Alvin and the Chipmunks (1998 Paramount TV series)/Tropes

Alvin and the Chipmunks is an American animated television series featuring The Chipmunks, produced by Bagdasarian Productions in association with Paramount Television Animation. It was the first incarnation of The Chipmunks to be presented in Dolby Surround.

It aired on CBS and Nickelodeon (despite that Nickelodeon Animation Studios was not being involved with the show's production) from May 7, 1998 to April 18, 2005.

General

 * Animation Bump: The episodes animated by TMS, Rough Draft Korea and Wang Film Productions.
 * Also, the Halloween specials (in a similar manner to The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror) were animated by PTA's Canadian subsidiary for not just the first Halloween special, but for the entirety of season 1.
 * Art Evolution: The show started off with Disney style-animation. But by the second season, the animation started to take a noticeable downgrade in quality throughout the end of the series run. By the end of the second season, the animation somehow became even cleaner and more on-model which would carry on the legacy with the third season.
 * Cerebus Syndrome: The episodes started off the same as the later Ruby-Spears episodes, but the writing quality got better and the plots began to be more serious, realistic, and story-driven.
 * Character Development: Dave became more understandable and smarter towards Alvin in the second season, comparing to what he acted in the first season. This was due to the writing toning down many of the cartoonish humor and ditching the formulaic sillier plots in favor of more serious, realistic, and story-driven plots.
 * Alvin was not that much of a troublemaker as he was in the first three seasons and the first half of the fourth season, but in the last half of the fourth season onward, he started telling the truth more and started to show some maturity, which will lead to the final episode of the series set to twenty years later after the show's premiere, entitled Still Squeaky After Twenty Years.
 * Clip Show: A Chipmunk Clip Show
 * Depending on the Artist: With the notable exceptions of Wang Film Productions, Rough Draft Studios, and PTA's Canadian subsidiary (all of which would use PTA's character layouts), The show had a passel of different animation studios working on it, often leading to examples of this trope.
 * Deranged Animation: The Chipmunks and Chipettes' dream sequences in Cartoonland brings back memories to Fleischer cartoons of the late 20s to the early 30s.
 * Downer Ending: Theodore accidentally making Alvin and Simon lose the basketball game in the episode, My Brother The Basketball Champion.
 * Flashback with the Other Darrin: We get flashbacks of the 7-minute segments and 3-minute musical segments from The Alvin Show, where the voices for Alvin, Simon, and Dave were redubbed by Ross Bagdasarian, Jr. and Theodore by Janice Karman.
 * Future Me Scares Me: The 60s Chipmunks and 60s Dave meeting up with the modern Chipmunks and modern Dave in the episode, Blast From The Past.
 * Off-Model: Tokyo Movie Shinsha (TMS Entertainment) and Koko Enterprises are the only examples, as they had different drawing and animation styles and tend to avoid PTA's character layouts in favor of their own based off the storyboards.
 * Recycled Script: A few Chipmunks musical segments, such as "Swanee River" and "Chipmunk Fun", were inserted into the half-hour episodes of the series.
 * Also, the two latter segments featuring Sam Valiant are "Sam Valiant, Real Estate" and "Dude Ranch", but were extended to 22 minutes.
 * Recycled Soundtrack: Many episodes have cues reused from the 1987 film The Chipmunk Adventure and the MWS/DiC episodes of Alvin and the Chipmunks.
 * Stock Footage: The Alvin Show episodes, A Chipmunk Christmas, and the Ruby-Spears/MWS/DiC episodes of Alvin and the Chipmunks are used as part of flashbacks.
 * Vocal Evolution: Tom Kenny's voice started out as rough for Sam Valiant, but noticeably got better by the end of the series' run.
 * Also, the dialogue became even more conversational and natural thanks to Kris Zimmerman Salter's voice direction in the second season onwards.
 * We Need A Distraction:
 * Who Writes This Crap?!: An in-universe example of this trope, where Alvin finds out that all of the good stuff is cut out by DiC for their episode and is not pleased with the results of that script.

Trivia

 * Cross-Dressing Voices: Janice Karman as Theodore.
 * Keep Circulating the Tapes: 4 volumes (containing 2 episodes each from the first season) were released on Paramount Home Video in 1999. In 2001, the entire first season was released on DVD. Two more seasons were released between 2001 and 2002. The fourth season was released in 2003, and seasons 5 and 6 were released in 2005. Season 7 came out in November 2006.
 * The Other Darrin: Brian Cummings took over as Clyde Crashcup after Shepard Menken's death in 1999.
 * Talking to Himself: Ross Bagdasarian, Jr. and Janice Karman are examples of thus trope.
 * What Could Have Been: Nickelodeon had offered to give Bagdasarian and Karman an eighth season of the series, but they believed the series had run its course.
 * The eighth season was going to continue the Chipmunks Go To The Movies trilogy for DiC Entertainment, but for so far, this never happened.

YMMV

 * Awesome Music: Many songs from The Alvin Show, A Chipmunk Christmas, and the Ruby-Spears/MWS/DiC episodes of Alvin and the Chipmunks have great music. Including one of the songs from The Chipmunk Adventure, "The Girls of Rock N' Roll", originally written for 1986's The Malibu Bikini Shop.
 * Fanon: People drew fanart of Clyde Crashcup and Leonardo in their new late 80s/early 90s-style character designs.
 * Also, to a lesser extent, Stanley the Eagle and Sam Valiant drawn in Bruno Bianchi's art style as in the series.
 * Growing the Beard: The series gradually shifted from Ruby-Spears-esque silly formulaic cartoony plots and characters in the first season to much better writing in the later seasons that had real soul and originality and took creative dares for a kids' series. The only problem was that they never changed the opening sequence, so the intro still portrayed Dave as a temperamental dad with a nervous breakdown and Alvin as your typical karmic, talented and troublemaking trickster.
 * Harsher in Hindsight:
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: Alvin dangerously flying in an airplane in one episode with Dave.
 * Narm:
 * Nightmare Fuel:
 * The Scrappy: Again, Daisy Belle from The Alvin Show. Both Brittany and Daisy Belle hated each other ever since they first met in the episode Blast from the Past. Brittany even comments that she and her almost have the exact same personalities, and was glad enough that she didn't come back because it gave the Chipmunks implications of bestiality and realized The Alvin Show would've shown sexual innuendo too.
 * Screwed by the Network: The series moving to Nickelodeon in their last three seasons. By the time it moved to Nickelodeon, it was already rumoured that the series could face cancellation soon. However, PTA denied those rumors due to the series' popularity.
 * The series was later pulled from reruns in May 2006 to make room for new SpongeBob SquarePants episodes. It moved to Nicktoons Network during that month and continued re-running the series until the spring of 2012. In February 2013, it moved to TeenNick for reruns at night and remained there until late January 2015. Recently, reruns started to be shown on TeenNick's block NickSplat (formerly The Splat).
 * Shipping: Alvin and Brittany, Simon and Jeanette, Theodore and Eleanor, Dave and Samantha.