Cartoons you’ll want to watch with your kids
Anyone with little kids knows that kids’ TV can be intolerable: Shrill, improbable, and skull-numbingly boring. (Those interminable pauses on Dora The Explorer where the kid-audience is supposed to answer the question Dora just asked on TV kill us.) Luckily, this Den of Geek! list has you covered with shows you might actually enjoy watching with younger members of your family. Notable mentions go out to Peppa Pig for tackling single parent families, promoting tolerance on issues of class and race, and showcasing strong female leads; and Adventure Time, whose brightly colored and action-packed shows will appeal to little ones but whose humour is pitched to adults.
And then there are animated series definitely not made for kids, many of which tackle serious issues better than most shows. Cracked leads off with one of our favorites, Rick and Morty, and its explanation of nihilism: When Morty tries to explain to his sister — who just found out she was an accident and probably made her parents’ lives worse — that he’s actually a different Morty from another dimension, he rounds off this revelation with: "Don't run. Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's going to die. Come watch TV." And there it is. Other notable mentions go to Steven Universe for dealing with trauma in ways we haven’t seen elsewhere, and Big Mouth for its hilarious and closely-observed treatment of adolescence.