This last week, Twitter has been flooded with confused adult tears, and I definitely contributed. After 2 seasons, Nickelodeon’s The Tiny Chef Show has been cancelled. Have I even seen a single episode? No. Did I mourn anyway? Hell yes.
The stop-motion video, which shows the green Chef trying to compose himself before sobbing on his bed, quickly went viral, with 69.5 million views on X, 3.6 million views on TikTok and 350K views on YouTube as of Friday, 27 June. Many shared my sentiment of only finding out about this show through this clip, yet feeling big emotions at its content.
Announcing this news through an animated clip, which has since gone viral, is a genius move. Not only did it elicit a fountain of sympathy from existing fans, but it also pulled newcomers into the fold who had never heard of it before. And maybe even guilt-tripped the studio into rethinking its decision?
Regardless, the huge response made me think: Why are people so emotionally attached to characters they’ve never watched before, and what does this say about creative precarity in the age of streaming? I have some thoughts.
Why am I crying over a puppet?
In a world saturated with horror, rage, and increasingly absurd headlines, soft, wholesome children’s content like The Tiny Chef Show and Bluey becomes more than just cute TV — it’s a balm. A safe pocket of gentleness in a brutalising landscape.
As an adult and journalist, I am well aware of the bad things this world has to offer. We’re living through climate collapse, political instability, economic uncertainty — the “ambient trauma” of the present. There’s no escaping it. Or… there is for short bursts of time when consuming warm television or films like so many adults are increasingly doing.
Whether it’s shows you’ve watched as a child or shows made recently for the children of today, more and more adults are returning to cartoon comfort shows. The boundaries between what shows are made for which demographic are being shifted and blurred. And mental health plays a role in this.
“Cartoons are powerful because they release stress by increasing pleasurable activities,” Dr David Rosmarin, founder and director of the Centre for Anxiety in New York, explained. Cartoons are now a wellness tool, helping adults heal parts of themselves they struggled with in their childhoods and managing the stresses they face now.
The Tiny Chef Show falls in this category. And its cancellation is a loss to this toolkit.
The cruelty of platform power
As a media practitioner, another issue this event has sparked me to think about is how it underscores how even critically acclaimed and beloved content is disposable in today’s platform-first, audience-second media economy.
Chef himself said, “But, we won an Emmy!”
And he’s right. The Tiny Chef Show won a Children’s & Family Emmy, earned widespread praise for its intricate stop-motion animation, and built a dedicated — if niche — fanbase. By any traditional metric, it was a creative success. But in the current landscape, “success” isn’t enough.
The showrunners haven’t publicly stated the reason for its cancellation, but industry watchers have pointed to the usual culprits: budget tightening, algorithmic deprioritisation, or corporate restructuring. In short: math, not meaning.
It’s part of a growing trend: prestige shows getting axed despite glowing reviews and loyal audiences because they don’t meet invisible KPIs. These metrics, often proprietary and never shared publicly, reduce art to data points: how many watched it all the way through, how quickly they clicked, whether it spurred enough “engagement.”
A recent report by Variety Intelligence Platform and Luminate, an entertainment data company, shows just how widespread the issue has become. Between 2020 and 2023, streaming platforms had an average cancellation rate of 12.2% — only slightly higher than traditional linear TV’s 10.8%. But the platform doing the most damage? HBO Max, which cancelled a staggering 26.9% of its shows in that period, more than double the average. That includes award-winning shows like Westworld, Minx, and an entire slate of children’s programming, gutted after the Warner Bros.-Discovery merger.
The question becomes: are we really building a future where the best shows don’t survive — not because we didn’t love them, but because they didn’t “perform” fast enough?
And AI slop isn’t helping
What a seemingly perfect term. Like everything else in our lives, AI poses a threat in one way or another. So I have to bring it up here.
AI slop refers to low-quality, mass-produced content generated by artificial intelligence, especially when it’s created for the sole purpose of flooding the internet with quick, cheap, and often soulless material.
John Oliver covered the dangers of AI on his weekly HBO show (please don’t be the studio’s next victim!), calling it “worryingly corrosive” for society. And I agree.
While there is no confirmed and direct replacement of Tiny Chef by AI-generated content, we can all safely conclude that children are now more exposed to mindless, invaluable slop as their form of edutainment. What a terrible future we are condemning the next generation to – one without nuanced content and critical thinking skills.
So while we might be “drowning in this shit for the foreseeable future,” as Oliver puts it, Tiny Chef creators, Rachel Larsen, Ozlem “Ozi” Akturk and Adam Reid, are crowdfunding for help from fans to keep going. “Tiny chefs cooking show has officially been cancelled (very unexpected) and without the support of a major network we need crowd funding to keep cookin’ over here.” They’ve announced that fans can make a one-time donation via Venmo or PayPal or join the Tiny Chef fan club to show support.
We’re crying with you, little green dude.
Kajal holds an MA in Journalism, Media, and Globalisation from the Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich. She has previous experience in African-focused humanitarian media and transnational newsrooms. The enduring power of words in shaping the narrative of tomorrow remains the foundation upon which she builds her career.
Tiny Chef, big feelings: Its cancellation speaks to media cruelty and AI slop
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This last week, Twitter has been flooded with confused adult tears, and I definitely contributed. After 2 seasons, Nickelodeon’s The Tiny Chef Show has been cancelled. Have I even seen a single episode? No. Did I mourn anyway? Hell yes.
The stop-motion video, which shows the green Chef trying to compose himself before sobbing on his bed, quickly went viral, with 69.5 million views on X, 3.6 million views on TikTok and 350K views on YouTube as of Friday, 27 June. Many shared my sentiment of only finding out about this show through this clip, yet feeling big emotions at its content.
Announcing this news through an animated clip, which has since gone viral, is a genius move. Not only did it elicit a fountain of sympathy from existing fans, but it also pulled newcomers into the fold who had never heard of it before. And maybe even guilt-tripped the studio into rethinking its decision?
Regardless, the huge response made me think: Why are people so emotionally attached to characters they’ve never watched before, and what does this say about creative precarity in the age of streaming? I have some thoughts.
Why am I crying over a puppet?
In a world saturated with horror, rage, and increasingly absurd headlines, soft, wholesome children’s content like The Tiny Chef Show and Bluey becomes more than just cute TV — it’s a balm. A safe pocket of gentleness in a brutalising landscape.
As an adult and journalist, I am well aware of the bad things this world has to offer. We’re living through climate collapse, political instability, economic uncertainty — the “ambient trauma” of the present. There’s no escaping it. Or… there is for short bursts of time when consuming warm television or films like so many adults are increasingly doing.
Whether it’s shows you’ve watched as a child or shows made recently for the children of today, more and more adults are returning to cartoon comfort shows. The boundaries between what shows are made for which demographic are being shifted and blurred. And mental health plays a role in this.
“Cartoons are powerful because they release stress by increasing pleasurable activities,” Dr David Rosmarin, founder and director of the Centre for Anxiety in New York, explained. Cartoons are now a wellness tool, helping adults heal parts of themselves they struggled with in their childhoods and managing the stresses they face now.
The Tiny Chef Show falls in this category. And its cancellation is a loss to this toolkit.
The cruelty of platform power
As a media practitioner, another issue this event has sparked me to think about is how it underscores how even critically acclaimed and beloved content is disposable in today’s platform-first, audience-second media economy.
Chef himself said, “But, we won an Emmy!”
And he’s right. The Tiny Chef Show won a Children’s & Family Emmy, earned widespread praise for its intricate stop-motion animation, and built a dedicated — if niche — fanbase. By any traditional metric, it was a creative success. But in the current landscape, “success” isn’t enough.
The showrunners haven’t publicly stated the reason for its cancellation, but industry watchers have pointed to the usual culprits: budget tightening, algorithmic deprioritisation, or corporate restructuring. In short: math, not meaning.
It’s part of a growing trend: prestige shows getting axed despite glowing reviews and loyal audiences because they don’t meet invisible KPIs. These metrics, often proprietary and never shared publicly, reduce art to data points: how many watched it all the way through, how quickly they clicked, whether it spurred enough “engagement.”
A recent report by Variety Intelligence Platform and Luminate, an entertainment data company, shows just how widespread the issue has become. Between 2020 and 2023, streaming platforms had an average cancellation rate of 12.2% — only slightly higher than traditional linear TV’s 10.8%. But the platform doing the most damage? HBO Max, which cancelled a staggering 26.9% of its shows in that period, more than double the average. That includes award-winning shows like Westworld, Minx, and an entire slate of children’s programming, gutted after the Warner Bros.-Discovery merger.
The question becomes: are we really building a future where the best shows don’t survive — not because we didn’t love them, but because they didn’t “perform” fast enough?
And AI slop isn’t helping
What a seemingly perfect term. Like everything else in our lives, AI poses a threat in one way or another. So I have to bring it up here.
AI slop refers to low-quality, mass-produced content generated by artificial intelligence, especially when it’s created for the sole purpose of flooding the internet with quick, cheap, and often soulless material.
John Oliver covered the dangers of AI on his weekly HBO show (please don’t be the studio’s next victim!), calling it “worryingly corrosive” for society. And I agree.
While there is no confirmed and direct replacement of Tiny Chef by AI-generated content, we can all safely conclude that children are now more exposed to mindless, invaluable slop as their form of edutainment. What a terrible future we are condemning the next generation to – one without nuanced content and critical thinking skills.
So while we might be “drowning in this shit for the foreseeable future,” as Oliver puts it, Tiny Chef creators, Rachel Larsen, Ozlem “Ozi” Akturk and Adam Reid, are crowdfunding for help from fans to keep going. “Tiny chefs cooking show has officially been cancelled (very unexpected) and without the support of a major network we need crowd funding to keep cookin’ over here.” They’ve announced that fans can make a one-time donation via Venmo or PayPal or join the Tiny Chef fan club to show support.
We’re crying with you, little green dude.
Kajal Premnath
Kajal holds an MA in Journalism, Media, and Globalisation from the Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich. She has previous experience in African-focused humanitarian media and transnational newsrooms. The enduring power of words in shaping the narrative of tomorrow remains the foundation upon which she builds her career.
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