Dr. Seuss (1996)

Dr. Seuss (also more often known as The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss premiered on Nickelodeon on October 13, 1996. It ran for two 20-episode seasons on Nick (later Nick Jr.), with the final episode airing on May 15, 1998.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) When the Henson Company decided to make the show, many of Seuss' famous creations would be included. The star was the Cat in the Hat. Unfortunately, he took more of the host/narrator role in the Nick Jr. episodes, as he covered various new stories around the Seuss world.
 * 2) Unlike Seuss's classic stories, the episodes never serve as metaphors for mature issues and themes, like environmentalism, racism and war. Instead, epsiodes focus on kids' show fare like "don't be afraid of the dark" ("There Is Nothing to Fear In Here"), "cleaning up can be fun" ("The Cat in the Hat Cleans Up His Act") and "let's cure a hiccup" ("The Sounds All Around").
 * 3) Each episode still has its fare share of nonsensical rhyming, but a lot of the heart is missing.
 * 4) *In all seriousness, the fact that Seuss's work can house such deep meanings is a testament to the man's craft, but this show doesn't have anything going for that.
 * 5) The Nick Jr. episodes have some very childish, cliche and overall very repetitive plots that wouldn't feel out of place in other kids' shows like Barney & Friends. They focus on typical preschool show fare and have many signs of being terribly written:
 * 6) *The A-plot involving the Cat in the Hat and the Little Cats is the same in many of the episodes, with Terrence McBird not wanting to try something and the Cats getting him to like it. Their intention is to teach him never to be afraid of trying new things, but this comes off as "disagreeing with other people is wrong". Some of the second season's other plots include:
 * 7) **King Derwin falsely outlawing Bimple Beans, which he doesn't like, and his son Milo the Page getting him to like them.
 * 8) **Sarah Hall Small feeling jealous about her new baby brother Paul.
 * 9) **The Cat in the Hat and friends throwing a surprise birthday party for Terrence, who thinks everyone’s forgotten about it.
 * 10) **Morton sleeping over at his friend Junior's house for the first time. However, it turns out that he doesn't want to go to sleep because he's afraid of the shadows outside.
 * 11) **The Cat in the Hat and the Little Cats trying to cure Terrence McBird's hiccups.
 * 12) **Some monsters waking up Sarah Hall Small in the middle of the night and Sarah trying to overcome her fear of them.
 * 13) **King Derwin upsetting his daughter Princess Tizz on her birthday by giving her some presents, only to tell her that they're too rare and precious to be played with.
 * 14) Terrence initially doesn't realize that he needed to color his picture for the Cat in the Hat nor do the Little Cats share their crayons with him in "The Cat in the Hat's Art House". Instead, when Terrence says that his picture "is missing something", the Cat phones Pam-I-Am. After she sings "You've Got to Have Color", Terrence receives a box of crayons from her.
 * 15) Many of Dr. Seuss' most popular characters don't make any physical or cameo appearances in the show. These characters include Sally, Thing One and Thing Two, Sally's brother, the Lorax, Marvin K. Mooney. The cubs and their dad from Hop on Pop, however, do make a cameo appearance in the Nick Jr. episodes, where they appear on one of the paintings in the Cat's Playhouse.
 * 16) Terrence McBird is an absolutely horrendous character. He is supposed to be an adult, as evidenced by his voice and the nectkie around his neck, yet he's very immature, grumpy and cowardly. In the Nick Jr. episodes, he acts like this whenever the Cat in the Hat and the Little Cats try to get him to like something.
 * 17) *Terrence is such a wimpy coward, in fact, that in "A Bird's Guide to Health" he thinks he caught Little Cat Z's cold and pretends to be sick.
 * 18) *In "A Bird's Best Friend", he acts rather selfish and spoiled, as he refuses to share his Hooble Ball with the Cat in the Hat.
 * 19) Little Cat Z, introduced when the show moved to Nick Jr. in 1998, is very annoying and useless. All he does is mutter Z-words and possess a hipster attitude, which the other Cats can understand perfectly. He's also a rip-off of Treelo from Bear in the Big Blue House, who is unintelligble yet understood perfectly by the other characters.
 * 20) Sarah Hall Small is a bland character with no personality and a poor substitute for Sue Snue (who appeared in the Nickelodeon era, but was removed in the Nick Jr. era).
 * 21) The final episode, "Cat's Play", ended the series and the Nick Jr. era on a sour note.
 * 22) Multiple instances of flanderization in the Nick Jr. era:
 * 23) *In the Nickelodeon era, the Cat in the Hat was a trickster who fooled others into thinking he would make their lives better, which made him hilarious and faithful to his book counterpart. The Nick Jr. era, however, depicts him as an overly excited and kind host with little to no other personality a la Bear from Bear in the Big Blue House.
 * 24) *The Grinch was very evil and threatening like his book counterpart in the Nickelodeon era, but not in the Nick Jr. era. In "The Cat in the Hat's Flower Power", he tries to stop the Binky Blossom Festival from coming by using a snow blaster and covering Seussville in snow instead of, say, stealing all the flowers that the Seussville citizens have collected for the festival. Another episode, "The Cat in the Hat Takes a Nap", only has him dreaming about having a birthday party with his dog Max.
 * 25) *Yertle the Turtle is now barely evil in the Nick Jr. era, even sharing his nut collection with Earl in "A Bird's Best Friend" after refusing to the first time. His hilarious villainy and his goal to be king of everything are completely thrown out the window, giving him little to no personality like the Cat in the Hat. He also somehow lives in the Jungle of Nool in this era instead of Salamasond.
 * 26) The Cat in the Hat and the Little Cats have 13 minutes out of each 24-minute episode all to themselves in the Nick Jr. era. That's more than half of the show's runtime. The other Dr. Seuss characters (Horton and Morton, Yertle the Turtle, the Grinch, Jane and Junior Kangaroo, etc.) have been reduced to subplots on which the Cat in the Hat covers by consulting his telescope, which is just stupid.

Good Qualities

 * 1) In Nickelodeon episodes like "The Simplifier", the Cat returns to his former glory; in the aforementioned episode, a harried husband and father frets over being too busy. The Cat introduces a new product known as the "Super Deluxe Simplify Machine." The more parts that are added to the machine, the greater effect it has in simplifying your life. As the father becomes more and more obsessed with building the machine, he begins to neglect his family, his job and his health. Finally, the Cat returns with another moralizing warning. The Cat, however, makes one last deal and allows the father to return the machine. This simplifies his life... back to where it was at the beginning of the story and so he finds a new appreciation for his life, all thanks the Cat.
 * 2) Unlike The Cat in the Hat (2003) and The Lorax (2012), it isn't that bad of a homage to Dr. Seuss and can be considered more a homage than those two films.
 * 3) The Nickelodeon episodes are really good and stay true to the works of Dr. Seuss, and "The Grinch Meets His Max/Halfway Home to Malamaroo" ended the Nick era (1996-1997) on a high note.