Who Are The Wild Thornberrys

[Latanya Hariri]

TheWild Thornberrys is an American animated television series created by Arlene Klasky, Gbor Csup, Steve Pepoon, David Silverman, and Stephen Sustarsic for Nickelodeon. The series portrays the zany hijinks of a family of wildlife documentary filmmakers known as the Thornberrys, which consist of the nature documentary television host Nigel, his wife and camera operator Marianne, their 16-year-old daughter Debbie, their younger daughter Eliza, their adopted son Donnie, and a chimpanzee named Darwin. The series focuses in particular on Eliza, who has a magical ability to communicate with animals.[1] The Thornberry family travels to every continent and wildlife environment in the ComVee, a recreational vehicle equipped with safety mechanisms to handle any terrain or body of water, to document their journeys in detail, with typical episodes involving Eliza befriending an animal and subsequently finding herself in peril.

Originally pitched by Klasky Csupo as an adult animated sitcom for Fox,[2] the series was then retooled as a family-friendly animated series for Nickelodeon and premiered on September 1, 1998, as the eleventh Nicktoon and the third overall produced by the studio following Rugrats and Aaahh!!! Real Monsters.[3] It ran for 5 seasons containing 91 episodes in total, with the series finale airing on June 11, 2004.

The series' fourth season premiere, "The Origin of Donnie", is a television special focusing on Donnie Thornberry's life before he was adopted by the family. A feature film, The Wild Thornberrys Movie, in which Eliza embarks on a quest to save a cheetah cub from poachers, was theatrically released on December 20, 2002. Rugrats Go Wild, a crossover feature film with Nickelodeon's Rugrats, was released in theaters on June 13, 2003. Spin-off media include DVD releases and three video games.

"This is me Eliza Thornberry, part of your average family. I got a dad, a mom and a sister. There is Donnie; we found him and Darwin, he found us. Oh yeah, about our house. It moves, 'cause we travel all over the world. You see, my dad hosts this nature show, and my mom shoots it. Okay, so we're not that average. And between you and me, something amazing happened... and now I can talk to animals. It's really cool, but totally secret. And you know what? Life's never been the same."

The series focuses around a nomadic family of documentary filmmakers known as the Thornberrys, famous for their televised wildlife studies, as they travel the world in the "Comvee", a large, amphibious, multifunctional overland motorhome which doubles as their base of operations. It primarily centers on the family's younger daughter Eliza, and her secret gift of being able to communicate with animals,[1] which was bestowed upon her after having freed a shaman masquerading as a trapped warthog.

The gift enables her to talk to the Thornberrys' pet chimpanzee Darwin. Together, the pair frequently venture through the wilderness, befriending many species of wild animals along the way, and discern moral truths and lessons through either their experiences or a particular animal species's lifestyle; often this means simply assisting the creatures by which they become acquainted in their difficulties.

The series was designed to have a focus on parents, after focus groups run by Klasky and Csupo uncovered that children were talking about the real struggles of the parent-child relationship; this was opposed to Nickelodeon's view of only featuring kids in children's programming.[6] It was also designed with the potential of being used in science curriculums. To accomplish this, the production crew hired a specialist who did research on different regions of the world, different cultures, and different species of animals, all of which were provided to the writers to help them develop ideas for episodes.[5]

Paramount Home Entertainment (through its Nickelodeon home entertainment banner) released all five seasons on DVD in Region 1 via Amazon.com through its CreateSpace Manufacture-on-demand program in 2010. Season 1 was released on June 24, 2010,[7] and Seasons 2 through 5 were released on December 1, 2010.[8]

A video game based on the television series titled The Wild Thornberrys: Animal Adventures was released only for PlayStation on November 8, 2000.[18] During this time, another game was released, The Wild Thornberrys: Rambler on PC and Game Boy Color on August 7, 2000, and November 2000 respectively. The Wild Thornberrys Chimp Chase was released only for the Game Boy Advance on October 1, 2001.[19] Characters from the series also appear in the Nickelodeon crossover games Nicktoons Racing, Nickelodeon Party Blast, Nicktoons: Freeze Frame Frenzy, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl and its sequel (where Nigel is voiced by Jim Meskimen), and Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis.[20]

Common Sense Media gave the series a rating of 5 stars, praising it for its ability to encourage young viewers to be empathetic toward animals, to want to find out about other cultures and ways of life, and to understand the vastness and diversity of the world.[23] Knight Ridder called the series "sympathetic".[24] The Native Voice complimented the series on its commitment to fun, adventure, detail, accuracy, and honesty.[25]

Main characters are white--they actively seek and embrace different cultures...and species. Some sibling put-downs. Very clever humor, especially from the guest animal characters and the witty chimp Darwin. Eliza is a smart female character who shows a strong love for science and animals.

Parents need to know that, although the appreciation for animals The Wild Thornberrys promotes is admirable, they may need to remind young fans that animals encountered in the wild should be approached with caution. Also, Eliza's sister Debbie is often snotty and superficial to the point of giving teenagers a bad name.

THE WILD THORNBERRYS is about a filmmaking family that dashes to a new corner of the globe in each episode -- to Finland, Australia, India, or the Everglades. The Thornberry kids don't attend regular school, they're on vacation all the time, they live in a camper, and the protagonist has a secret power no one knows about. Eliza Thornberry (voiced by Lacey Chabert), not only can speak to animals, but she also meets click-talking Kung people, Maasai, and Aborigines and interacts with everything from aye-ayes, to wombats, to humpback whales.

The premise of the series is tailored to a child's imagination and teaches kids to appreciate animals, to be curious about different ways of living and the vastness of the world. The Thornberrys live a fantasy life, for sure, but the series explores the real customs of many different cultures and the real behavior and habitats of countless kinds of animals.

The Wild Thornberrys also delves into family relationships. OK, so a wild boy found in the jungle and a chimp happen to live with this family, but Eliza and teenager Debbie (Danielle Harris) still struggle to overcome sibling rivalry, learn responsibility, and form independent identities. The show presents a nuclear family living an alternative lifestyle; as a result, even episodes with traditional growing-up themes come across as fresh and new compared to many home and school-centered family shows. Also worth noting is the married relationship here, which is surprisingly rich and multidimensional compared to most marriages seen on television. The Thornberry parents (Tim Curry and Jodi Carlisle), true partners and great role models, include their family in the realization of their own dreams and in the pursuit of travel, creativity, and adventure.

Families can talk about the bickering between the sisters in The Wild Thornberrys . Is it realistic, or do you just find it grating? Young and old viewers may also discuss what a loving sibling relationship should look like.

Well, this one seems like a nice change of pace. After watching a couple of Nicktoons that had a largely interchangeable premise, we have one that actually did something a little bit offbeat. The Wild Thornberrys was a show about a family exploring the wilds of the world, because their father runs a documentary series. In some ways, it's one of the most unique of the Nicktoons. In other ways though, it has problems that do prevent it from being something truly special or unique.

The show stars Eliza Thornberry, the daughter of the Thornberry family. She often gets into wacky hijinks with her chimpanzee, Darwin. I assume he's named as such because Eliza has made it her life's mission to disprove Darwin's theory of natural selection. Heh...this is gonna be an interesting show because it has...interesting problems, unique from any other Nicktoon. And that's that it tries to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to realism and fantasy.

One of the premises of the show is that Eliza has the ability to talk to animals, provided that she doesn't tell any human beings that she can do so. I assume that the animals are allowed to know. At the start of the series, this is actually really underutilized believe it or not. In the very first episode, Eliza doesn't talk to animals for like the first half of it, and even after that, it barely affects the episode at all. This is one of the worst things that you can do with an interesting premise, and that's just not use it. I mean talking to animals, it sounds like a cool power. But throughout the first season, Eliza barely talks to animals, and it only barely affects the plot most of the time. Sometimes, it doesn't affect the plot at all! Like the episode with the Komodo dragon. The only thing that talking to animals amounts to here is that, Eliza learns that the dragon is going to eat her. Which uh...you don't need to be able to talk to animals to learn that Komodo dragons, actually normally do not eat humans. I mean there have been incidents of them attacking and even killing humans, so, you know, don't go near them, but generally speaking they avoid interactions with humans. Let's just say that being able to understand animals, doesn't exactly make you understand animals.

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