Answer for question 4398.

[Error: unknown template qotd]This is a hard question. I suppose the first book is probably my favorite; I love the opening that deals with the Shire and the relationship between Bilbo and Frodo. I love the interaction of Frodo and Gandalf and the forming of the Fellowship of the Ring. And I love that it followed all the characters all the way along, not dividing into two parts to follow separate sets of characters, as the other two do after the Fellowship breaks up. The division is rather irritating, story-wise. I wish he would have alternated chapters following the two groups instead of having one whole half of the books devoted to one group and the other half devoted to the other group.

Frodo has always been my favorite character. I feel for him and his tortured quest and how he becomes so bogged down and changed by it that in the end he feels he can no longer stay in the Shire he loves, the Shire he gave up everything to protect while the majority of the residents don't understand or appreciate his sacrifice and just think he was off foolishly adventuring. It must have been horrible for him, to feel that he was becoming such a burden on Sam with his wife Rosie and that he needed to get away so that Sam could devote all his time to his family.

I must say, though, I honestly prefer the films over the books. The casting is perfect, the scenery absolutely breathtaking, and the music extremely powerful and moving. And for the most part, with the exception of how they changed the Shelob's Lair segment, I feel that every one of the changes actually improved the story and eliminated things unnecessary to the main plot. I also like that they actually gave Arwen something to do. I was stunned at how little she appears in the books (including the appendix where Tolkien shows how she and Aragorn met). And I read the books before I saw the films, I should point out.

Ah, the '80s.

So, of course the inevitable happened: I got curious about the 1980s Care Bears series and looked up some.

LOL, the clips in the theme for the Nelvana-produced Care Bear Family version were very DuckTales-ish. The show itself was kind of "... Eh? What the ... ?" but not for the reasons one might think.

The first episode I tried had a couple of morons randomly trying to catch the Bears and failing in stupidly comic ways, all while the Bears are trying to help a boy gain confidence in himself. Apparently those idiots (a shrew named Shreeky, how appropriate, and the 1980s version of Beastly) are main characters and those kind of antics probably happen a lot. It was annoying to me, cliche cartoonish, and distracted from what really should have been the only plot, that of helping the kid.

Apparently sometimes there's a grandmother Care Bear who tells stories to her young grandkids involving the other Bears' adventures. Or at least, that's what I thought at first. I became thoroughly confused by a story she told about a mysterious phantom haunting a theatre, because the phantom ended up being Grumpy, only this was a Grumpy none of the others knew. I realized that in spite of Gram acting like the story was real, it must either be fiction (in their verse, I mean) or else it was real, but didn't actually involve the Bears, and she just stuck them in the story to make it more interesting for her grandkids. After reading through the episode guide, I see that there are quite a few episodes involving Gram's stories, some of which definitely are fiction because they use the main characters and take place centuries in the past, like an ancient Egypt one. LOL. Actually, I really liked the grandma character; she was sensible and wise and loving all at once. I was just confused by the story. Ignoring what made it confusing, however, it was really fun. I'm all for things about haunted theatres.

Grumpy absolutely bewildered me in both episodes. He ... really wasn't grumpy. In fact, he really wasn't anything; he was quite bland. The only time he acted grumpy at all was when he "hmphed" over jumping on a trampoline and then was frustrated when he went flying off and crashed into a barrel. "Why do these things always happen to me?!" he exclaimed. But that really wasn't being grumpy, especially when such things really did keep happening to him. It was a little strange how he kept having such bad luck! Otherwise, he just went full-force into the latest mission without trying to bring a different perspective on the situation, etc. It could have been just about any character along and it probably wouldn't have changed the plot one bit (except for always falling into barrels).

My puzzlement over his behavior isn't just because of how he acts in the most recent series. From the very earliest drawings of him in the 1980s, he was clearly always meant to be grumpy and cynical. Even when I didn't know his name, that always stuck out in my mind as a kid. The recent series captures that very well. The Nelvana series leaves me in a perpetual state of "..." He seems, maybe, more sad than grumpy and doesn't always have confidence in himself. That could be interesting for a character, but somehow I don't like the thought of a character called Grumpy being sad instead. It could give kids the wrong message and cause them to confuse grumpiness with sadness. Those are really two very different feelings. And yes, sometimes people can act grumpy when they're really sad, but not always.

That was all the Nelvana-produced series. I also tried a DiC-produced episode, and I liked it much, much better. There were no idiots bumbling through trying to catch Care Bears; it focused completely on the main plot of helping the troubled kid (although I felt that she was so bratty and one-dimensional that her change of heart came a little unbelievably, but I liked seeing her switch gears anyway). Everybody went to save some kids she'd tricked into going into an old abandoned house and there was lots of fun with secret panels and tunnels and such. From the episode summaries, it looks like Grumpy is more appropriately grumpy in the DiC series; I'm going to try some more of those.

The Nelvana version bewildered me so much that the only dreams I can remember having involved the Care Bears from that version of the series. **headdesk.** Apparently my mind was trying to make sense of that, and their Grumpy. I think I need a little brain bleach from seeing the odd things in that version; maybe I'll watch my disc of the Welcome to Care-a-Lot episode again today.

Of course, many of the fans of the Nelvana series hate on the recent series. I saw several commenters who bashed the new series and preferred the old. I wonder if their complaints are because of the Bears' personalities, the slice-of-life format, or the CGI. I imagine there's some fans somewhere who appreciate whatever good every series has to offer; maybe I'll start looking for a fan forum soon.