Thirty-seven years ago today, one of the most chaotic movie-based cartoons ever made hit television screens. In the mid-1980s, the FCC rolled back its guidelines for children’s TV allowing Saturday morning cartoons to become the wild west for advertisers. Toy companies could essentially create 30 minute commercials for their products. Movie studios didn’t follow far behind. Police Academy, a raunchy comedy franchise, RoboCop, a violent corporate satire, and even Rambo, a film series rooted in a veteran’s PTSD: all adult-oriented cinematic experiences that were turned into animated series replete with merchandise and toys of their own. One series that came out of this pipeline helped cement a movie villain into a crowd-pleasing best friend and completely changed the dynamic of its core characters. You only had to say his name three times.
Beetlejuice: The Animated Series premiered on ABC September 9th, 1989. Tim Burton, an animator in his own right, developed the show with Executive Producer David Geffen. Nelvana, the studio behind classic Star Wars cartoons Ewoks and Droids, handled the animation duties on the series. The show became a hit. It even won a 1990 Daytime Emmy Award, an award it had to share with The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. The show would run for 94 episodes across two different broadcast networks, ABC and FOX. The show is now available in its entirety for free on Tubi.
In Beetlejuice, Lydia Deetz finds out she has the ability to see and speak with ghosts that are living in her new house. When the Maitlands are threatened with an exorcism, Lydia summons a demon to save them. She becomes the object of Beetlejuice’s schemes to stay in the mortal world. The movie ends with Beetlejuice getting his comeuppance after trying to marry Lydia. The cartoon throws all of that out the window and replaces the predatory dynamic with a real friendship. The misunderstood poster child of the burgeoning pre-Hot Topic goth movement, Lydia takes advantage of being able to call Beetlejuice to explore the Neitherworld, the cartoon iteration of the film’s “Afterlife”. The cartoon also let the movie’s resident ghosts, The Maitlands, rest in peace.
Voiced by Stephen Ouimette as Beetlejuice and Alyson Court as Lydia, their antics would often get them into trouble, forcing the pair to constantly rescue each other from other ghouls or worse, sandworms. Beetlejuice remained selfish, dishonest, and constantly trying to get one over on people alive or dead. Lydia, however, gave the ghoul a moral compass. Beetlejuice became her chaotic best friend instead of the monster she had to defeat.
The animated series also replaced how people look at Lydia Deetz. Winona Ryder’s memorable bright red wedding dress is replaced in the show with a red spider-webbed poncho. The character swaps out her school uniform for the poncho whenever she bounds into misadventure with the supernatural con artist. Cosplayers that want to step out as Lydia Deetz have often chosen to recreate the spiderwebs over the wedding dress.
In 1990, a little sanity returned to the world of broadcast cartoons with the passage of the Children’s Television Act. The law officially targeted excessive advertising and lack of educational programming, but it arrived amid a larger pushback on violent and adult-leaning cartoons. The writing was on the wall for the strange pipeline that had turned the likes of RoboCop and Rambo into kids’ shows. Beetlejuice aired its final episodes in 1991. No matter how many times viewers said his name, the “Ghost with the Most” wasn’t coming back.
Twenty-seven years after it ended, the spirit of the cartoon was revived when Beetlejuice was adapted into a stage musical. While the Broadway hit follows the plot of the movie, it lifted several aspects of the animated series to make Beetlejuice and Lydia into more of an odd couple than antagonists. Their mutual loneliness gives them an emotional connection that was absent in the 1988 film. The musical’s rapid-fire jokes, sympathetic eponymous lead, and central Lydia-Beetlejuice dynamic all hew closer to the cartoon.
When Tim Burton returned to make Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, it’s hard not to notice that the now older Lydia and Beetlejuice have a little more patience for each other. After years of viewing the pair as partners, audiences had a desire to see how the two would play off each other now. Ryder is definitely exasperated throughout the film. But there is a fun dynamic in the sequel between her and Michael Keaton’s dashing demon that wouldn’t land if we hadn’t gotten roughly 34 hours worth of animated adventures to cement the relationship.
However you take your Beetlejuice, the story of an outsider connecting with someone from a completely different world still resonates. The cartoon may have explored the wackier side of death, but it also made it clear that there was nothing to be afraid of. So when you want to catch up with an old, pinstripe-laden pal you just have to open Tubi. No name-calling required.
