VeggieTales/Headscratchers

Doesn't the Executive Meddling by NBC to make them take the explicit Christian references out of the present-day segments of the TV show sort of defeat the purpose?
- You can still teach lessons about morality without religion O.o
  - Well, yes, but the show was pretty much about Biblical lessons simplified for kids, right?
    - Not necessarily. This Jewish troper's mother showed troper and her siblings plenty of Western Animation/Veggietales videos, but turned them off before QWERTY could put up a Bible quote. We still got the moral lessons, though.
      - Isn't it kind of hypocritical to say "I don't want the religious bits, but I do want the lessons derived from the biblical teachings" ?
      - No.
      - This Troper is a pagan, but she still likes watching Veggie Tales because she believes in some Christian values ("love thy neighbor" for example.)
- Regardless, taking the Christianity out IS still missing the point; the series was created as a CHRISTIAN series, and it feels very lacking without that aspect.
  - YMMV on that. This troper vastly prefers their recent episodes over the previous ones, mainly due to the series having Grown the Beard and becoming an vastly entertaining, Ear Worm fueled, series.
    - So, what, the Silly Songs weren't EarWorms because they were being played in between scenes from bible stories? It wasn't entertaining to watch them get bombarded with slushies while the french peas sung another Ear Worm about knocking their wall down? Larry suddenly dropping down and trying to speak through sand isn't funny because when he comes back up and spits sand out of his mouth he reveals he said something religious? The stuff suddenly becomes entertaining just because it's not Christian?
In the episode about them going around the wall of Jericho, it is very obvious that it's small. So small, that they can lap around it several times in a day. There is nothing around the "wall" (more like a building) for miles. What's stopping them from just going around it? Why must they destroy Jericho? Just to prove God's point?
- Jericho was a stronghold of the Cannanites, and allowing it to stay there would be allowing pagan influence to remain in the land that was to be given over completely to Israel. You can see in other places that by allowing some Cannanites to exist among them left footholds for other cultures and religions that eventually lead to their undoing.
- Also Jericho was way bigger in real life.
What do they have to do with Christianity lately? Their TV show and latest movies are generic, yet awesome, kids cartoons. The episodes aren't blatantly Christian aside from mentions of God at the beginning and end of each episode.
- Blame NBC. They took out any references to Christianity from the TV show. I guess it was kind of understandable, given that they would want to expand their audience to everyone, not just Christians. Still, its kind of annoying.
This troper is rather sad that they've, for the most part, stopped doing videos of Bible stories and have been just doing parodies, because she distinctly remembers Veggie Tales for it's Bible stories and not so much the parodies, maybe they ran out of stories because they've all be retold in some form or another. Then again the Bible does have R-rated material in it, but never mind
- Agreed, this troper misses the Bible stories. They haven't run out of material (as far as I know, I have not seen a story about Samuel, Adam and Eve, Elijah and Elisha, the days of Moses' leadership in the desert, to name a few), there are a lot of stories in the Bible, but they have to make it appeal to the kids without losing the message. But they have to get the idea green-lighted with the person in charge of the company so they can put money into the project. If the person says "no" to the projected idea, then they have to go back to the drawing board. That could be why they're doing parodies, they may not be allowed to use Bible stories anymore because they (Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki) have no control over the material and what to put in it.
Why'd they cut the theme song so short? It was AWESOME, and now it's only like one verse of its former self.
- Because little kids don't care about the themesong, and it means the show itself can be that much longer.
  - Every person I know who likes this show thinks of it as an Ear Worm and can't help but sing along. The elementary school kids where I go loved the song.
Why is Veggie Tales a Christian series anyway? It seems like any other cartoon series, with random Christian references put in.
- You just answered your own question.
- Though to give it a better answer, the creators of the show were church ministers, pastors, or just very involved with their church in general, and their goal was to create a show that DIRECTLY dealt with Bible topics and Christian teachings in the show, as almost all cartoons don't allow this because of free religion. So, it is a Christian cartoon because that's what it was created as. Or used to be, anyway.
- More to the point, they wanted something that would actually be fun to watch. Up until Veggie Tales came around, most children's programming for Christians was abysmally boring and saccharine, not to mention somewhat insulting even to a child's intelligence.
  - Most children's christian entertainment is horrifyingly bad. Go to your local christian bookstore and see how long you can watch most of those things, because they usually treat viewers like morons. Western Animation/Veggietales and the few other good ones are a breath of fresh air to someone like me.
In the Lyle the Kindly Viking episode, the French Peas bring Archibald "Omelet" because they couldn't find Hamlet... which, being a literary classic as it is, is available in pretty much every bookstore everywhere. They might be peas, but still...
- Rule of Funny.
What's with the movies? I didn't know anything of the series for years, and I loved the movies. I was surprised to find out the show as Christian. The movies seem like any other fun kids movie, it's mainstream and so not religious.
- Yeah, the movie about the story of Jonah wasn't at all religious.
- I don't know, I kinda like that they're distancing themselves from Christian stuff, because it shows how far the humor in the series can go if they experiment.
- I was talking mainly about the Pirates movie, and it is pretty hard to make a Christian cartoon that isn't basically an adaptation of Bible stories or extremely thick on the Christian theme. They're doing as well as they can, but most episodes don't really have Christian themes referenced to anymore; it's more of a typical problem cartoon rather then a cartoon where you tie these problems to Christian stuff, then air the cartoon.
Why so many asparagus characters?
- Have you ever seen an asparagus patch? One root can produce ten or more spears.
Qwerty is supposed to be male? He sounds and acts like a female computer.
- How does he act like a female computer? All I remember him doing is looking at whatever characters happened to come over to him, and jumping every once in a while to face a different direction. As for the sound, it's just beeps.
  - His voice is feminine, if not gender neutral at best. He acts somewhat feminine too.
  - Again, his "voice" is beeps, semi high pitched beeps but not really enough that it would mark him as a girl. And again how the heck does he act feminine? He sits there. That's like walking out side and saying "That rock looks like a girl rock".
  - There's a girl rock in the movie.
Where'd the Petunia person come from? I didn't see her in old episodes so she's at least vaguely new, but she shows up in basically every episode. Was there some sort of explanation for her having about as much screen time as Larry while older characters get smaller parts?
- She's been around since 2004. She's a girl, and Larry's Love Interest.
- Larry's love interest? In canon? No joke? Veggie Tales is officially Ruined FOREVER as far as I'm concerned. New question: Why the heck does Larry need a love interest?
  - In any episodes where Petunia's character needs a love interest, it's Larry's character, and vice-versa. I don't know if this actually applies to Larry and Petunia.
    - She originated to tell the story of Ruth in a medieval setting (Which Word of God claims is a prequel to King George and the Duck) because they didn't have any other female characters to use. Larry was Boaz in that episode.