Now to be fair though the Eds ARE the protagonists of their show they are what I consider "loser protagonists." You know characters that though you do mostly follow also realize are actually for some reason or another are scummy in some sort of way IE the fact that all 3 do spend their time trying to scam the other kids of the Cul-De-Sac for jawbreakers and thus aren't meant to gather the most sympathy. So like say with Wile E Coyote or Pinky and the Brain or Invader Zim or heck even in other Cartoon network shows like Johnny Bravo or Hector Con Carne's Evil Con Carne, the specific goals that the characters are aiming for you may eventually wish to succeed just for how persistent they are in their task but you also recognize how either pathetic or psychotic they are and know for the sake of the world of the series, makes sense that the characters would constantly fail in their goals. Thus you are going to need obstacles to ensure they don't and early on that was very much the Kanker sisters. It's clear in the first season though Anntonucci and co had ideas on what the characters were about hadn't exactly developed the other Cul-De-Sac kids to actually really stand on the same level of the Eds thus how much easier they were able to usually get one over on them, so needed some force to ensure they didn't get away with their win. Thus making the Kankers who did stick around as antagonists throughout the show even after the others were developed to be constant thorns in our heroes side which... not going to lie much as I get why, can't say I like them much either.
Antonucci also admitted the kankers are based on bully girls he knew and had to deal with when he was a kid which you would think would mean "well wouldn't that mean you'd want to have them get taken down a peg by our heroes?" Honestly I think that though the key to comedy is catharasis in some sense, that ones who did get into writing and want to be twisted do actually like taking what hurt them and spreading that on screen to others as a "better way" of showing their anguish for the sake of laughs. The problem is though sans their squabbles with one another not only do they really have no other dynamic, but not even really a relationship with any of the other characters. I think sans the Valentine's Day special they just feel so separated from everyone else, and in a cast so small when you have players that regularly pop up but don't have a dyanmic with everyone that makes them so limiting. Since yeah everyone else you can sort of suss out how they play off one another; how cloying and co dependent Jimmy and Sarah are; Kevin and Rolf being best buds despite Kevin being a jerk and Rolf still not understanding our culture; there was even that episode where Jonny thought Nazz hated Plank because of not understanding him at the spelling bee so kept calling her a wood hater and tried to prank her to show off that relationship. But there is NOTHING with the Kankers that do make them really empty characters just there as agressors who not even the rest of the cast can do anything about. It does make them effective obstacles and I will say fewer moments in any cartoon mean as much as Eddy telling them off in "A Fistful of Ed" because of knowing how off formula it is, but it still makes a lot of their appearances pretty one note which never really worked for me and obviously others as well.
