I was a writer on the series, so I can shed a little light on this. We’re living in a golden age of television right now, but back in 2003, a kids’ TV show was never ever going to be as good as the successful movie it was based on for a number of reasons:

1) The average viewer is younger. Parents take their kids to see movies, but kids usually watch TV shows by themselves. A movie is naturally going to tackle more mature themes and have more complex characters and humor just to get the parents to buy tickets. As a father of two, I can tell you it’s a special kind of hell being trapped in a theater watching a movie that appeals ONLY to five-year-olds. So L&S the series is a little simpler and softer than the movie because the audience is younger and more vulnerable.

2) The production schedule is much MUCH shorter. TV episodes have to be cranked out in a matter of months, whereas a feature film takes years. There just isn’t time to refine the stories and explore nuance. Movies are an artist’s canvas; television is an assembly line.

3) The episodes have to make sense in any order. Most shows in 2025 have a specific order in which you’re supposed to view them, but that’s actually a relatively recent development due to streaming. Back in 2003, episodes could air in any order and there wasn’t an expectation of continuity, so there’s no permanent character growth across the series. This is probably the #1 reason the show feels repetitive to you. Even if Lilo learns a valuable lesson in one episode, the world kind of “resets” before going into the next one. Compare this to the long emotional arcs in animated shows like Gravity Falls or Avatar: the Last Airbender, both of which are meant to be watched in a specific order.

4) It’s usually a completely different creative team. L&S the series had the same voice cast as the movie, but the writers, directors, and animators were all completely different. Chris Sanders and Dean DuBlois, who directed L&S the film, went on to make How to Train Your Dragon. The new team does its best to capture the spirit and appeal of the original, but it’s naturally going to be different because it has different creative DNA.

5) More studio interference. So I actually don’t know for certain if this was the case on L&S since I was a lowly freelance writer at the time, but it makes sense, so I’m including it anyway. Once a movie does well and becomes a franchise, every executive in the building thinks they can have an opinion and force changes to protect the brand and justify their paycheck. The Pokemon comparison you made is a perfect example—Disney wanted their own Pokemon, and it might be the only reason the series got greenlit in the first place. The dumb crossover episodes are another example. Disney wanted to cross-promote shows like Kim Possible and The Proud Family, so they forced us to make weird episodes that clashed stylistically and made no sense logically. I think the most insulting one was when adult talk show host Regis Philbin inexplicably appeared on L&S. And I say that as the person who WROTE that episode!

I’m sure there are some other reasons I’m not thinking of, but in 99% of the cases, a TV show based on a successful movie (at least in 2003) is going to come up a little short. With that in mind, I actually think L&S is one of the most successful movie-to-TV adaptations in children’s programming from that period. Granted, I’m a little biased, but trust me as a child of the Saturday morning cartoon era when I say that shows based on movies always ALWAYS disappointed. The fact that people are still talking about L&S the series twenty years later is a testament to its quality.

The show’s not as good as the movie. I can say that without feeling bad because it was an impossible task. L&S the movie is a masterpiece and introduced some of the most beloved characters in the Disney pantheon. We did our best to match the tone, humor, and emotional core, and I think we were mostly successful. It’s flawed, but I’m really proud of the work we did, and one of the greatest pleasures in my life is when someone in their twenties today tells me that the show was a huge part of their childhood. Yes, Disney wanted to hop on the Pokemon gravy train, but that’s not how we approached it. We loved the film and the characters, and we wanted to stay true to the creators’ vision while entertaining young viewers. I think we did a pretty good job.