Strawman Has a Point/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Examples of Strawman Has a Point in Western Animation include:

  • In the G.I. Joe episode "Satellite Down," Storm Shadow and some of the Joes are forced to make a temporarily alliance while under attack by a tribe of apemen. Storm Shadow, while being assaulted by a group of apeman children, flings one of them against a rock, causing Lady Jaye to object. Storm Shadow defends his actions by pointing out the obvious: that they are under attack. We're supposed to think the Joes have the moral high ground, but Storm Shadow is the voice of reason.
  • This was a frequent occurrence on Captain Planet and the Planeteers with the character Wheeler, who was portrayed usually as an arrogant and obnoxious jerk and hence always wrong, despite the fact that he often made sense. In one episode, he was mocked and declared selfish due to his opposition to keeping endangered and injured animals picked up in the groups travels on Hope Island, despite the fact that not taking exotic species out of their natural habitat is a perfectly valid Green Aesop on its own. This is not the only example. He has been "wrong" to espouse two entirely contradictory positions in two separate episodes, and was somehow wrong both times. See The Complainer Is Always Wrong for details.
  • Batman: TAS:
    • Villain Lock-Up uses extreme (for a kids' cartoon) methods to keep the Arkham inmates in line, so bad that Scarecrow escapes simply to get away from him. But his justification, Arkham Asylum's "revolving door", is perfectly sound. It helps that the more monstrous inmates like The Joker were conspicuously absent, so more sympathetic ones like Harley Quinn and Ventriloquist could plead their case. And as Scarecrow shows, his improved security system isn't a hundred percent perfect—if, by some miracle, another inmate escapes, they'll probably do ANYTHING to avoid going back there. Even when Scarecrow was brought back in the first act, he was in full costume and brought in by Batman and Robin. Sympathy aside, the episode implied he'd still pull his shtick again, meaning he's still a dangerous psychotic, despite wanting to stay away from Lock-Up.
    • The Penguin from the episode "The Ultimate Thrill" who, in the transition to The New Batman Adventures, had become a Villain with Good Publicity. When Batman busts into his apartment to interrogate him about Roxy Rocket, he sarcastically asks to see Batman's search warrant before opening a can of submachine-gun fire on Batman. Considering that Batman is a vigilante operating outside of the constraints of the law, it was a rare moment in which the cartoon pointed out that he had no legal authority to bust The Penguin for anything and killing Batman on his property would have been justifiable under the Castle Doctrine.
  • In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • A number of people sided with Twilight Sparkle's outlook in "Feeling Pinkie Keen," as opposed to the lesson "sometimes it's better to just have faith" Pinkie Pie was supposed to teach. The intended lesson was "if observed data conflicts with your pet theory, theory should be revised to conform to data and not the other way around" (IOW, the basic idea behind the scientific method). Sadly, the writers forgot that simply showing the framing device without the exposition would be intuitively obvious only to STEM majors, and that they should have hung a larger lampshade.
    • The Canterlot Elite in "Sweet and Elite" are depicted as smug elitists for treating the ponies from Ponyville as hicks. Consider though that a bunch of Ponyvillians trashed the highest profile social function in Equestria, and proceeded the trash the second highest social function, one wonders if the reputation for being boorish hicks is actually somewhat deserved.
      • Complicating this, however, is the part where the reigning monarch -- and in a pre-constitutional monarchy, the reigning monarch is the sole authority on exactly what court etiquette is -- not only didn't mind her Ponyville guests acting that way, she specifically invited them for that purpose.
    • In "The Super Speedy Cyder Squeezy 5000," Flim and Flam were technically correct in their original claim; that their machine could outproduce the efforts of the Apple family alone, and although they agreed to change the conditions and then lost because they got cocky, Applejack ends the episode getting equally cocky about a pretty hollow victory—she only won the bet via labor intensification; having to double her workforce on short notice. With the lack of industrialism established, next season either the town will have to face the same sort of shortages it did in the beginning of the episode, or be forced to suspend most other facets of its economy, possibly including the more necessary ones, just so it can create a large supply of consumer goods that are nice, but far from necessary.
      • Or Applejack could just hire her five friends—or anypony else in town—again to help out with the next harvest for a day, now that she knows that they're willing to do so and that it would work. The only reason it was a problem in the first place is because the Apple Family takes self-reliance to Honor Before Reason levels.
      • In real life, the commonest solution to this very same problem faced by farms (harvest time requires extra labor that is not needed the rest of the year) is... to hire casual day labor as needed to make up the shortfall. Truth In Television.
  • In Justice League:
    • This once happened to the writers. During "A Better World," Batman and his Mirror Universe counterpart are having a battle/argument in the batcave. League!Bats is arguing that freedom is worth preserving, even at the risk of harm, while Lord!Bats argues that by taking away freedom they have ensured security. Initially, League!Bats was supposed to win the argument, but when they wrote the Armor Piercing Line, "[W]e've made a world where no eight-year-old will ever lose his parents because of some punk with a gun," for Lord!Bats, the writers could not think of any counterargument that League!Bats could give. Despite the writer's own intention of having League!Batman win, they had to re-write the scene to have Lord!Batman win since there really was no adequate response. In the end, League!Bats shows Lord!Bats the world he created, in which a man gets arrested and beaten for stating he wouldn't pay for his food and notes that mom and dad would be proud of the world he created.
    • The entire Cadmus story arc was centered on Cadmus' attempts to thwart the worst-case scenario of the league taking over the world like their Justice Lord counterparts. As it was framed in a "Who watches the Watchmen"-type debate, the strawman struck back on both sides. Amanda Waller justifies Cadmus' shady business by pointing out that the League has a Kill Sat, they have made some questionable decisions in the past, and normal people don't have a way to defend themselves against the league if they overthrew the government as in the "Justice Lords" world. In Question Authority, Green Arrow lampshades the whole thing by saying that if the League ever decided to cross the line and become the Lords, there's nothing that the rest of the world could do to stop it. In an inversion, Batman points out that Green Arrow and the league's more grounded heroes were meant in part to keep the heavy hitters honest, but they only served as the overall conscience against them Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, not an actual Restraining Bolt if they were to truly abandon their principles and attack the government.
    • This led to the Aesop being resolved on two fronts. First, The League, in a pivotal moment, proved they were not the threat the Justice Lords were by being willing to turn themselves in to the government and hold themselves accountable for the orbital satellite mishap until their names were cleared, proving that the government didn't need to be as powerful as the League to keep them in line (though Batman pointedly thought this was idiotic, and spent his time doing the name-clearing instead). Meanwhile, Cadmus' screwups (Doomsday going rogue and Luthor/Brainiac trying to assimilate the universe) showed Waller how Cadmus was ultimately responsible for the very threats to the world it was meant to guard against.
    • And finally brought full circle in "Patriot Act". Following the prior events, and Superman's speech about the league's "hubris" being partly to blame for why the world was afraid of them, the league has made better inroads towards gaining the people's trust, including dismantling the aforementioned Kill Sat. However, given the preceding events, it's still not completely unreasonable for General Eiling to use a Super Serum on himself to become an actual physical match against the league possibly going rogue. Granted, he callously puts a crowd of innocent people in danger when he attacks a group of Badass Normal leaguers but he also subverts the strawman portrayal when he listens to the crowd of civilians calling him out on his own hypocrisy. Eiling halts his rampage and leaps off, promising to return if the superheroes ever did become a threat.
  • King of the Hill:
    • Several episodes often centered on Hank opposing some person or organization that conflicted with Hank's view of life, and Hank is almost always portrayed as being the correct person in these conflicts, though many of the apparent straw men often had good enough positions. Occasionally, however, Hank would lampshade it.
    • A particular example comes in "Reborn to Be Wild", where Bobby finally gets interested in religion thanks to a group of hip skaters who are also devout Christians. Hank reacts with horror and tries to force Bobby back into more traditional avenues of worship, while the hip preacher says that Christianity needs to do more than an hour-long lecture every week if it wants to attract the younger generation. While Hank does ultimately make a good point (he doesn't want Bobby to treat faith as just another fad), this only comes at the very end of the episode, after 20 minutes where he's treated as right despite being portrayed as an intolerant Luddite.
  • The Powerpuff Girls: In the episode Equal Fights, the character Femme Fatale makes a good point about the lack of original female superheroes, though this is Played for Laughs considering the source media.
    • More accurately the girls accepted her premise but ultimately rejected her conclusion that the shortage of female superheroes and supervillains means she should be allowed to continue her crime spree.
  • One episode of Phineas and Ferb has Candace decide to give up on trying to bust her brothers. The show presents this as wrong, and Candace changes her mind at the end, but since Candace has spent many, many episodes trying and failing to bust her brothers, usually because of some sort of Deus Ex Machina, her decision actually looks sensible.
  • X-Men: Evolution:
    • When Lance joined the Brotherhood to be with Kitty, Scott doesn't trust him and eventually accuses him of being behind a series of joyrides which have totaled the various X-Vehicles. He's presented as being in the wrong for not trusting Lance and being so apprehensive, in order to motivate Lance to stick with the Brotherhood, even after Scott realizes he was being a dick about it and apologizes. However, Scott had every right to be suspicious and apprehensive as A) Lance had only recently developed feelings for Kitty, and until recently was a very aggressive criminal who regularly caused a lot of property damage, B) Was only interested in joining because of Kitty, and had no interest in learning (and when Evan showed no interest in learning, they were going to give him the boot for it), C) The moment when Scott is supposed to come off as being a dick about it was when he reactivated something in order to trip Lance up for a joke, which was massively out of character for Scott anyway, and was in retaliation for Lance's previous acts of jerkery towards Scott, D) Scott did actually try to welcome him at first, but became dissuaded when Lance screwed up two different lessons for no other reason than to be funny, and was way behind the newbies in terms of skill, regularly throwing up and coming in last in races, E) That Scott suspected him of the joyrides, as did Logan, because of both great reason (Lance had taunted Scott about it after his car was destroyed) and that when confronted about it he not only doesn't deny it, but later actually admits it in order to anger Scott. Scott was supposed to come off as being a hostile jerk, and to many he did, but even people who like Lance have noted he wasn't exactly an innocent little flower here. If he had said that he didn't do the joyrides, actually got his act together and did the lessons, and didn't respond to Scott's few attempts at being friendly with uncalled for hostility himself, he could have became a valued member of the team.
    • A small one in a later episode, Cajun Spice, had Remy kidnap Rogue, play up their similarities and show her a good time, they try to get her to help him save his adopted father. She gets mad upon finding out the truth, but comes to his rescue later, and defends him when Logan gets ready to cut him to ribbons. Except, this is forgetting that Gambit had drugged, kidnapped, threatened, and manipulated Rogue, but the fact he's doing it for a noble cause and apologizes once she finds out seems like they were trying to gloss over the fact that, well, he was being very sleazy about it.
  • In the Digital Piracy Is Evil episode of The Proud Family, enough people pirate the music that the local music store loses its customers because they don't bother to buy music from him when they can get it for free. Despite how much of the episode is obviously exaggerated; that scenario is actually plausible. Especially since they don't start losing money (and customers) when just Penny downloads music.
    • Of course, the thing that ultimately killed the storefront music outlet was... for-pay online music stores, such as iTunes. Not piracy.
  • Often occurred on Daria, though this could often be chalked up to Values Dissonance, Daria often took positions that the show's initial target audience of anti-social teens would agree with but most wouldn't, but those opposed to her would be portrayed as obviously wrong by emphasizing how shallow, stupid or petty they were, even when they weren't that unreasonable.
    • The episode where Daria ends up on the yearbook committee is a prime example. Daria convinces the teacher overseeing it to cut the clubs and sports sections from the yearbook, primarily out of spite toward those involved. The show tries to keep sympathy on Daria's side by making everyone trying to stop this be extremely underhanded and shallow, despite the fact that they just want a standard yearbook feature and Daria is mostly just being petty. In the end the sections are restored to the yearbook after one teacher getting shafted by it assaults the overseeing teacher and gives him a vicious beating, neither teacher is portrayed as sympathetic, but somewhat disturbingly the scene is simply played for laughs.
    • This also started out the case in "Fizz Ed", where thanks to budget cuts the school was forced to take sponsorship from a soda company to make up the missing money. Daria was staunchly opposed simply on the principle of corporate sponsorship of education. But early on the episode made it clear how badly the budget cuts were hurting, and the usually reasonable character of Jodie actually explained why she was OK with it. The show then makes it appear as if Daria was right all along by showing how the corporate sponsor later takes control of the actual curriculum and ends up worsening the educational value, when in fact this was never Daria's concern or brought up.
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