My Life as a Teenage Robot

My Life as a Teenage Robot is an American animated science fantasy television series created by Rob Renzetti for Nickelodeon. The series follows the adventures of XJ-9, better known as Jenny Wakeman, a robot girl who attempts to juggle her duties of protecting Earth while trying to live a normal teenage life.

My Life as a Teenage Robot premiered on Nickelodeon on August 1, 2003. The show was cancelled 2 years later on October 17, 2005. Unaired, completed episodes of the series were eventually seen on Nicktoons from October 4, 2008 to May 2, 2009. The series totaled 40 episodes and three seasons, including one TV movie. All three seasons are available on DVD at Amazon and on the iTunes store although Geo-blocked from some countries including Canada.

Overview

See also: List of My Life as a Teenage Robot characters

Production

Rob Renzetti moved from Cartoon Network to Nickelodeon to develop his own ideas as part of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. At Nickelodeon, he developed a pilot called "My Neighbor was a Teenage Robot" which was the basis for the series. After brief stints working on Family Guy, The Powerpuff Girls, and Samurai Jack, Renzetti returned to Nickelodeon to start the Teenage Robot series.

Renzetti made 11 shorts during two seasons as a director on Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Five of these starred two characters called Mina and the Count and followed the adventures of a rambunctious little girl and her vampire best friend. He hoped that these characters might get their own series, but Nickelodeon rejected the idea. Faced with an empty slot where the sixth Mina short was slated to go, Fred Seibert tasked Renzetti to come up with three new ideas. One of these was about a teenaged girl whose boyfriend was a robot. After further thought, Renzetti merged the two characters to create Jenny, a robot with the personality of a teenaged girl.

On October 17, 2005, the show's crew announced on their blog that the show had been cancelled, and the third season would be the last: "The executives love the show but the ratings aren't good enough for them to give us more episodes."^[1][2] After the show ended, Renzetti spent two years as story editor for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic before moving on to become a producer for Gravity Falls.

Home media

"See No Evil", "The Great Unwashed", "Hostile Makeover", and "Grid Iron Glory" were previously on Nick Picks DVD compilations. As of December 12, 2011, seasons 1, 2, and 3 are available on DVD exclusive to Amazon.com in region 1. The full series was released across six discs by Beyond Home Entertainment in Australia on February 5, 2012.^[3]

Broadcast

Nickelodeon debuted My Life as a Teenage Robot on August 1, 2003 at 8:30 PM.^[4] The show was a part of Nickelodeon's Saturday night programming block called SNICK on August 2, 2003 and briefly was a part of the TEENick lineup on August 2003 to June 2004. The first season ended on February 27, 2004 with "The Wonderful World of Wizzley / Call Hating".

The second season (which was originally set to air on October 1, 2004) was pushed back to December 8, 2004 with the Christmas episode "A Robot for All Seasons". A new second season episode was not aired until January 24, 2005.^[5] In the second season, a 48-minute, 2-part TV movie entitled "Escape from Cluster Prime" (which was nominated for an Emmy in 2006)^[6] aired.

References

External links

• My Life as a Teenage Robot at the Internet Movie Database