Jump to content

My Life as a Teenage Robot

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 2606:a000:f8cc:9100:1831:6501:d49a:4c27 (talk) at 02:03, 9 November 2017. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

My Life as a Teenage Robot
File:My Life as a Teenage Robot Title Card.jpg
The series' intertitle.
Genre
Created byRob Renzetti
Developed by
  • Rob Renzetti
  • Alex Kirwan
Directed by
Voices of
Theme music composerPeter Lurye
ComposersJames L. Venable
Peter Lurye
Country of originUnited States
No. of seasons3
No. of episodes40 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producersRob Renzetti
Fred Seibert
Running time23 minutes
Production companiesFrederator Studios
Nickelodeon Animation Studio
Original release
NetworkNickelodeon (2003–05)
Nicktoons (2008–09)
ReleaseAugust 1, 2003 (2003-08-01) –
May 2, 2009 (2009-05-02)

My Life as a Teenage Robot is an American animated science fantasy television series created by Rob Renzetti for Nickelodeon. The series follows the adventures of XJ-9, better known as Jenny Wakeman, a robot girl who attempts to juggle her duties of protecting Earth while trying to live a normal teenage life.

The show premiered on Nickelodeon on August 1, 2003. The show cancelled production on October 17, 2005 because of low ratings.[1] Unaired, completed season 3 episodes of the series were eventually aired on Nicktoons from October 4, 2008 to May 2, 2009. The series totaled 40 episodes and three seasons, including one TV movie. All three seasons are available on DVD at Amazon and on the iTunes store, although they are geo-blocked from some countries including Canada.

My Life as a Teenage Robot received positive reviews from critics, being nominated for numerous awards, most prominently one Primetime Emmy Award and eleven Annie Awards.[2]

Overview

See also: List of My Life as a Teenage Robot characters

XJ-9 ("Jenny Wakeman", as she prefers to be called; voiced by Janice Kawaye) is a state-of-the-art gynoid automaton sophisticated robot created by her mother Dr. Nora Wakeman (Candi Milo), an elderly spinster robotics scientist, five years prior to the series. Jenny is Earth's protector, armed to the teeth with a wide range of weapons and devices, but all she really wants is to live the life of a normal teenager. She was preceded in development by eight other models; in season one, the episode "Sibling Tsunami" introduced XJs 1–8.

Jenny's friends are her next-door neighbors Brad (Chad Doreck) and Tuck Carbuckle (Audrey Wasilewski). Brad is outgoing and adventurous, and is the first actual friend Jenny makes, while Tuck is Brad's rambunctious younger brother who usually tags along on adventures. Another one of her friends is Sheldon Lee (Quinton Flynn), a somewhat stereotypical nerd who is infatuated with her. Jenny often rejects his romantic advances, but still cares for him as a friend. Fans of the show often speculate on whether Jenny would have ended up with Sheldon or Brad. Renzetti and his team seem to favor Sheldon but refuse to give any definitive answers as to how he would have ended the series if he was given a fourth season.[3]

At high school, Jenny has an ongoing rivalry with the Crust Cousins, Brit (Moira Quirk) and Tiff (Cree Summer), the popular girls in school. Dr. Wakeman often tries in vain to control her creation and keep her "daughter" focused on protecting the planet Earth. Adding to her trouble is that she is constantly being dogged by the all-robotic Cluster Empire, whose queen, Vexus (Eartha Kitt), wants her to join their world of robots (by force if necessary). Despite it all, Jenny struggles to maintain some semblance of a mostly-human life.

The special of the series, "Escape from Cluster Prime", shows that the alien planet is actually a peaceful paradise for every kind of robot. It's also revealed that Vexus has made Jenny out to be a villain due to her constant refusals to join, blaming her for the missing components that allow robots to transform; Vexus actually has them hidden, to help control the populace.

The series is set in the fictional futuristic town of Tremorton. Its themes focus on making lighthearted fun of typical teenage problems and other conventions and drama of the teenage and superhero lives, mixed up with a combination of action, adventure, sci-fi fantasy, and comedy sequences.

Production

Rob Renzetti moved from Cartoon Network to Nickelodeon to develop his own ideas as part of Fred Seibert's and Frederator Studios' Oh Yeah! Cartoons. At Nickelodeon, he developed a pilot called "My Neighbor was a Teenage Robot" which was the basis for the series. After brief stints working on Family Guy, The Powerpuff Girls, and Samurai Jack, Renzetti returned to Nickelodeon to start the Teenage Robot series.

Renzetti made 11 shorts during two seasons as a director on Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Five of these starred two characters called Mina and the Count and followed the adventures of a rambunctious little girl and her vampire best friend. He hoped that these characters might get their own series, but Nickelodeon rejected the idea. Faced with an empty slot where the sixth Mina short was slated to go, Fred Seibert tasked Renzetti to come up with three new ideas. One of these was about a teenaged girl whose boyfriend was a robot. After further thought, Renzetti merged the two characters to create Jenny, a robot with the personality of a teenaged girl.

On October 17, 2005, the show's crew announced on their blog that the show had been cancelled, and the third season would be the last: "The executives love the show but the ratings aren't good enough for them to give us more episodes."[4][5] After the show ended, Renzetti left for Cartoon Network Studios, working on Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and The Cartoonstitute, before moving on to become supervising producer for Gravity Falls.

Home media

"See No Evil", "The Great Unwashed", "Future Shock", "A Robot for All Seasons", "Hostile Makeover", and "Gridiron Glory" were previously on Nick Picks DVD compilations. As of December 12, 2011, seasons 1, 2, and 3 are available on DVD exclusive to Amazon.com in region 1. The full series was released across six discs by Beyond Home Entertainment in Australia on February 5, 2012.[6]

DVD name No. of
episodes 		Release date Episodes include
Nick Picks Vol. 1 1 United States May 24, 2005 1x09 Hostile Makeover
Nick Picks Vol. 2 United States October 18, 2005 Grid Iron Glory
Nick Picks Vol. 3 United States February 7, 2006 1x06 See No Evil
Nick Picks Vol. 4 United States June 6, 2006 The Great Unwashed
Nick Picks Holiday United States September 26, 2006 2x01 A Robot For All Seasons
Nick Picks Vol. 5 United States March 13, 2007 2x02a Future Shock
My Life as a Teenage Robot: Season 1 (DVD-R format) 13 United States December 12, 2011 All episodes from the first season
My Life as a Teenage Robot: Season 2 (DVD-R format) 14 All episodes from the second season
My Life as a Teenage Robot: Season 3 (DVD-R format) 13 All episodes from the third and final season
My Life as a Teenage Robot: The Complete Series 40 Australia February 5, 2012 All episodes from the entire series

Episodes

Main article: List of My Life as a Teenage Robot episodes
SeasonSegmentsEpisodesOriginally aired
First airedLast airedNetwork
PilotDecember 4, 1999 (1999-12-04)Nickelodeon
12613August 1, 2003 (2003-08-01)February 27, 2004 (2004-02-27)
22414December 8, 2004 (2004-12-08)September 9, 2005 (2005-09-09)
32613October 4, 2008 (2008-10-04)[Note 1]May 2, 2009 (2009-05-02)[Note 1]Nicktoons (U.S.)[Note 1]

Broadcast

Nickelodeon debuted My Life as a Teenage Robot on August 1, 2003 at 8:30 PM.[7][better source needed] The show was a part of Nickelodeon's Saturday night programming block called SNICK on August 2, 2003 and briefly was a part of the TEENick lineup on August 2003 to June 2004. The first season ended on February 27, 2004 with "The Wonderful World of Wizzly / Call Hating".

The second season (which was originally set to air on October 1, 2004) was pushed back to December 8, 2004 with the Christmas episode "A Robot for All Seasons". A new second season episode was not aired until January 24, 2005.[8] In the second season, a 48-minute, two-part TV movie entitled "Escape from Cluster Prime" (which was nominated for an Emmy in 2006)[9] aired. Reruns of the series aired on Nicktoons from August 1, 2003 to May 15, 2016.

References

  1. ^ "Band Aids and Teenage Robots". The Teenage Roblog. Retrieved April 8, 2016.
  2. ^ "My Life as a Teenage Robot Awards and Nominations".
  3. ^ AWN. "Dr. Toon: Nuts and Bolts With Rob Renzetti | AWN | Animation World Network". AWN. Retrieved September 21, 2011.
  4. ^ "Band Aids and Teenage Robots". Teenageroblog.blogspot.com. October 17, 2005. Retrieved September 21, 2011.
  5. ^ "XJWriter is No More!". Teenageroblog.blogspot.com. October 25, 2005. Retrieved September 21, 2011.
  6. ^ "My Life As A Teenage Robot Season 1 – 3". Beyond Home Entertainment. Retrieved September 26, 2013.
  7. ^ [1] Archived November 27, 2005, at the Wayback Machine
  8. ^ http://65.98.113.4/schedule/displaySeries.php?seriesID=309&networkID=19 Schedule for "My Life as a Teenage Robot" on Nicktoons
  9. ^ "Complete list of prime-time Emmy nominations". Nytimes.com. December 31, 1969. Retrieved September 21, 2011.

External links

Template:Nickelodeon original series and Nicktoons


Cite error: There are <ref group=Note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=Note}} template (see the help page).

Retrieved from "https://en.chped.com/w/index.php?title=My_Life_as_a_Teenage_Robot&oldid=809432464"