When Rugrats hit the scene, I instantly loved it. I was 7 years old when the first episodes aired, and it was a great show. I couldn't get enough of Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, Lil & Angelica. It was great and had lots of good episodes. Then something terrible happened. For no apparent reason whatsoever, the creators decided it would be a good idea to give Tommy a brother and make a movie. What a horrible decision. Dill added NOTHING to the plot of the show except being ridiculously annoying and ruining all of the flow of the main characters. Also around this time, the writers decided they needed to take the more adult-type themes out of the show entirely and make this show as if it should be shown on Nick Jr. instead of Nickelodeon. I will never understand why they changed the show so dramatically towards their extremely younger demographic group. Rugrats had plenty of older kids and even teenagers and some adults watching regularly. Why pander to your youngest viewers who would watch the TV no matter what show was on? They lost me when they added Dill. However, I did view the show after the 2nd movie because my mom had in-home daycare and they would be watching it. The character of Chuckie's step sister was even worse than Dill. That series of episodes was even more unwatchable than the ones with just Dill. I was just saddened watching that and seeing how downhill Rugrats had fallen. It's a shame that Nickelodeon and their creative writers, did this to basically every show that was good in the early 90's. Am I right? Look at what happened to their best shows, they were either canceled or changed so dramatically that they no longer resembled that great show you once loved. Doug was sold to Disney and turned into crap. Hey Dude was canceled in it's prime. Rocko's Modern Life was given the boot for no reason. Angry Beavers was given the axe because of a disagreement with the creators wanting to keep the show the funny. Nickelodeon from 1990-1995 was great, then it just fell apart and we got stuck with a bunch of garbage mostly after that that has never recovered into anything watchable. I DVR Rugrats every night at 5:00 and 5:30 AM. Sometimes they are the original episodes and I love watching them now. Other times they are the newer ones and those just suck and I immediately delete those.
