The Cat in the Hat.
      • "Johnny Test's Quest" references Jonny Quest and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
    • Episodes like "Johnny's World Prank Wars 1", "Johnny's First Annual Snowball", "Lakeside Johnny", and "Mush Johnny Mush" are all racing/competition episodes.
    • Some episodes have recycled plots:
      • Season 5's "Johnny Susan, Susan Johnny" is a rehash of "Papa Johnny" from season 4 due to the very same body-switching concept.
      • "Johnny Irresistible" is a rehash of "Johnny Smells Good" from season 3, due to the same concept of Johnny putting on this type of spray or perfume that makes everyone all suddenly cling onto him.
      • "Johnny Johnny" is a rehash of "The Good the Bad, the Johnny" from season 2, due to the same concept and plot of an evil Johnny clone roaming around town causing destruction.
      • "Johnny's Royal Flush" is a rehash of "Deep Sea Johnny" from season 1 due to the same concept of Johnny and Dukey turning into fish.
      • "Johnny X... Again?" is a rehash of "The Return of Johnny X" from season 1 due to having the same plot with Johnny and Dukey having to stop Repto Slicer from destroying the city as their superhero alter-egos, Johnny X and Super Pooch.
      • "Tiny Johnny" is a rehash of "Lil' Johnny" from season 1 due to having the same concept with Johnny and Dukey becoming small only to discover another world (though this time, it has a world Montague made himself with Johnny's toys. "Lil' Johnny" on the other hand has a tiny version of Porkbelly where everything is perfect).
      • "Johnny Germ Fighter" reused stereotypes of the Canadian people saying "Eh" at the end of every sentence just like in "Johnny Gets Mooned", they say in the scene where Johnny tells Phobious McPhobe Dukey was his "hairy cousin from Canada" and Dukey says "Yeah yeah, eh?"
    • There was an episode called "Johnny Tube", which was probably made to pander to younger audiences obsessed with YouTube at the time.
    • Many episodes have predictable endings with almost no lessons learned from the characters, with the cliched "Everybody laughs" ending.
    • Out of these seasons, Season 6 is arguably the worst of the bunch as it not only has lazier writing compared to previous seasons, but it is also the worst season in the entire series as the animation became stiffer and the whip-crack sound effect was cranked up to an 11.
  2. Sometimes, episodes in these seasons have contrived messages, like in the episodes, "Green Johnny" and "Good Ol' Johnny Test", where they try to cram in the "Recycle and keep the world a better place" message in your face.
    • Other times there are bad morals.
      • "Porta-Johnny" and "Johnny Get Yer Gum" teach kids to escape punishments rather than face them.
      • "Runaway Johnny" teaches kids that running away makes them get their way.
      • "Rated J For Johnny" teaches kids to buy and play mature videogames not appropriate to your age like Grand Theft Auto, Doom or Mortal Kombat.
  3. Although far from the worst quality, the new animation, art style, character designs, and lighting that Atomic Cartoons from Canada did are pretty cheap looking and are a pretty big downgrade when comparing it to Season 1's hand-drawn animation. Even the flash animation from the second and third seasons looks better compared to the animation used in these seasons.
    • The character movements are sometimes too stilted, choppy, and off-putting. While the flash animation from Seasons 2 and 3 isn’t perfect, the character movements at least were more expressive and exaggerated compared to these seasons.
    • Recycled and re-used character animations and assets for example whenever Dukey gets electrocuted or hurt it's the same design reused again over and over. (Seriously? How lazy is that!)
    • The title card for the episode "Johnny Get Yer Gum" is misspelled as "Johhny Get Yer Gum", when this easily could've been fixed in programs like MS Paint.
    • Some backgrounds look empty and unfinished.
    • Animation errors can also be seen at times such as the color of certain characters' clothes changing and layering issues.
  4. Quantity Over Quality: Like with The Simpsons, Family Guy, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly OddParents, Fireman Sam, Teen Titans Go!, and Alvin and the Chipmunks (2015), it lasted for way too long, with a total of 6 seasons, 117 episodes, and a lifespan of 9 years and is in fact one of the reasons why the show as a whole is hated so much.
  5. The pacing in Season 4 and the first half of Season 5 is a bit too fast, even more so than in Season three, especially in the episodes "Johnny Goes Nuts" and "Johnny Daddy Day".
    • The pacing in Season 6 is a bit too slow, ironically for an 11-minute-long episode.
  6. A handful of the characters have been flanderized and lacked the charm they originally had:
    • Johnny went from a rebellious, yet goodhearted boy who helped others, cared about his family, and even had mature moments of learning lessons, and having remorse for his actions whenever they are bad, into being a problematic, troublesome kid who now constantly messes up his sisters' inventions for his self-serving purposes, causing trouble for himself and the whole city. He also became selfish, disrespectful, immature, gross, and narcissistic.
      • In "No Homework for Johnny", his teacher, Mr. Teacherman, gave him a LOT of homework, that was unrealistic (ex, finding a fern with spores), so Johnny needed someone to do his homework, and he came to his sisters, and so he got a Homework Buddy. Then he gave him even more unrealistic assignments. Then Dukey asked him where he got it from, and the cookies tasted like his neighbors, so he asked the HB for cookies to analyze for Social Studies, which is again unrealistic, and they found out he was a Homework Burglar and ended up almost risking his family.
    • Dukey in Seasons 5 and 6, while still likable, went from a reluctant, yet nice talking dog who can be seen as an older brother-like figure to Johnny to a yes-man Butt-Monkey-type character who, despite pointing out Johnny whenever he is about to do something dumb or otherwise irresponsible, is nevertheless perfectly willing to join in with his friend's antics and, if not, he is easily bribed with meat.
      • An example of this was in "Johnny's In Charge" when Johnny did everything he was not supposed to do (invite friends, go into the kitchen, or enter the lab) while he was in charge, and Dukey joined him in, with no reluctancy.
      • He is also portrayed as a Karma Houdini at times as he is barely even called out or punished for his actions despite often being the more troublesome of the two.
        • One example was in "Extra Credit Johnny" where he tries to distract Johnny from doing his homework, and when Johnny tries not to listen to him, he tempts him, leading to Johnny joining in with him only for Johnny to forget to do his homework and get in trouble with Mr. Teacherman. And for some reason, Johnny never called Dukey out in the episode.
    • Susan and Mary went from great teenage partners in training with comedic traits and having the ability to perform intelligent and creative experiments on Johnny to help him out while keeping him safe, into bland and generic teenage girls who constantly drool over boys, most notably Gil Nexdor, with many nonsensical and botched schemes while having little to no regard for Johnny's safety.
      • In the episode "Johnny's New Baby Sisters", they turned themselves into babies so that Gil would take care of them, which would be considered pedophilia and is very disturbing all around.
      • Susan, on the other hand, can be a bit tense, harsh, and explosive whenever she's furious (mostly at Johnny). That could show that she can be a mean big sister at some times, compared to Mary, who is calm and usually approaches Johnny in a nicer way (although Susan still loves Johnny as a sibling).
    • Johnny's dad, Hugh, went from a firm but fair parent, into a completely overbearing, high-strung, and hotheaded control freak who cares about almost nothing but meatloaf, not even his kids.
      • In "99 Deeds of Johnny Test", Johnny had 98 detentions, so Hugh said one more detention and he'll ship him off to the military academy at 4:00, so he had 99 deeds to make up for his detentions, and if so, his permanent record will be cleared. Before it was time to go, he had 98 deeds made up, but the Principal dropped his pen, and Johnny picked it up, making 99, and as a result, his PR was cleared, and Hugh was UPSET. I mean, seriously, it's bad enough to ship off your son to the military academy, but to feel down when the chance was destroyed is just SICK and TWISTED.
      • In "Spotless Johnny", if Johnny missed his curfew, he will take his video game and television privileges and pants for an entire week, which is public nudity.
      • In "My Dinner With Johnny", he bet Johnny Test that if he didn't use good manners for today's dinner, he will have to clean his room for a year and yell on the roof he loves his meatloaf. While the former isn't necessarily a bad punishment and as a matter of fact should be encouraged, the latter is public humiliation, which is a very CRUEL punishment.
      • Like Dukey, Hugh was also a Butt-Monkey character in some episodes.
        • In "Johnny Goes Nuts", he has trouble with his nut costume when his body accidentally switches sides the side with the two holes for his eyes to see to the backside, which prevented him from looking where he was going, thus leading to him bumping into many things. Hugh also ends up in the Porkbelly Nut Fields, only to get attacked by squirrels.
        • The sister episode, "Johnny Daddy Day", is the BIGGEST offender. Most of the things the entire family did for Hugh on Father's Day caused him to get injured in many ways, such as inviting an old friend of his, only to reveal that his old friend became his rival because Hugh stole his girlfriend (who could've been the one currently known as Lila, Johnny's mom) and have him assaulted as well as listening to loud music, leading him to end up in the hospital injured.
        • In "Johnny Irresistible", there is a scene where Hugh got trampled by a bunch of people who wanted Johnny thanks to his irresistibility from his sister's invention.
        • In "JohnnyTube" when Johnny attempts to upload a video on the internet of a badger trying to attack him, the badger instead decides to attack Hugh when Hugh walks out of the house to scold Johnny to take out the trash resulting in the latter like in "Johnny's Daddy Day" getting severely mauled and injured by the badger to the point where he also once again has to go to the hospital and is later on seen in the episode on the way to the hospital in a hospital truck due to his injuries.
      • Hugh has also had a few ridiculous and crazy moments throughout the series.
      • He even hasn't recovered from Flanderization in the reboot, but not as unlikable this time around.
    • Gil Nexdor went from a dimwitted, if not comedic supporter for Johnny as well as Susan and Mary, into a bland and generic love interest for Susan and Mary who always acts as if he has never seen them before, even though Susan and Mary have told him numerous times that they are Johnny's sisters. However, they at least did explain this in one episode, stating that Susan and Mary constantly have to wipe his memory after every botched experiment, and it has started giving him brain damage, to the point he has become dumber than Johnny.
    • Eugene (Bling-Bling Boy), while still a likable character, went from a typical, yet entertaining and cunning villain who would threaten to destroy Porkbelly if Susan doesn't fall in love with him, into a bland and generic villain who makes uncreative and easily foiled schemes to get his hands on Susan, which can get annoying.
      • That's why in "Johnny Test's Quest", his scientists decided to go on strike and tie Eugene up to Susan. Yet still, when Eugene offers him a double salary, they accept, because the writers want to keep everything normal.
  7. Some of the recurring and/or minor characters have disappeared completely; notably, characters such as Janet Nelson Jr. (who disappeared after Season 3), Doc Beebles/The Beekeeper & Ms. X, and Ms. Z (with the former disappearing after Season 3, the latter after Season 2) are nowhere to be seen in these seasons.
  8. Two character names have also changed for unexplainable reasons, with Dukey's superhero alter-ego being renamed "Super Dukey" instead of "Super Pooche" (except for the season six finale) and Missy, who is Sissy's dog, having her name changed to Fluffy.
  9. The voice acting, while still on point, can be obnoxious at times as the voice actors often yell at the majority of their characters’ lines.
    • Some of the voice actings changed:
      • In Season 5, Dukey (and Mr. Teacherman) got a new voice actor, Trevor Devall, who replaced Louis Cirillo. Although not terrible, he isn't as good as the previous voice actor.
      • Also in Season 5, Brittney Wilson, Mary (and Sissy)'s old voice actor returned and replaced Ashleigh Ball(who at the time was working on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic), who replaced the former in Season 2. Once again, although not terrible, she isn't as good as Ball. Luckily, Ball returned in the next season.
        • And it's kinda shocking considering that Brittany Wilson did a decent job voicing Mary in Season 1.
  10. The humor downgraded from being hilarious to being stale, repetitive, and sometimes horrendous.
    • Toilet humor is even used, although rare.
      • An example of this is Johnny farting on the bad guys to defeat them when he is dressed as a superhero (Johnny X)
      • Another example is Johnny having Sissy pull his finger and farting in the episode "Who's Johnny".
    • Various episodes have the same running gag whenever somebody mentions something in a sentence, a sound effect that is related to what the character said is heard in the background.
  11. Some scenes aren't kid-friendly.
    • In "Johnny's Royal Flush" there was a pretty disturbing and genocidal scene where an alligator gets sucked into a sewer turbine and is prompt ripped to shreds, which is followed up by an utterly awful attempt at being funny by revealing that the pieces were alligator-skin bags, which could easily be interpreted as animal abuse.
    • In "X-Ray Johnny", Johnny Test wanted X-Ray glasses so he was strapped on a chair and Susan Test got a drill to drill Johnny. Thankfully, this was done off-screen, but the idea of it is not at all kid-friendly.
    • The episode "Johnny's Left Foot" is disturbing entirely, as it looks like it was trying to charm its audience using foot fetishism, which is a very bad idea for a show aimed at middle schoolers and preteens. What's worse, the premise of the episode is that Johnny breaks his foot, and his sisters give him a robotic foot, disturbingly implying they amputated his foot! (which is a plot hole)
    • "The Quantum of Johnny" has a scene where Dukey tastes chocolate from a chocolate fountain, which is toxic for dogs in real life. (It's possible that the writer or the creator, Scott Fellows himself, was not aware of chocolate being bad for dogs. It is also possible that Dukey's mutations allow him to eat chocolate and other foods.)
    • ''Johnnycicle'' (despite being a decent episode) has a scene where women beat up Brain Freezer as a vampire.
  12. The sound is downgraded from above average to downright awful.
    • Most notably, the overuse of the whip-crack sound when the characters move their body parts, especially in season six, which gets grating pretty quickly.
    • Sound errors are more common. An example is Susan having Mary's voice, notably in the episode "Johnny BC".
  13. Noticeable plot holes.
    • One example was in the episode "Sleepover at Johnny's" where Eugene's mom is seen wearing glasses and is shown to have poor eyesight. Since she was never seen wearing glasses since her debut appearance, episodes before, and even after the aforementioned episode, there is no explanation as to why she started wearing them or how did she end up with poor eyesight.
    • Another plot hole is seen in "Johnny With a Chance of Meatloaf" where Johnny, his sisters, and Dukey decide to find a way to stop Hugh from serving meatloaf every time they have dinner by creating a formula that turns food into monsters, resulting to them battling the food monsters once the plan was done and ending with them trusting the meatloaf monster. The thing is, even though they did this because they were getting sick of Hugh serving meatloaf every single time for dinner (Hugh was always obsessed with meatloaf), why didn't they just explain to their dad how they felt about him feeding them meatloaf all the time and convince him to stop only for him to understand and do so like how he would normally do if he came to his senses about it?

Redeeming Qualities

  1. Out of all three seasons, Season 4 is arguably the least bad as it has more good episodes, Dukey not being flanderized in that season and the animation is a bit better than in the two following seasons, though that isn't saying much, because that season still contained some of the absolute worst episodes of the show and the animation is still a huge downgrade from the first season and to a lesser extent the second and third seasons.
    • Despite how terrible the fifth season is, it's transition to HD is great.
  2. Some characters are still tolerable such as:
    • Lila Test (Johnny's mom)
    • Susan and Mary Test (despite their Flanderization)
    • Brain Freezer
    • Montague
    • Dukey (despite his Flanderization by the fifth season)
    • Mr. Black and Mr. White
    • Mr. Mittens
    • Dark Vegan
    • Eugene (Bling-Bling Boy) (despite his Flanderization)
      • Eugene, in particular, was given some decent character development, such as his abusive mother, and the fact he eventually stopped insisting to be called by his self-given super-villain name "Bling-Bling Boy". He also went from a constant annoyance to Johnny's other best friend, and not very villainous either (not that he was, to begin with).
      • Sissy and Bumper also got some good character development, as ever since "Johnny's New BFF" they went from constant bullies of Johnny to semi-friends who only pick on him once in and while.
      • Johnny despite his huge Flanderzation in these seasons can still have likable moments such as in "A Holly Johnny Christmas", "Past and Present Johnny" "Johnny's 100th Episode" and "Runaway Johnny".
  3. There are still a handful of good or decent episodes like:
  4. Some of the pacings can be decent from time to time.
  5. The title cards are still decent and colorful, and are better than the first three seasons ironically, which is a major plus for these otherwise awful seasons.
  6. Some good morals are still maintained from the first three seasons.
  7. The voice acting is still on point when there is no yelling or screaming.
  8. Despite there being some change in the character designs, most of them remain cool looking such as Johnny, Dukey, and Brain Freezer.
  9. There are still hilarious moments at times, including one-liners like "I blew up Malaysia".
    • Speaking of which, the toilet humor is at least rare.
    • One character, Tim Burnout, who disappeared for a while, returned in season six, and the joke about nobody remembering him is pretty clever and funny.
  10. The show eventually got back on track when Netflix premiered Johnny Test (2021), which is a huge improvement over the last three seasons, as the reboot is Toon Boom Animated instead of Flash animated like in seasons two through six, creator Scott Fellows, as well as the show's original cast returned, the new character designs by Stephen Silver look great, and most of the crew from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic worked on this reboot.
  11. Despite these seasons flaws, they are at least better than the animated web series reboot.

Reception

While the first three seasons of the show received generally positive reviews, these seasons were universally panned by a bunch of people, including fans and critics alike, to the point where some of those people started to really hate on the show. In fact, these seasons are so bad, that cartoon critics like PhantomStrider, Saberspark and BradenINSANE hate the entirety of the show, see videos below. Season 4 got a 5.6/10, and season 5 got a 5.5/10 thus making it the lowest-rated season in terms of reception season 6 got a slightly more positive reception, earning a 5.8/10 on IMDb.

ASK Air considered Season 4 "the season that didn't need to exist but did anyway" while bashing Seasons 5-6.

Nicktendo considered Season 4 to be his favorite season.

Episodes With Their Own Pages

Season 4 (2009-2010)

Season 5 (2011-2012)

Season 6 (2013-2014)

Trivia

  • Johnny Test has received tons of hate art all over the Internet. In most of them, Johnny is depicted getting attacked or killed by other characters, especially by TRC-Tooniversity and formerly hippy trippy.
  • There was a LONG hiatus from Seasons 4, 5, and most notably 6. So this took five years to complete and would've only taken 3 if done properly.
  • The show's rights were given from Warner Bros. to Canadian animation studio Cookie Jar Group after season 1. This had big changes to its setting; as a result, there were noticeable differences:
    • The show's main location, Porkbelly, went from somewhere on the western American coastline as hinted in the first season to somewhere in Canada in some episodes and later British Columbia, Canada in one episode.
    • It changed some of the recurring characters like Mr. Black, Mr. White, and the unnamed General, who are still Americans, but are now technically but unintentionally foreign agents who illegally take one of Canada's citizens' freedom and (unknowingly) their inventions for spying reasons.
  • From 2012 until 2014, the show was overplayed as episodes aired non-stop and took up a lot of the Cartoon Network's schedule, before Teen Titans Go! later took over as Cartoon Network's most overplayed show between 2016-2018; despite this, the series still airs daily in Canada on Family CHRGD, Cartoon Network's Canadian feed, and Family Channel.
    • In fact, this is one reason the show has been hated so much.
  • In October 2013, Johnny Test was filed a lawsuit by David Scott for not crediting him for the idea of the show back in 1995. Cartoon Network lost, and they were forced to cancel the show in May 2014 and scrap the planned seventh season renewed four months prior. However, the final episodes aired on December 25, 2014, as part of a block called Johnny Testmas.
    • The show was also originally going to be renewed for a 7th season with an additional three part special, but due to this, the plans were scrapped and Cartoon Network cancelled the show after the 6th season.
    • Also, this negates the common criticism/belief that the show rips off Dexter's Laboratory.

Videos

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