YMMV / Out of Jimmy's Head

• Bile Fascination: Its notoriously bad reception, along with its now former status as lost media, have both inevitably warranted this. Many people who don't even remember the show from when it was airing have gone to see episodes online primarily to see if the show is as bad as people say it was. It is actually because of this that the show was eventually saved from being lost, even if it did take a good 15 years for the remaining episodes to be found again.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • The Appleday toons do seem to have a few fans, if the Fan Art floating around means anything. Also, comments on TV.com and YouTube state that some viewers only watched the show for the cartoon characters (except for maybe Golly). In addition to that, Tux the penguin being voiced by Tom Kenny might have something to do with it.
  • Yancy, Jimmy's adopted Alien-American sister is also considered one of the show's few good characters, thanks to her no-nonsense Only Sane Woman shtick with Sonny.
• Informed Wrongness: Jimmy is meant to been seen as selfish for abandoning Craig in favor of his new life, but Craig has treated Jimmy so horribly for his own selfish needs that it only makes Craig come off as hypocritical for calling Jimmy out. By abandoning Craig, Jimmy is pretty much doing the right thing.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Craig, Jimmy's horrendous excuse for a "best friend", is far more despised than Sonny, a Psychopathic Manchild who wants to kill Jimmy to further his own goals. The fact that the latter is Laughably Evil also helps his case.
• Just Here for Godzilla: There are plenty of people who only watched the show for the cartoon characters.
• Narm: The scene where Jimmy gets hit by the train has many problems. He runs straight into it without looking, the train itself is moving too slow to realistically cause any damage, Jimmy just gets sent flying even though logic dictates he's just get knocked to the ground, nobody even seems to notice it until the Smash Cut to the next scene, and the editing for Jimmy's movements themselves is incredibly noticeable.
• Older Than They Think:
  • An entire series built around the Roger Rabbit Effect had been attempted once before in the form of Philbert, a TV pilot made by Warner Bros. in the 60s about a cartoonist interacting with the character from his comic strip.
  • Although this was the first major live-action production that Cartoon Network had produced and aired, the network had shown live-action footage on before and used to air The Banana Splits (which was a mix of live-action and animation) in the 90s.
    • Additionally, despite Cartoon Network advertising this as their "first live-action series," the network's first original program to use live-action material was actually Big Bag, predating the pilot movie by ten years (though in this case, Big Bag would have a live-action story reminiscent of Sesame Street (as it was co-produced with the Children's Television Workshop) sandwiched by recurring animated segments).
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: In the movie, Craig and Golly are just jerks to Jimmy throughout much of the film, with only Golly apologizing for his actions at the climax. The TV series, meanwhile, shows them taking a (moderate) level in kindness and, in Craig's case, not only has him go through Character Development, but also punishes him appropriately whenever he does a thing.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • In "Bad Fad," one of the kids Craig is babysitting is Brick Heck.
  • R&B singer Tinashe was a cast member on the series as The Other Darrin for Robin.
• The Scrappy:
  • Craig may in fact be the most hated character from the movie. He's a terrible friend who takes advantage of Jimmy and has No Sympathy for anyone as he tries to be a part of the popular kids. Far less so in the show, however.
  • Mr. Roberts is this for being the worst traits of the Bumbling Dad trope taken up to eleven, to the point of allowing the Big Bad to rent a room in the house, and somehow thinking Sonny was his wife in disguise despite having seen them right next to each other at several points during the movie. He's also constantly shoehorned into the more intense/emotional scenes for jokes.
• So Okay, It's Average: Those who don't hate the show tend to view it as this.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • Most of the time the animation does look convincing...when the camera stays still. In a particular scene where the camera pans on all three axis, Golly looks like he's shrinking. There's also a noticeable amount of scenes where the cartoons are acting in empty live-action backgrounds as opposed to actually interacting with the humans, which is generally agreed to be the only way to make this particular effect look convincing (the scene of Jimmy and Tux doing a tango cheek-to-cheek in the first episode is one of the better-looking shots).
  • The TV series, due to being on a significantly more crunched deadline (coming out roughly nine months after the original film), was very prone to this; effects often have a hint of pixelation (most prominently with an opera-singing duck with an obvious green screen), and some of the animation has tracking errors and/or glaring cuts because of it.
  • The TV series uses obvious computer effects even for things that really shouldn't need it, like ketchup squirting out of a bottle and superimposing footage on TV screens rather than just recording it on a DVD and playing it.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • It being a live-action production with cartoon characters alone has drawn comparisons to Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
  • Some people also see it as one to Lizzie McGuire, as both are live-action middle school sitcoms featuring animated consciences of the main character.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Though it's still terrible, some people have noted that the show is at least a marginal improvement over the movie. The plots are more coherent (despite still being nonsensical in nature), Jimmy's no longer a Flat Character, certain characters like Craig and Golly evolved from Jerkasses to having a heart of gold, the animation for the cartoon characters is a great deal better, the acting and writing are far better delivery-wise, background characters with little screentime are made into Ascended Extras, and it's overall far less mean-spirited in tone. It's like the show takes place in an entirely different universe than the movie, and it feels much better off because of it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: It is generally agreed that the show's premise is its only redeeming quality, since it was actually pretty unique, albeit wacky. Unfortunately, the execution left a lot to be desired, and the show could have actually been awesome, if only they had hired a much more talented writing team.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: The voice acting (whether from the main cartoons or one-off guests) was actually pretty solid and a big reason why the cartoon characters were viewers' favorite parts.
• Uncertain Audience: A big reason why the show failed. Many longtime CN fans were not happy about a live action series being aired on a network that was previously exclusively meant for cartoon shows. Unfortunately, even those who were open minded to the idea still ended up hating the show, due to its overall quality, writing and acting. The show failed to find an audience, so much so that it became lost for a while, as a result of no one caring enough about the show to actually archive episodes.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Craig is supposed to be Jimmy's best and only real friend, and yet he keeps using him, brushing off his inputs, accusing him of being a bad friend for things that are out of his control, and only cares about hanging out with the popular kids... and yet we're meant to feel sorry for him when Jimmy can't go to his party and cheer when he chooses his so-called friend over his career as Milt Appleday's successor. At this point, we can pretty much assume Jimmy only hangs out with him because Robin's his sister.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Jimmy is quite the empty vessel of a character. The most his personality amounts to is his crush on Robin, and that's it. He really only exists to have the wacky cartoon characters have someone to bounce their antics off of.

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