Media Essays: Ed, Edd n' Eddy: Childhood Relived

Written by The Wandering Fox

Teddy and Freddy were hiding the Cynical Crown, the cat and fox chuckling as they found a good hiding place.

Teddy: He won’t need it for this!

Freddy: He sure won’t! You get the popcorn ready cos this is gonna be a fun ride.

Teddy: It’s nice he talks about nicer things once in a while.

That is true guys, I gotta find something to happily talk about on the blog and I think I’ve got it here for you!

Hey everybody, it’s me the Wandering Fox, and today I’m here to have a chat about my recent trip in Memory Lane, and that trip had me rewatching Ed, Edd N Eddy.

I had lots of fun rewatching the show, it brought back lots of memories of coming home from school after a day of bullying and stressful lessons I could just enjoy the fun wacky daily lives of the Ed’s, it was one of the big cartoons of my childhood on Cartoon Network, up there with Teen Titans, Robotboy, Xiaolin Showdown, and many others. I remembered clearly the episode in which the Ed’s try to save Ed from being grounded, then there was Ed getting angry, Rolf being a funny good hearted farmer, the bedtime story episode, gosh they were fun to remember and rewatch. But sadly I didn’t watch Ed, Edd n Eddy to the end of its run as I grew up I went to high school and was coming to terms with lots of changes in my life, so I never saw the school years of the Ed’s until my rewatch.

Having done that I was just stunned at how many jokes there were that flew over my head, how there was life lessons in there I didn’t realise and it makes me even gladder that though Ed, Edd n Eddy is done its stood the test of time as a fine cartoon show that anybody could watch over and over again. Does that mean it’s perfect? No, there’s some bits in there in which I think it went too far in being mean spirited but it didn’t wreck the show.

With the rewatch I thought I’d talk about the show, it’s clever storytelling, the good and the bad, and Double D as I think he’s the main character in the series and had gone through lots of changes as a character. So get your pennies or quarters and buy some football sized sweets as we go back to the cul-de-sac.

The series and its story.

It’s funny that we even got Ed, Edd n Eddy in the first place cos Danny Antonnuci, the creator of the series, was dared to make a kid’s show having done a lot of adult animation. He pitched it to Nickelodeon but they wanted creative control over it which he didn’t and he went to Cartoon Network and the rest is history. Antonnuci based a lot of the series and its characters off of his childhood, the Ed’s representing different points of his life and personality, to Rolf being a rep of himself living as an immigrant. Quite interesting the whole thing came about of his childhood.

Ed, Edd N Eddy is primarily set in the summer holidays though we had a Christmas and Halloween special and the final season took place at the school, focussing on the lives of the Ed’s and their scams, having fun, getting in scuffles with the other kids and the Kankers, with big slapstick comedy in there from violent fights with the characters literally getting twisted or contorting themselves to get in small spaces. We have a good grasp of the Ed’s in the first episode, Ed is the lazy monster movie loving muscle of the Ed’s who says the most daft of things but is loving and caring for his friends. Edward Double D is the smartest of the Ed’s. Then we have Eddy, the most cocky and greedy of the Ed’s. The rest of the kids take more episodes to get use to them but as the series goes on we find out a lot more about them. The first few episodes do explore the weaknesses of the Ed’s like Ed’s bad hygiene and how Double D and Eddy try to clean him. Then we have Eddy bring insecure about his height and later goes insane from boredom. Then we have Double D’s physical weakness, letting us see there’s the things that makes the Ed’s weak but they make up for it in their own way by being together, Ed is the muscle than can protect Double D, Eddy’s scams let Double D get creative with his inventions and Double D is the reasonable voice that helps the Ed’s see how things works abd can often be the connective tissue between the Ed’s and the kids.

The other kids have their own characters worked on as the series continues, with Kevin being the grumpy bully character who, despite going after Jimmy and Johnny as well, can be a cool kid the others like to hang around and as we see he was thoughtful enough of the Ed’s that he was going to give them free Jawbreakers, his character becoming crueller and meaner towards the Ed’s as a result of him becoming annoyed with their scams which has him left in a paranoid mood in “See No Ed”. Rolf is the proud farmer boy who has the patience of a saint when it comes to the Ed’s and is a good friend to those he’s with and is a hardworking kid, proud of his culture and family, though he himself starts to lose it with the Eds with him and Eddy at each other’s throats, scolding Ed for the simplest of mistakes. While others like Nazz and the Kankers lack character growth they at least provide fun stories for the setting and the characters whether it’d be Nazz being fawned over by the boys or the Kankers parking their trailer on Eddy’s lawn.

The series gave us some great life lessons like how “Will Work for Ed” is about workers rights with Rolf deducting Ed’s pay unfairly just cos Ed was making some simple mistakes, with Eddy protesting the terrible work conditions while Double D going in to chat with Rolf is alike that of a lawyer. You then have “Dim Lit Ed” as we see Double D’s good intentioned efforts of educating the kids coming across as being controlling and killing the joys of being out of school.

It was also not scared to go into some darker themes like Ed’s abuse at the hands of his mother, how he’s scared of her but still loves her is like that of victims with their abusers. Then there’s Rolf’s home sickness as he yearns for his own home and how he feels when his culture is mocked which takes such an effect on him that he buries himself alive. Eddy’s anxiety of being alone is quite forgotten as we see in the first season how he goes insane in not having anybody to scam and when he’s on his own his house he’s frightened and calls for Double D, with the reveal he was abused by his older brother being a hint of how he’s afraid of being alone without anybody to help him. We also see Eddy going insane from failing at a scam that he just repeats everything he does which is him refusing to admit he’s lost. Eddy’s refusal to give up goes back to him not knowing when to stop with the pranks he does, like how he and Ed tricked Double D with the sticky notes that only resulted in Double D moving in with Eddy and being a nuisance to him.

The series did well at slowly changing the characters and their dynamics, with Double D becoming more snarkier and grumpier as well as him and Eddy clashing a lot more, with “Once Upon an Ed” being an example of them making fun of each other. To me I think their relationship became bluntly bitter and crueller following from the events of “Don’t Rain on my Ed”, in which Eddy abandoned Double D to the Kankers and a swarm of chickens.

EEnE [S3E24] Don't Rain On My Ed - The Chase For Jawbreakers

The series though does have a few bummers with the first longer episode being divisive enough that many were annoyed Jimmy was the culprit and that characters like Double D were laughing at his humiliation, or the episode where Eddy and Ed trick Double D in thinking he’s going to die just cos they wanted to bother Kevin, then there’s how Sarah barely gets comeuppance for her treatment of Ed. I do think the school episodes were not that good either though at least the last episode featured Eddy finally standing up to the Kankers to leave Double Dalone. The school episodes though in my opinion could’ve been replaced by the local shops and told some stories of the rise of DVDs, bargain prices in shops, and comic shops or having the parents buy a new car that has to be looked after would have made for stories that were fresher for the Ed’s without having to go to school. I think the school episodes came to be created because the final episode of Season 4 was meant to be the finale, with the Ed’s having been in their 100s and reliving their childhood, but I think a lot of fans were unhappy with that, with the school episodes made.

What Ed, Edd n Eddy accomplishes though is that it will make you laugh. You ever want to feel happy or go have a laugh, you can watch just about any episode. Whether it’s “Ed Ed and Away” with the Ed’s chasing a balloon, to them telling Johnny a bedtime story in “Once Upon an Ed” with their own POVs, with Rolf’s iconic quotes like “The hat of discipline! DO YOU LIVE IN A CAVE!?” or Ed’s friend Jib.

The series did well at throwing in Easter Eggs like making their own TARDIS or R2D2 to referencing Hellraiser and Dawn of the Dead, while there was lots of adult humour like Ed having a helmet on his butt “for protection” and Eddy’s secret magazine collection clearly being a porno stash.

Box shaped Time Machine with a lightbulb on top, Double D with a question mark? Yeah, clear Doctor Who reference.

The Ed, Edd n Eddy Big Picture Show was a pretty good finale to the series though I’m a little annoyed Johnny was the antagonist at the end as it’d have been sweet if all the kids could be the Ed’s friends, if it’s the final then why have that?

Though still. The series was really good despite a few bumps. But to me the show’s biggest strength was in just a character.

Yes, the man, the legend, it’s Double D!

Double D was voiced by Samuel Vincent, a talented actor and singer who voiced Sonic the Hedgehog in the singing segments of Sonic Underground, Krypto the Superdog, Arrow of Storm Hawks, Peter Parker, and surprisingly in The Dragon Prince as Tristan and Commander Fen.

Double D was the morally good of the Ed’s but he wasn’t like that all the time. You go back to the beginning you will see he’s almost a whole other character, he’s quieter, more sneaky and was all for scamming the other kids and humiliating them, and he was more kid like in his behaviour, he was happy to be thrown in the dirt while having fun with his friends, he loved to eat food. Even then he was the smartest of the Eds with him coming up with the inventions to either make the scams or build tech to help the Ed’s. It’s after “Laugh Ed Laugh” he starts to change, he’s more louder, is more for doing right by others or his own way of good, and he begins to become reluctant in the scams, expressing doubt in them, snarking against Eddy and all, he’s more nervous around girls despite being fine enough with Marie, Sarah and Naz before he’d become a sweaty mess, I think it’s after Sarah was crushing on him he had become nervous of girls. Double D’s morality climaxes in the Big Picture show which the scam they did went that badly wrong that Double D is almost in tears and shameful of the scam but is having to run away and leave his family, Eddy’s prank in the runaway has Double D scold Eddy enough that he is willing to go back to the kids and face whatever beating they’ll give him and wants nothing to do with Eddy or Ed. You watch you see as well the other kids are mostly okay with Double D and can have a friendly chat with him if Ed and Eddy aren’t with him, and Double D does care about them as well it said if he wasn’t Ed or Eddy’s friend he’d have been welcomed in by the other kids. You get the sense with Double D thanks to his bizarre upbringing and his sensitive side that he does want friends but he was lumbered with Ed and Eddy.

But while Double D is the morally good of the Ed’s, he’s not at all perfect. He still makes mistakes like in “Dim Lit Ed” his tries at educating children is him badly misunderstanding how kids just want to be kids and they are on holiday for a reason, to have fun and him trying to educate them was ruining it. Then there’s “The Key to my Ed” in which him trying to moralise Eddy only annoys him enough that he begs him to shut up. Double D is also not above having a bit of an ego as we see in “Once Upon an Ed” with his recollection of the day having him see Eddy and Ed as greedy little children who cower before him like he’s an adult.

Ed Edd n Eddy | Rich Guy Eddy | Cartoon Network

He also isn’t above cruelty to Eddy by getting revenge on him with the sticky notes. Don’t say Double D was oblivious, he clearly realised Eddy was prancing him.

Double D is also weak to his hormones when he, like Eddy, Ed, Johnny, and Kevin compete for Nazz’s affections without even realising he’s scaring her, or how he competes for the last Jawbreaker despite trying to split it and the other Jawbreaker equally. Double D is what he is. He’s a kid who’s growing up, he’s trying to do the right thing but he’s also gonna fall into the trappings of a youngster, he can be mean, he can be quite the guy with a ego, he does things that others don’t get. He’s a kid. You see him as well beginning to lose patience with Eddy as the series goes on and he really has enough in the Big Picture Show and Eddy does clap at him that he went along with the scam, Double D grows a backbone and is going home to face up to the kids. He wants to do right, he wants to have friends. It’s nice that he had a happy ending in the Big Picture Show and you think he’s gonna have a bright future.

Teddy: Heh, you’re gonna enjoy watching more of it.

I am. Just rewatching this series reminds me of the old days. Back when I was younger and didn’t have grey hairs.

Freddy: I’m glad you didn’t have your Cynical Crown out.

Yeah it was nice to not have it, it’s great to talk about something you enjoy for a change.

To all of you who read this I hope you loved it, it was nice to revisit Ed, Edd n Eddy. Do comment below your thoughts on Ed, Edd n Eddy.