Screenwriting : Playing Genre Conventions Straight by Devon McBride-Wilson

I wanted to go ahead and ask this question, after going back and forth over it, and nearly posting it several times already. After having written several feature length scripts, and dozens of television-oriented scripts [original and spec], I'm looking at less technical questions. When writing a television pilot that's a solid genre piece, how fresh and new do you need to be? Can one twist the usual without reinventing the wheel? Put another way, when does playing genre archetypes straight become unintentional parody? This question was sparked as I am still perfecting my penultimate pilot, which is intended to be a cartoon, a type of media where genre and logic can be quite fluid. But it would help to get input from a live-action tv/film perspective too.