Farewell to the Creek
Black history still matters.
Black stories matter.
And yes, Black lives matter.
If you haven’t rolled your eyes and tuned out of this article after recoiling and seething at the thought of someone merely typing those three words let alone uttering it out loud, thank you for staying wide awake.
When I was a kid back in the 1980s, there weren’t many animated shows that had Black characters on it, and the ones that did had them as sidekicks to the main characters, barely making a peep, and largely in the background. Nearly everything else relied on the same, safe default White male lead.
While there’s nothing really wrong with that, sometimes, viewers want to identify with a character that comes from the same cultural background, and the first one that really did that for me was... *sighs*... Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.
Look, I know… I know.
It really, really sucks talking about anything Bill Cosby has done creatively because what he did in his personal life for decades, and that has tainted everything he made or been associated with. Fat Albert was one of those projects, yet I can’t ignore the impact it had on me as a kid when it aired. It was a series starring Black kids being Black kids with Black talent and a Black creator behind it. It was a rarity in the 1970s and 1980s, and it’s even more of a rarity in the 2020s.
You really didn’t see many animated series with Black leads and multiple Black characters voiced by Black actors, employed Black talent behind the scenes, and truly embrace Black culture.
Fat Albert did that. Waynehead did that. Static Shock did that. The Proud Family did that. Class of 3000 did that. The Boondocks did that. Black Dynamite did that. Young Love did that. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur did that.
Craig of the Creek definitely did that.
Craig of the Creek was something special. It was an animated series about a Mid-Atlantic-based Black family with the titular lead being a creative cartographer with an empathetic personality and always willing to help anyone, especially his friends (and sometimes his rivals) at his beloved creek. Craig’s not perfect, and at times, he has a bit of an ego, but he’s generally a good kid loved and respected by so many.
This show was uniquely diverse with characters of different ethnicities, genders, social backgrounds, and sexualities. And it was unapologetically Black. References to HBCUs (that’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities for the uninitiated), Black culture, including music, TV shows, and movies, and pretty much Black family life that’s rarely in any medium, let alone children’s animation. It showcased a middle-class Black family in a suburban setting and without references to ghetto life, gun violence, crime, drugs, and other things way too commonplace in Black media.
In short, Craig of the Creek was a show about kids just being kids.
And Cartoon Network canceled it.
They didn’t cancel it because of ratings. Craig of the Creek was one of the biggest series on the network and one of the few highlights on the channel. It wasn’t canceled because of viewer complaints. If anything, the series received critical acclaim and numerous accolades for the way the show presented diversity, LGBT+ storylines, and positive representation of the Black family.
It was canceled because Warner Bros Discovery is cheap and made cutbacks in everything except shows on the Discovery family of networks. In October 2022, Cartoon Network shortened the series order of the fifth season by half and shortened the episode order of a preschool-targeted spinoff, Jessica’s Big Little World, by half. When the fifth season of Craig of the Creek premiered in 2023, they split half of that to make Season Six, which was also split in half in 2024 when they only aired aired six episode that summer. The final four episodes were originally slated for September 2024 but was delayed with no explanation and very little promotion to January 2025.
The final episode, “See You Tomorrow at the Creek,” aired on January 25, 2025, in the United States.
I’m not in any way suggesting that there was malice in the way they treated Craig of the Creek from Warner Bros Discovery. It’s just a coincidence shows with prominently Black casts and talent behind the scenes have been canceled, purged from the site, or completely written off. I know other shows and movies have had that fate as well, but the optics are pretty bad. The treatment of Invincible Fight Girl, another animated series with a Black creator, Black talent, and a Black lead, and its uncertain fate (at the time of this writing, January 2025, no word of whether or not Adult Swim, the slot the Cartoon Network Studios-produced series was buried in, has renewed or officially canceled the series has been made) is also glaring as hell, especially when news of other renewals had been made since then.
Removing the front half of Craig of the Creek’s episodes from MAX and removing the series from the Cartoon Network lineup days after the finale are also bad optics for Cartoon Network and Warner Bros Discovery, especially given the timing of an inauguration of a presidential administration that is seemingly against diversity, equity, and inclusiveness in workplaces, the media, and American life. You could only bend the knee so far before you fall on your face or your other end.
The saddest thing about losing a show like Craig of the Creek is that we probably won’t get anything like it in the foreseeable future.
16 years passed between the end of Fat Albert and the premiere of The Proud Family. 12 years passed between the end of the original Proud Family and the premiere of Craig of the Creek. If history is any indication, I’ll expect the successor to Craig of the Creek that would resonate with a generation to come in eight years, or 2033. And even that’s being generous because at the rate the television industry is going, I doubt there would even be broadcast or cable showcases for children’s entertainment in the United States, let alone the kind of American animation industry that allowed shows like those three to even exist, in 2033.
Sure, there will be a few shows from Black creators that have Black leads and use Black talent behind the mics and at the drawing tables, but I doubt they’ll last beyond two short seasons. Big Media’s not willing to let shows have the opportunity to grow and gain an audience anymore.
“I want to stay... just a little bit longer.”
That quote was Craig’s penultimate line in the series finale, and for some reason, those nine words spoke volumes.
Black stories matter. I want to see more stories come out. I want to see more be made into animated series. I want them to last more than a season. I want them to get a chance to grow, thrive, and inspire another generation who deserve to see folks who look like them, come from the same backgrounds as them, and aren’t just the safe default that had been the norm for over a century.
In short, I want them to stay a little longer.
That said, I want to thank the cast and crew of Craig of the Creek for giving audiences one of the best animated series ever produced that celebrated so much that is good and awesome in this world and getting a chance to put faces rarely seen and heard, and stories rarely told in the mainstream. I’m mad that it’s over, but this old salt is happy that we had a show like this in the first place.
Long live the Creek.
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