It's a Wishful Life (The Fairly OddParents)

"It's a Wishful Life" is the tenth episode in the fifth season of The Fairly OddParents. It's a parody of the 1946 American Christmas movie It's a Wonderful Life (hence the title).

Plot
Timmy Turner tries to do many good deeds for people, but nobody appreciates his work. Angry, Timmy wishes that he had never been born and therefore becomes nonexistent. Jorgen Von Strangle shows up and shows Timmy how much better everyone's lives would be without him. Jorgen tells Timmy that, unless he finds somebody whose life is worse without him, he'll be sent to a place where godchildren go when they wish that they were never born, so Timmy tries to find somebody whose life is worse without him.

Why We Wish that this Episode Never Existed

 * 1) This episode is infamous for being very mean-spirited towards Timmy Turner, as he learns that everyone would be better off without him.
 * 2) At the beginning when Timmy tries to do good deeds for his friends and family, they criticize him for stupid reasons, causing him to wish that he was never born.
 * 3) The episode tries to paint Timmy as an unlikable and selfish character by wanting to do good deeds for appreciation (which isn't even THAT selfish in the first place), which it's pretty much clear he isn't.
 * 4) It's obviously a parody of It's a Wonderful Life, but this episode instead teaches the opposite of the movie's message.
 * 5) TERRIBLE Moral: The message this episode says is that if you are feeling unappreciated, then it means that your life has no meaning and everybody's lives would be better off without you, which is extremely nihilistic and a very dangerous message to teach unappreciated and badly treated kids in real life.
 * 6) * The secondary moral is that you shouldn't do good deeds for appreciation, but because they're the right thing to do. But that massively fails as well because that was what Timmy was originally doing in the first place.
 * 7) The writers made the dimension of kids who improved the world by wishing they were never born literally look like hell.
 * 8) *Speaking of which, why does such a place exist?
 * 9) Apparently, Timmy's existence is the reason AJ is bald, Vicky is torturing kids, Francis is a bully, his parents are poor and live in a suburban house, Chester lives in a run-down trailer, Elmer has a boil, and the Chicago Cubs haven't won the World Series since 1908 (they eventually did in 2016, but still). How does his existence affect someone's lack of hair, make someone an abusive person, let someone bully others, cause someone to live in either a suburban house or a trailer, having a boil, or even affect a baseball team's perpetually poor performance? Not to mention, Timmy was born decades after 1908, so that one is the most confusing. He may have cost them a recent World Series, though, like the one in 2003.
 * 10) Puzzlingly, none of Timmy's love interests, like Trixie Tang, Veronica or Tootie and even his alien friend Mark Chang (the latter two of whom are characters who would've been miserable if it wasn't for Timmy), make an appearance.
 * 11) Jorgen is extremely unlikeable here, as he encourages Timmy to literally kill himself, which is extremely out of character for Jorgen to do, as much of a sadist as he is.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) In the end, Timmy learns that good deeds aren't done for appreciation; they are done because they're the right thing to do, which is a positive message, despite the poor execution.
 * 2) The scene where Cosmo mistook Jorgen Von Strangle for a cactus was pretty hilarious.
 * 3) Some allege that due to some inconsistencies, the episode's events don't really represent how life would be if Timmy had never been born, but it serves more as a method to teach a lesson to Timmy and not to be taken seriously.
 * 4) Timmy is the only likable character in this episode.
 * 5) The concept of The Fairly OddParents doing one of those It's a Wonderful Life plots like shows like Rugrats did is an interesting concept but the same can't be said for the execution.

Reception
The episode was heavily panned by many Fairly OddParents fans and critics alike and is considered the worst episode of the classic era and one of the worst episodes of the show (if not the worst.) It received a 5.2 on IMDb.

Videos
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Trivia

 * The episode was so bad that even Butch Hartman, the creator of the show, admitted he hated this episode.
 * NyxWuff, a YouTube reviewer, thought this episode was the worst episode in animation history.

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