Planet Sheen
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 Generally one of the most disastrous things Jimmy Neutron has ever done: unintentonally cause one of his friends to blast off into a really boring adventure of his own.
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Planet Sheen is an American computer-animated comic science fiction television series. It is the second spin-off television series of the film Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, as well as a spin-off/sequel of The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius.
The series was picked up for 26 episodes by Nickelodeon for its first and only season. Jeffrey Garcia returned as the voice of Sheen, and Bob Joles and Rob Paulsen are the voices of Nesmith and Doppy.
The series was originally animated by C.O.R.E. in Toronto, but animation production moved to Bardel Entertainment in Vancouver after C.O.R.E closed down. At that time, Chris Neuhahn took over as Supervising Producer.
Planet Sheen premiered on Nickelodeon on October 2, 2010, along with T.U.F.F. Puppy, in the United States, and its final episode aired on February 15, 2013.
Plot
Sheen Estevez, despite a warning from his friend Jimmy Neutron about a button on his ship, presses it to see what happens. He finds himself on another planet, no humans... The planet is ruled by "the emperor". Sheen is pursued by Dorkus, our adorable clueless bad guy, who has intentions of capturing our protagonist. Sheen is accompanied by Nesmith, a talking chimpanzee who has also found himself marooned upon this planet.
Why It Makes Sheen Unable to Return Home to Earth
- The idea of a series centering on a character like Sheen Estevez is unoriginal, lazy, and not a good idea since Sheen was designed to be the comic relief and not a protagonist.
- On that topic, Sheen himself has also fallen from grace when he was dumbed down from being a supportive, and actually funny comic relief character that had a fun personality to being a rather annoying, aggravating and unfunny comic relief idiot with barely any character and with the personality of Jar Jar Binks.
- Executive meddling: According to reports and Jimmy Neutron's fan wiki page, Planet Sheen was originally going to be a more serious show:
- The plot of this show was that Sheen arrived on the planet by accident after an argument with his friends, and with his arrival on the planet he would become the right hand of the Emperor, only for him to discover that the Emperor was a ruthless dictator who sought to conquer the entire planet, so Sheen would pose as a double agent to help the resistance (led by Aseefa), overthrow the Emperor, and return to Earth.
- At the same time in the first drafts, it was contemplated that Jimmy, Carl, Cindy, and Libby, together with the other friends, or allies of Sheen would help him fight the Emperor through the communication generated by Goddard. Jimmy's villains (commanded by King Goobot V) would return, teaming up with the emperor to destroy Sheen, Jimmy, the resistance and Earth.
- Thus, accepting that taking the serious route could have furthered Sheen's character development and explored previously hidden aspects of his character, which has potential for being a comic relief focused spin-off done right.
- At the same time in the first drafts, it was contemplated that Jimmy, Carl, Cindy, and Libby, together with the other friends, or allies of Sheen would help him fight the Emperor through the communication generated by Goddard. Jimmy's villains (commanded by King Goobot V) would return, teaming up with the emperor to destroy Sheen, Jimmy, the resistance and Earth.
- The reason that led to the decision to discard this great idea was that Nickelodeon, after finishing Avatar: The Last Airbender made several administrative decisions with the writers or sponsors, which caused disputes between various workers added to the writers' strike of 2007, caused the dismissal of its former directors and the breaking of the contract of one of its sponsors. Before this, the company suffered a serious deficit causing the resignation of several writers or the budget cut of several productions, and Nick executives asked creators Keith Alcorn, Steve Oedekerk, Steven Banks, and Mike Gasaway to change the tone and story because it was too similar James Cameron's Avatar movie.
- So, after the resignation of the original writers, they forced the creators to settle for this ridiculous or pathetic spin-off excuse, discarding all of the plot and background that the program was going to have where they only ended up keeping the names of the characters.
- It is worth mentioning that this decision was made very hastily, since originally the new Nickelodeon executives wanted the program to be called Red Acres, "where a clumsy fast food delivery boy after entering a rocket accidentally landed on a planet known as Hillbilly", but Nickelodeon rejected it because it did not have a child protagonist. Curiously, this show recycled several of the plots and aspects that Red Acres was going to have.
- Jimmy Neutron creator John A. Davis himself even said in an interview on the Nickelodeon animation podcast that Sheen is fun to write, but he works better in small doses, thus implying that Sheen is probably not very capable of being the main star. This show may have very well proved his point.
- The plot of this show was that Sheen arrived on the planet by accident after an argument with his friends, and with his arrival on the planet he would become the right hand of the Emperor, only for him to discover that the Emperor was a ruthless dictator who sought to conquer the entire planet, so Sheen would pose as a double agent to help the resistance (led by Aseefa), overthrow the Emperor, and return to Earth.
- Production Hell: During 2010, some Nickelodeon workers posted on the Reddit forum that Nickelodeon mishandled Planet Sheen, since they had misallocated its budget. On that same forum, workers confirmed that some producers of Nickelodeon advanced and delayed the production of several chapters, which caused a discussion with the writers and animators of the series.
- In addition to that, in 2012, more Nickelodeon animators declared on Reddit that Nickelodeon had frozen the production of the series due to salary discussions with the directors of Planet Sheen who preferred to let the program die since Nick already had not paid the workers.
- Corruption in Test Screening: Despite being a cartoon, according to testimonies from former employees, Reddit leaks from Nickelodeon workers as well as from Jimmy Neutron's fans, this cartoon would have suffered from corruption in the transmission of evidence, since this show was originally going to have a large number of episodes, the majority of which were going to be 25 or 30 minutes long. However, due to low ratings and negative reviews, all of the plots that had been proposed or created that had the objective of improving the program, among them being demos and storyboards of animation like the return of Jimmy, everything was rejected at once and these storyboards were hidden by the orders of Nickelodeon executives.
- In addition to when the show was semi-frozen and burned off to NickToons after the bad relationship between the main executives of Nickelodeon with the producers of the program, all the material that they had in mind were eliminated because they no longer wanted to invest money, or time in the program.
- Laughable yet forgettable theme song, which is all just random lyrics being sung by Kevin Michael Richardson in a deep monotone voice.
- Despite the premise stating that Sheen must attempt to return to earth, Sheen himself doesn't have any concern with returning throughout the series. On that topic, he decides to stay and live on Zeenu in the final episode, and completely forgets about Libby (his girlfriend in the original show), making it end on an obvious cliffhanger.
- In fact, it also ends with Nesmith (the literal butt-monkey of the show) getting a cold, only to get worse near the end of the episode.
- It also was never shown if Sheen returned home. However, in The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron episode "The Tomorrow Boys", it is implied that Sheen did return to Earth, and it was also stated in an episode of Rob Paulsen's podcast, Talkin' Toons. Then again, the futures shown by the chrono-arch were predictions, so the future could still change, but it still didn't happen. In addition, Sheen was also shown back at home in Pixel Town, confirming he did return home.
- Aside from Sheen, none of the other characters (including Jimmy, Carl, Cindy, and Libby) from the original series appear in this show. Because of this, you could replace Sheen with some other random character and it wouldn't make a single difference.
- False advertising and publicity: The promos that were made for the series stated that Jimmy and his friends would have an important role within the series. However, they do not appear or are mentioned in this cartoon as stated above.
- In addition to that, in some promos of the series that were distributed on television networks around the world, it seems that Sheen would be a kind of fugitive since several pieces of dialogue indicate that the aliens are afraid of him, but this never happens in the series. A few other pieces of dialogue indicate that Jimmy and his friends of Retroville were going to rescue Sheen, but it does not happen in the series either.
- Very poor, uncreative, and laughable character names. For example, the main villain of the show is named Dorkus.
- The art style and visuals, while not terrible, are cheap looking for 2010 standards and are a massive downgrade from the original show, which came out eight years prior.
- The movement and facial expressions for the characters are incredibly slow since there are very noticeable moments in which the movement of the mouth seems to be a simple sigh, or an inhalation of air (Sheen and Aseefa suffer from this the most). Thus, when they are talking it gives the impression that they are whispering instead of speaking.
- At the same time, because of the slow movement of easy expressions, they make the characters look incredibly grotesque, especially Princess Oom.
- The Zeenuians' character designs all look poor and unappealing.
- Mostly bad voice acting, even from actors such as Jeff Garcia and Fred Tatasciore.
- In addition to that, in its various dubs, several of Sheen's voices were not respected and were replaced by other actors.
- However, Bob Joles does give a good performance as Nesmith.
- Several of the episodes feel like parodies of the themes that were embroidered in the Jimmy Neutron episodes.
- On the new planet Sheen finds himself, it does not feel like a technologically and intellectually advanced civilization, as the aliens live at some point in a monarchical way mixed with a republic, though at the same time each of them is extremely submissive and ignorant to realize that Sheen is an ordinary human or that they are afraid of Jimmy's rocket.
- Nesmith can be considered a butt-monkey, a character who gets hurt for little or no apparent reason. The same can be said for Dorkus, the main antagonist.
- Its Latin American dub was not well received because there was a change in the dubbing studio. This was due to budget cuts, resulting in this dub of the series to be done in Venezuela, which caused much criticism and discontent from Latin American fans.
- In addition to the above, the Venezuelan dubbing actors (mainly Paolo Campos, who voiced Sheen in this dub) received racist insults and death threats from fans. In turn, Irwin Daayan (Sheen's original voice) received harassment from fans who demanded that they sue Nickelodeon.
- Unlike the original show, the plots of the episodes are incredibly bland because the series doesn't follow a linear structure like Avatar. It doesn't help that the show fails to make a good story for the characters, and instead keeps handling a non-linear structure or is full of padding, making it boring and unfunny for the viewers.
- Speaking of the episodes' plots, the series itself has four structures to make episodes:
- Sheen getting in trouble for doing stupid things or telling lies.
- Dorkus devising a plan to defeat Sheen, only to end up getting hurt in the end.
- Sheen, Nesmith, and Doppy having an adventure on the planet.
- Sheen supposedly teaching the inhabitants of the planet "ways from the earth".
- Speaking of the episodes' plots, the series itself has four structures to make episodes:
- Most of the new characters in the series are merely dumb replacements for the characters from the original show.
- The most notable example is Doppy, who is basically Carl Wheezer but as an alien. He has a very similar body shape and beady eyes, personality (except dumber and naive), and even the same voice actor as him (Rob Paulsen). Mr. Enter even called him Carl in his review of the show because of this.
- In Rob Paulsen's "Talkin' Toons Podcast" where he portrays Carl, he reveals many hidden details, including the fact that Doppy was just him in disguise while Sheen is currently in juvenile detention and back on Earth after returning from Zeenu.
- Nesmith, despite being likable, is a version of Jimmy Neutron but more responsible, patient, sensible and not-so irritable.
- Dorkus, although also nice, is very similar to King Goobot.
- Pinter, despite being a likable character much like Nesmith and Dorkus, is just a carbon copy of Ooblar.
- Aseefa is a bad copy of Libby and has the same the personality of Judy Neutron.
- The Emperor is a sillier combination of Hugh Neutron, Ham and Bolbi.
- Princess Oom is a frenetic, maddening and grotesque parody of Cindy Vortex and Libby Folfax in some ways.
- Grish the Handsome is a ridiculed or arrogant version of Nick Dean, or Jet Fusion.
- Chock-Chock, Aseefa's pet, is a very bad combination of Goddard and the Twonkies.
- Global and Hajing (Doppy's parents) are dumber and more ridiculous versions of Carl's parents and they share the same design as each other.
- The monsters and beasts of the planet are also pathetic combinations of the Twonkies and Poultra.
- The warriors and the main guards of the emperor are bad copies of general baker and general Ernest Abercrombie.
- Similarly, the city of aliens is a deviant copy and parody of Retroville or the monks of the shankri-llama.
- The most notable example is Doppy, who is basically Carl Wheezer but as an alien. He has a very similar body shape and beady eyes, personality (except dumber and naive), and even the same voice actor as him (Rob Paulsen). Mr. Enter even called him Carl in his review of the show because of this.
- Like seasons 9 and 10 of The Fairly OddParents!, the series repeats many jokes to the point that they get old quickly, such as:
- Doppy beating himself up.
- The emperor impressing Sheen's nonsense.
- Princess Oom crying or wanting to lick Sheen.
- Nesmith saying he's going to build the rocket.
- Dorkus receiving a beating.
- Dorkus threatening to attack Sheen.
- Sheen feeling disgusted by Princess Oom.
- Sheen saying or wanting to do strange things.
- Aseefa isn't as good as a love interest for Sheen in this show as Libby in the original show was because of how the whole relationship is treated more like a wacky comedy than the original show interpreted Sheen and Libby's relationship.
- Much like Nickelodeon's other then-recent SpongeBob SquarePants knock-off, the series copies several of the negative aspects of SpongeBob SquarePants' dark seasons, such as:
- The humor is limited to being grotesque.
- The main protagonist(s) is/are incredibly annoying, immature, and unfunny comic reliefs who never shut up whenever they're on screen.
- The villain is treated like dirt by the protagonist, even though he doesn't deserve it.
- The secondary characters are dumb as a pile of rocks and applaud the antics of the protagonist.
- Nesmith is the victim of the jokes of the protagonists.
- The plots have open endings, or a linear structure.
- This show has a lot of gross-out and toilet humor, which were not common in the original show.
- "Is This Cute?" features a pony with a rainbow mane named Boh-Rok who is feared by the aliens, shoots out snot, and picks people up with his nose hair, all of which are disgusting to audiences.
- In "Feeling Roovy", Aseefa belches constantly after Baby Arms Banarog steals her roove.
- Outdated boyish and girlish stereotypes which are very annoying and sexist, especially the latter.
- The series is most likely a franchise killer for the Jimmy Neutron franchise, as there have been no fourth season nor even any announcements of new shows since it ended, leaving the show on a cliffhanger (as mentioned above) and Nickelodeon has since given up on the franchise.
- Besides that, the failure of this show botched O Entertainment and its parent company Omation, who have remained dormant since it ended.
Redeeming Qualities
- At least Sheen's voice actor, Jeff Garcia, reprised his role in the show.
- The pilot episode is actually decent despite sheen not listening to jimmy's rules
- Sheen is not as annoying unlike the other episodes
- The jokes works well such the line:"Evolution must be going in reverse." or Sheen asking for "J.N"
- Good introduction for the characters
- Carl does make a funny cameo in a flashback in "Is This Cute?"
- Bob Joles gives a pretty good performance as Nesmith.
- Nesmith, Dorkus and Pinter are the only likable characters.
- Nesmith could be a bit smart, and Aseefa is protective and helpful to Sheen at the beginning. She is also a talented yodeler as she yodels Mary Schnider's "Clarinet Polka Yodel" in the pilot and other episodes.
- Like Sheen's design, some of the other characters' designs such as Nesmith and Aseefa's are passable as well.
- Despite the animation being a downgrade from the previous series, it's nice to finally see a Jimmy Neutron series in high definition.
- The concept of Sheen spin-off could be interesting and not lazy for some people, despite the bad-for-a-lot-of-people execution.
Reception
While The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius was well-received and gained a cult following, Planet Sheen received mixed reviews from critics but received largely negative reviews from fans of the original series, due to erasing the realism from the original show, not using any of the original show's cast besides Sheen, lazy humor, ugly animation and lacking any character development. Fans also stated dislike for the fact that Sheen's return to home was never shown. In addition, it has constantly listed as one of the worst cartoon spin-offs of all time and one of the worst Nickelodeon shows of all time. The show currently has a 2.9/10 rating on IMDb.
Saberspark placed this on #4 on The Top 10 Worst Nickelodeon Cartoons.
Watchmojo.com placed this at #10 on The Top 10 Worst Nickelodeon Shows.
Trivia
- There was originally going to be a made-for-television film finale, in which Jimmy and his friends go to Zeenu to find Sheen and bring him back to Earth, but it was canceled due to the series' failure.
- Carl was originally going to be part of the series, and it would've been about both Sheen and Carl stealing Jimmy's rocket, but it changed to being just about Sheen, so due to executive meddling, Doppy was created.
- John A. Davis later announced that he regretted working on this show.
- The show wasn't going to be a spin-off and was going to be a show called "Red Acres"; the show was supposed to be about some random fast-food worker who got launched into space and crash-landed onto a planet with hillbilly aliens, but Nickelodeon didn't pick it up because it didn't have a child lead, so it got retooled into this.
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