Have to disagree here. The idea behind the Nickelodeon series, and part of what makes it special, is that it's a journey through a specific moment in time. From the very beginning, the premise of the series was that it was a 6th grader "just trying to survive until junior high" (one of the classic Nickelodeon promos for the show). When he graduates and makes it to junior high, that's the perfect way to go out (along with a summer trip, just to show that life goes on).
I don't have any interest in them telling us specifically what happened to him when he grew up. We already kind of know, since Doug is largely based on Jim Jinkins - he grew up to be a cartoonist. But aside from that, the show was about the journey, not the destination.
And in the end, it's a fictional cartoon world that operates under some cartoon parameters. I do not want to see that Doug is no longer friends with Skeeter, or that Porkchop died. What would be the point of that? How far into the character's life do we need to be explicitly shown what happens?
I can't help but think Jinkins got that idea from that DrCoolSex "live Doug movie" Youtube video that someone linked him to a while back.
I already discount the entirety of the Disney series, which was so far removed from anything resembling the Nickelodeon series in every aspect that it's quite easy and completely natural to do.
If Jinkins wants to explore this topic, he could do it with another character in any medium he chooses. There's no reason to invent some sort of explicit ending just to try to come up with some sort of "meaning" for childhood friendships that don't last into adulthood (and that's not always the case, anyway). Jinkins seems to want to operate under the premise that there is some grand meaning to "life," and that there's some kind of "finished product"/destination that a journey will lead to. But the only actual destination for anyone is death, and adults are not some sort of "finished products."
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