The City of Frownsville (The Powerpuff Girls, 1998)

The City of Frownsville Seriously? This episode was allegedly a dedication to the victims of 9/11? Series: The Powerpuff Girls (1998) Part of Season: 6 Episode Number: 10b Air Date: July 23, 2004 Writer: Bobby London Director: Randy Myers Previous episode: Sun Scream Next episode: West in Pieces

"The City of Frownsville" is the second segment of the tenth episode in the sixth season of The Powerpuff Girls.

Plot

The carnival has arrived in Townsville, to which everyone is happy until a tearful villain named Lou Gubrious uses his machine to change everyone's happiness to misery and depression.

Why It Makes Us Cry

1. This episode tries to make the audience feel sorry for the villain, the Girls, and the people of Townsville, but instead, it makes you feel blatantly annoyed, irritated, and aggravated due to the non-stop crying they do.
2. The antagonist, Lou Gubrious, is just pathetic and behaves like a degraded version of The Weeper. To add insult to injury, it is never explained why he is so miserable, to begin with.
3. The humor in this episode is not even funny, the infamous example is when Hal Larious takes Bubbles' trophy and laughs maniacally causing her to bawl, which is just beyond cruel!
4. The characters' crying drags on for a long period of time until late in the episode.
5. In addition to the episode being annoying due to the prolonged crying. However, the Courage the Cowardly Dog episode "The Tower of Dr. Zalost", another episode of a Cartoon Network show had a similar premise to this episode, except that it was executed way better than this episode.
6. Although this episode is said to be a dedication to the victims of 9/11, this episode barely has anything to do with the actual September 11 attacks incident, hence making this episode utterly disrespectful and a huge insult to the victims of 9/11.
7. The entire voice-acting in this episode is far more annoying than usual, mainly due to the characters' non-stop crying throughout most of the entire episode; not helping is the fact that their crying sounds come off as very forced and phoned-in rather than legit genuine crying.
   • Lou Gubrious/Hal Larious arguably has the worst and most annoying voice-acting of all the characters of this episode, mainly due to the his broken, whiny, noisy, and over-the-top voice, especially when he cries, laughs or screams, which is provided by Dee Bradley Baker. Sorry Dee, you're usually a good voice actor, but Lou Gubrious has got to be one of your poorest voice-acting roles.

Redeeming Qualities

1. "We're Going to the Carnival" is a fairly catchy song.
2. Lou Gubrious slipping on a banana peel was funny.
3. Decent ending.

Reception

• PhantomStrider ranked this at #6 on his "Top Ten Worst Episodes of Good Cartoons".
• This episode, along with Sun Scream, was the lowest-rated PPG episode on IMDB - holding a rating of 5.4/10.

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