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Object shows, also known as object fiction or the biggest "fuck you" on Planet Earth, are animated series or other works of fiction that revolve around anthropomorphized inanimate objects doing dumb shit, usually on an island or something. Other common traits include bad, low-budget animation made with Adobe Animate or software even cheaper than that, like PowerPoint, Windows Movie Maker, or—dare I say—Vyond; show-within-a-show game show formats; overusing the same royalty-free music over and over; not being funny despite often being painted as comedies; in the case of "dramas", not being even dramatic; extensive author appeal; and being shit. It is often regarded as an independent genre of fiction but should probably be categorized as a subgenre of brain rot and a scientifically proven cause of democratic backsliding around the world.
After Battle for Dumb Island premiered in 2010 and took off in the ratings, a bunch of talentless writers, animators, etc. looked at it and went, "It's free real estate!" The second ever object show, Object Objection, which premiered in 2011, is credited with solidifying this shit an independent genre of fiction. Since then, object shows have been everywhere. They've been inescapable. And they multiply. Rapidly. In 2023, UNESCO estimated that over 40,000 object shows were airing on television worldwide at that time, an all-time high for any year since their origin in 2010.
Since taking off, object shows have developed what The New York Times described as "a large, passionate, worldwide fanbase", which really just consists of a bunch of extremely online 11-year-olds on sites like YouTube and Fandom whose parents don't let them watch anything rated beyond TV-G (or their respective country's equivalent), but give them unsupervised Internet access, thus turning their brains to mush and making them some of the most unbearable kids on Earth.
Overview[]
The exciting history of the object show[]
2008–2012: Dwamatic backstowy 🥺[]
Blame Cary Wawa and Michael Woohoo for this clusterfuck of a genre.
While in high school, Wawa and Woohoo made comics or something IDK. One of those comics was Firey Drama Island, a Total Drama Island clone starring this little shit named Firey, a fireball, as its main character. After starting graduating from high school, they began writing bibles and treatments and shit for TV shows, one of which was a show called Battle for Dumb Island (BFDI) that adapted the premise of Firey Drama Island. After other networks were like "nah bro wtf", The CW's stoned executives abruptly picked up the show's pilot, after which a full first season was commissioned.
And upon its September 24, 2010 premiere, the beloved "Beefy Die", as it would soon be nicknamed, would receive instant critical acclaim and a fanbase of Klasky Csupo-obsessed small children and terminally online people and usher in a newer, dumber, more irritating era for television, animation, and humanity.
Immediately after Battle for Dumb Island premiered, cartoonist/animator Justin Brody and author Sidney Cringle were like, "ANYTHING YOU CAN DO I CAN DO BETTER I CAN DO BETTER IM BETTER THAN YOU" and wrote a bible and drew character designs for a rip-off titled Object Objection, which they pitched to The CW upon the airing of BFDI's second episode in October 2010, and the network quickly picked the show up and commissioned a pilot. This show began the practice of "prodrushing": rushing the production (hence its name) of an object show to get either an episode or a full season completed and broadcast as fast as possible. In only three weeks, that show's pilot episode was written, animated, voiced over, scored, edited, and gawked at by Broadcast Standards and Practices, all in time for its premiere on September 24, 2011, exactly one year after the premiere of BFDI. This resulted in the shows developing a weird Simpsons—Family Guy relationship, where a rip-off (Family Guy, Object Objection) is broadcast on the same network as the show it ripped off to begin with (The Simpsons, Battle for Dumb Island). Upon the series' premiere, a combined fandom of BFDI and Object Oblivion fans became known as the Object Show Community (OSC), coined by a bunch of Xbox Live kids.
The term "object show" was coined in an Object Oblivion review written by Roger Ebert for the Chicago Sun-Times: "Between BFDI and Object Objection, I object (no pun intended!) to the lack of more of these object shows on television! I want more object shows! GIVE ME MORE OBJECT SHOWS!" You can also thank him for the storm that followed....
2011–2014: "There's Battle for Dumb Island at home"[]
In 2011 in particular, object shows saw a sharp increase in popularity. As a result, hundreds of creators desperate for money would pitch their own object shows to production companies and television networks each month. Only a few pitches would survive. The phenomenon became known in the animation and television industries as the "Pitch Massacre".
Among the survivors of the Pitch Massacre was Battle for Paramountain, created by Harry Hathaway, which was caught in a bidding war between ABC and CBS but ultimately bought by the latter because Paramount Pictures correlation, premiered in January 2012, and was canceled after 13 episodes. Battle for Paramountain would make history, though, as the first object show animated with CGI, courtesy of the barely-credited slaves at Marza Animation Planet. Two other survivors were Inanimate Avantgarde, a laughably darker-toned series created by Ryan Sketchy and Peter Trublud that The CW greenlit out of pity. Shortly after, however, The CW faced competition from Fox, which greenlit Kenny Jacobs and Ryan Murphy's object show, Inanimate Poverty, which was also laughably darker-toned. Both shows premiered on September 22, 2012 in the same exact time slot, resulting in fierce competition for ratings between The CW, armed with three of these fucking shows, and Fox's one object show.
Also during the 2012–13 seasons, several object shows would premiere mid-season. Most of them were unsuccessful: Battle for Something, which premiered on The CW in December 2012 and was ultimately canceled after two seasons; Super Object Squad, which premiered on Fox in January 2013, was canceled after two seasons, moved to MyNetworkTV for one more season, and was canceled again; Inanimate Island, which premiered on Fox that January and was canceled after 6 fucking episodes; Battle for Dumbass, an attempt by PBS to get its foot in the door, which premiered in March 2013 and was canceled after 12 episodes; and Battle for Booty World, which premiered on CBS in April 2013 and was canceled after airing 6 of its 13 episodes. However, shortly after it bought Inanimate Poverty, Fox picked up Harry Hathaway's CGI object show Object à la Mode, which premiered in January 2013 to high ratings, critical acclaim, and the tune of a bunch of Xbox Live kids screaming at the tops of their lungs.
In September 2013, the controversial object show Object Oblivion premiered on The CW and marked the birth of "goregrind" object shows, which focus more on graphicness and shock value than silliness and light-hearted "fun". It was misinterpreted by critics as marking a cultural "turning point", and they perceived it as birthing a new kind of object show: the "adult" object show, or an object show explicitly aimed at adult—though not very mature—audiences, which would result in an insane influx of extremely violent object shows soon after. (We'll get to those in a moment.) That October, the American-Canadian-Japanese object show Battle for Battle Battle premiered on Cartoon Network and made history as both the first object show to air first-run on a pay television channel and the first internationally co-produced object show, further fueling the race for "object show dominance" and inspiring writers and animators and other yahoos from all over the world to make their own object shows. Race to Mount Stick was the first object show produced outside the United States. Produced entirely in Canada, the show premiered on Teletoon in February 2014. The Mexican-made El Chapulín Inanimado was the second object show produced outside the United States, premiering on Canal 5 in May 2014.
2014–2019: International oversaturation, the Object Show Ratings War, perceived decline, widespread hatred, and a whole lotta cancellations[]
God, what the fuck am I writing?
Object shows' popularity worldwide led to a perceived oversaturation. In July 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported that an estimated 420 ongoing object shows were concurrently produced and telecast in countries all around the world at that point, namely 'MURICA™ (obviously), Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany (I think), Italy (for some reason), India (I guess), the Philippines (lotta logo kids there), and North Korea (kill me). That's not even counting all the web series being created by 20th Century Fox-crazed 10-year-olds with Microsoft PowerPoint, Paint.NET, Bandicam, and unsupervised Internet access.
In the United States, terrestrial and cable networks were all competing intensely for viewership, so much so that the media began calling it the "Object Show Ratings War". By 2014, MTV had already picked up OBJ420, meaning the fight was now Fox vs. the CW vs. Cartoon Network vs. MTV. However, the competition between MTV and the CW was awkward as fuck because they were both owned by National Amusements to some extent, but who cares? 🤪 Back at The CW, Inanimate Avantgarde's "experimental" writing and visual presentation and Object Oblivion's deliberately offensive and gory nature both drummed up a shit ton of controversy and drew significant attention to the network. Due to the latter show's rapidly increasing popularity, Inanimate Poverty's ratings tanked on a grand scale, and ahead of the 2015–16 season, Fox felt that there was no choice but to... MOVE THE SHOW TO AN EARLIER TIME SLOT! YOU REALLY THOUGHT THEY'D CANCEL THEIR BABY?!!?! HELL FUCKIN NO!!!! 🤪🤪🤪 Specifically, the show aired in the time slot directly before Inanimate Avantgarde. However, because they were in different time slots now, there was no direct competition between these two shows, so it proved to be meaningless. After viewership tanked to something insanely low like 10,000 viewers (0.01 million!!!) per episode, Inanimate Poverty was canceled after four seasons. The CW won. This story would later inspire Ryan Murphy to make 9-1-1. This battle between networks in the U.S. was heavily talked about by dumb British tabloids and inspired ITV to acquire the broadcast rights to a shit ton of Warner Bros. Television-owned object shows. BBC Two sought to compete with ITV by picking up a shit ton of other object shows. The war had gone global.
Australian news outlets heavily reported on this shit for some reason, and a bunch of TV networks in Australia went "heyyyyyy". As a result, everyone was scrambling for object show broadcast rights. A stupid bidding war broke out between the Nine Network and Network Ten over Race to Mount Stick that ended with Nine acquiring the show. Inanimate Poverty was subsequently acquired by Ten, which already aired Inanimate Avantgarde, so it was essentially duel-wielding object shows. However, Ten dropped Inanimate Poverty after its first season. Nine abruptly stopped airing Race to Mount Stick and filled its time slot with a suspiciously similar original show, Race to Wallaroo Island, which isn't even notable enough for its own article because no one noticed it existed and it was canceled after four episodes.
A bunch of new object shows I won't even name because there's too many 😭 were greenlit by Fox and The CW and scheduled to premiere during the 2015–16 and 2016–17 seasons and were mostly canceled after one season, which Forbes interpreted as a sign of both networks losing interest in the genre. The only survivors of this culling were SDBFOD on Fox, which the network renewed for a second season for the 2017–18 season to pity its executive producers and because it was a production of the network's then-sister, 20th Century Fox Television, and Objects on Fire on The CW, which was renewed for a second season because they were contractually obligated to or else Blueetoons, the co-producers with The CW's co-owners CBS, would sue them for all the money they had.
Because of the above, casual viewers were so over object shows and prayed for the genre to just fucking die already. According to a poll conducted by CBS News in February 2017, 200% of Americans who didn't identify as object show fans were sick of hearing about this shit and wished death on the OSC. President Donald Trump was also critical of object shows, calling them "DEMOCRAT BULLSHIT LOL #MakeAmericaGreatAgain" on Twitter.