Headscratchers / Jimmy Two-Shoes

• Does anyone else think it weird that Jimmy Parents are never seen or talk about?
  • Well, how old is Jimmy supposed to be, anyway? Not that it matters, seeing as how he's in Hell.
  • Although the premise of him getting there by having been hit by a bus was discarded in favor of a less concrete establishment of how he got to Miseryville... I'd assume that however he got there, they ended up not coming along.
• What does Heloise's lower body looks like? Not only do we never see her legs (or feet), but she moves in a way which suggests that she doesn't even have any.
  • Are you new to Limited Animation?
  • Heloise is the creator of all these complex machines and designs. She may never have had legs (she is a denizen of Miseryville, after all, and how many normal humans are there?) or she may have replaced them. I'd go with the former.
    • Actually in "Heloise's Big Secret", she does have legs and feet since she tap danced on a sewer lid to get access to her secret experiment.
  • Well, Word of God is Heloise's "a bit of a shapeshifter" (which was more or less confirmed in "The Hooded Chicken"), so it appears she only has feet when she needs to. Otherwise, she's perfectly fine with slithering around or something like that.
• Yes, and the fact that Lucy (seems a lot like the short form of Lucifer. ) If they where allowed to, I think they would outright call it Hell or a Hell-like place. Knowing American TV, even saying the word "Hell" in a kids' cartoon is considered a swear. Remember the edited DBZ HFIL? Yeah, it's pretty obvious. Another way of looking at it would be to compare it to Planet Fire from The Lex. pretty much hell in a nutshell
  • Yes. I don't know where, but this information must come from somewhere.
  • Check the link under Single Woman Seeks Good Man on the main page, it links to a few details listed by Edward Kay. I think it's pretty obvious to anyone old enough that Miseryville is Hell, and anyone young enough probably wouldn't care.
  • The theory that Miseryville is Hell seems to have been Jossed by the episode where they go to space as well as the season 2 opening, which show Miseryville is actually another planet or at least part of it.
  • Not necessarily. It could just mean that Hell isn't located on Earth.
    • It also has to be taken with a grain of salt, as in one episode, Jimmy visits the Himalayas to pick bread from a mountaintop bush to make a sandwich for a manipulative Weavil — I wish I could say it makes sense in context, but it really doesn't. Speaking of...
    • They never said it was the Himalayas. They called the bread "Himalayan bread", but this could just be Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit" since the mountains themselves are unnamed.
• If Miseryville is Hell (Or a reasonable equivalent), as is implied by various aspects (including red sky, red water, being led by a demon named Lucius, and the preoccupation with causing misery)... why is Jimmy free to leave to say, live in the woods free of rules, or go to the Himalayas to pick bread? Granted, they don't turn out to be much better than Miseryville, but still.
  • You just answered your own question. Everywhere in Miseryville is horrible, so Lucius doesn't bother to stop anyone who tries to leave. Plus, it's been established that Lucius VII is highly incompetent, at least compared to his ancestors. Not to mention, it has been shown that he's completely dependent on Heloise, who probably makes sure Jimmy's allowed to roam unharmed.
  • Lucius also doesn't really want Jimmy in Miseryville, as he constantly tries to make it happier and usually succeeds. Presumably Jimmy is allowed to stay due to his friendship with Beezy and Heloise, but he's welcome to leave at any time.
• So, according to Word of God, Lucius has some pretty terrifying powers, to the point where he can remake Miseryville on a whim. The only reason he doesn't use them is to prove he can rule without them. Fair enough, that sounds perfectly IC for Lucius. But it raises the question as to why he hasn't used these in some other circumstances. In both "Rocket Jimmy" and "Air Force None", he's put into some life threatening situations that he could easily get out of with these powers, but doesn't, even when he's clearly panicking. Is he really willing to die before he admits he needs them?
  • It's possible since he's so used to not using them, in times of panic, he forgets he has them entirely.
• Anybody else notice how the water is Off-Model in the episode "Wish You Weren't Here"? It's blue instead of red. It was probably just a mistake on the animator's part, but it still kind of bothers me.
  • It happened again in Lucius Lost. Maybe the regular water is blue, while Miseryville water is red (or, likely, lava).
    • This makes sense, the color of the water could vary depending on location. There's been explicitly red water in previous episodes, so it may depend on where exactly the water is.
    • If the red water is lava, why is it a perfectly safe recreational activity to drink and swim in it? Wait a minute... if Miseryville is Hell, then perhaps it was originally just people being tortured in the lava under Lucius I, and the land was somehow added in when people got too used to swimming in lava to be made miserable by it.
• Does anyone think Jimmy acted kind of OOC in "Heloise, Schmeloise"? I mean, most of the episode with the Oblivious to Love thing even in the most obvious circumstances was IC, but throwing Heloise in a mud puddle so Schmeloise and himself could literally walk over her seems veering into jerkass territory.
• How old is Heloise? She seems a bit young to be a serial killer, but then again I've heard of murderers who have killed at young ages.
  • 14, according to Word of God. I think she's just meant to be short/tiny for her age.
  • 14 is still young for a serial killer but.. Meh.
• Has Word of God actually confirmed the whole "Heloise and Jimmy were humans that got hit by a bus and were sent to hell together" thing? The show seems to imply that Jimmy came there from some other location, the second theme song states, "He's not from around here, if you know what I mean!" and in "Bird Brained" Heloise of all people sarcastically says, "Remind me where you're from, again?" when Jimmy is surprised that Miseryville birds can talk. Word of God confirmed that Heloise is human, so if she died at the same time Jimmy did, why would she ask that?
  • I believe Edward Kay has said that was the original pitch. It might simply not apply anymore.
• How does Saffi have a house, being how she is?
  • I've only watched the first season, but maybe she has a guardian or caretaker?
• Why are Jimmy and Heloise seemingly the only humans in Miseryville? Did no other humans ever get sent to Hell?
  • My theory is that after someone has been in Miseryville for a while they turn into a monster, possibly once they are miserable enough too. Maybe Jimmy and Heloise haven't been changed yet because they haven't been there long enough/aren't miserable enough.
    • I would expect that in 2 years there would be time for a fair few people to end up there, enough to be noticeable, if it's a time issue. Makes more sense if it's how miserable they are.
  • Maybe the All-Merciful God hypothesis holds true in-universe, and Hell is for demons only. Word of God is that Jimmy is there by accident and Heloise is Ambiguously Human. Wait a minute, what if Heloise is one of the Nephilim...
• In the episode, "I've Totally Shredded My Cheese", why did Jimmy say that in the first place? If he said, "I've totally shredded my jeans." that would have made sense because the crotch of his pants were destroyed, so why did he say cheese?
  • Rule of Funny.
• In the episode where Miseryville is taken over by an evil doll, why does Lucius say "Good work, Two-Shoes" at the end when it was Samy who defeated the doll? You could argue that Lucius never appreciates Samy, but the same applies to Jimmy, so what gives?
• As much as I enjoy the show, why on earth did Edward Kay and Sean Scott try to make a cartoon about Hell for kids? I've seen sketches of concept art (Adolf Hitler was one of the characters sketched!) and some of it is actually really violent and disturbing (Jimmy tearing off his own skin with blood, serial killers making up the cast). Not to mention the pilot is obviously Hell (as opposed to being similar/probably) and anyone would tell you that is completely non-kid-friendly. Were they trying to test religious censors, pitching their idea to the wrong channel, or just being stupid/edgy?
  • I would guess that they couldn't get an adult cartoon aired.
  • Well, apparently, Jimmy Two-Shoes was originally meant for a tween/teen audience similar to some contemporary Teletoon cartoons like Fred's Head, Total Drama, and 6Teen - all of which really pushed on the definition of "kids" show (Teletoon seemed to be trying for edgier cartoons in the mid and late 2000s). Teletoon approved of the pilot version, but Disney bowlderized it for international distribution. Additionally, a lot of the sketched concepts by Phil Postma (like Hitler) were never meant to be used. They were just exercises in capturing the intended dark-comedy mood.