In May 2014, Stuart Snyder, the man responsible for single-handedly destroying Toonami, bringing in live-action schlock to CARTOON Network, establishing the "NO GIRLS ALLOWED"* policy for cartoons, declaring that boys only like comedy (as a member of that demographic, I can assure you that such a statement is completely asinine), and ultimately killing every good show the network made resigned as the President of the Network. And oh what glorious day it was.
If Cartoon Network made this series as an apology for the sins of Snyder, then it succeeded. This series is dark, atmospheric, weird and pretty scary at times. It's not bright, it's not dumbed-down, it doesn't hold back on the creep factor, especially for Tim Curry's character, Auntie Whispers, and it takes its audience seriously. And even though the cast has a lot of celebrity actors (aside from Tim Curry, they also got Christopher Lloyd and cast Elijah Wood as one of the two main leads), they got them because they knew these guys were perfect for the roles. The story is revealed a snippet at a time and from what little I've gathered from the two episodes it strikes me as being just as dark as the setting and atmosphere.
Oh, and just to put icing on the cake, they stuck the old Cartoon Network Studios animated logo on to the end of it like they used to for shows like Samurai Jack and Power Puff Girls, followed by the classic Cartoon Network logo with the Cartoon Cartoons theme dubbed over it.
They're back, and this is only the beginning of what I hope is another era akin to that of the late-90s/early-2000s.
*IMDb does not allow me to spell the word "GIRLS" with a backwards "R". Please pretend that it did.
