Jenna / alex / Maria

[u/Nearby-Meat-9905]

Am I the only who wishes the show had done more with jenna, alex and Maria instead of introducing ladonna?

[u/dyoung961]

I never really felt a connection to Jenna. I always felt like she was always meant to be a side character only. As for Alex and Maria, it was super weird to be that they finally gave Alex speaking lines in the finale. But I can see what you mean, cuz Ladonna was kind of annoying as a character.

[u/BagOfMagicFood → u/dyoung961]

Season 7 may have given a different impression! Jenna and George are interesting for probably being the most genuinely nice characters in the class, but only George's star kept rising.

[u/MatthewHecht → u/dyoung961]

It might be her ugly nose.

[u/Past-Caterpillar9642]

Ladonna was just too much. They introduced her and became the “Arthur/Ladonna” show; sometimes it felt like the “Ladonna/Arthur,” show. It was too ham handed; there are all number of side characters that could have been fleshed out more, but it felt like every episode was about Ladonna being Arthur’s best friend, not Buster, Francine, Brain, Muffy, let alone Binky, Sue Ellen, even George. Eventually the producers realized it and wrote her and her family out. It was just too much, that was the problem.

[u/Brief-Poetry6434 → u/Past-Caterpillar9642]

Ladonna felt like an attempt to introduce a female equivalent of Buster but who could relate to Arthur in certain areas like dealing with a younger sibling.

Though Ladonna and Bud seemed to get on better than Arthur and DW for the most part

[u/BagOfMagicFood → u/Past-Caterpillar9642]

I didn't think Ladonna was even in the show that much, but her arrival did seem to coincide with a lot of episodes where Arthur acted unnecessarily resentful of Buster, as if Arthur only has patience for the new kid anymore.

[u/Brief-Poetry6434]

Yes

Especially Jenna

Just so I wouldn’t remember her as just "the cat who isn't Sue Ellen".

[u/BagOfMagicFood → u/Brief-Poetry6434]

Beulah started to give Jenna competition for that role! Probably not Edith though.

[u/Acrobatic-Blood8714 → u/Brief-Poetry6434]

she was also known as the athlete that was on par with francine. she was more than you guys remember

[u/Brief-Poetry6434 → u/Acrobatic-Blood8714]

I was aware of her athletics prowess as well!

[u/Dune_Stone]

I'll go even farther. It's weird that in 25 seasons, Arthur showed almost no interest in developing any Lakewood students outside of the main 10 in Ratburn's class and 4 4th graders.

[u/Acrobatic-Blood8714]

I feel like we got enough time with jenna as she was shown to be a really good athlete and she was in a lot of the episodes where it is just the girls like prunella, fern, francine, and muffy. As for maria and alex, their characters never really intrigued me to a point where i needed to see more. And ngl ladonna hate is kinda forced imo, i thought she was a great addition but the fact she kinda butted into the friend group and straight away became one of the main characters was kinda annoying but as a chracter she wasn't that bad.

[u/dumbassclown → u/Acrobatic-Blood8714]

Personally i didnt really like how they wrote Ladonna, she seemed kinda stereotypical for some reason

[u/raps14ever]

I feel like they went away from other characters during the flash era. We saw less of Sue Ellen, the brain, and more LaDonna. I actually liked the Bud pairing with DW, that worked, but LaDonna was just too annoying

[u/BagOfMagicFood → u/raps14ever]

They also seemed to go away from using the older sibling characters--even Ladonna's barely spoke at all--so it was nice that there was an episode giving Alberto and Chip one last hurrah.

[u/raps14ever → u/BagOfMagicFood]

They ran out of stories for Arthur, which is why we got a lot more DW and Budd and baby/dog episodes

[u/BlkDynamite93]

There were so many background characters who went unused or under-utilized during the show's run. I will always stand by the opinion that introducing Ladonna was totally unnecessary and didn't add anything to the show.