You Know Who ELSE Loves Regular Show?: The Movie Sleuth’s Mom! (A Love Letter to J.G. Quintel’s Creation)
It seems
terribly cliché to cite the “end of an era”. But with the eighth and final
season of Regular Show wrapping up on
Monday, January 16th, it is, indeed, the end of an era for Cartoon Network.
Alongside Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time,
which also premiered in 2010, J.G. Quintel’s Regular Show has helped to usher in a prosperous and popular
upswing for the network, building its current spot as forerunner in television
animation on cable.
Quintel’s
wacky animated buddy comedy started life when he was attending California
Institute of the Arts. Two of his student films would yield the basis for the
main characters in Regular Show,
which at its heart retains the delightful zaniness of the original shorts in
many ways, even though over the seasons the art has improved and the characters
have received a surprising amount of depth and development. Using his
college-aged self as model for main character Mordecai the blue jay, whom he
also voices, Quintel created Regular Show
as a series of slice-of-life sketches during which even the most mundane of
undertakings between Mordecai, his best friend Rigby the raccoon, and their
co-workers at the park where they are employed as groundskeepers inevitably
turn into crazy misadventures.
The series,
while certainly appropriate for children, has garnered a popularity among young
adults, as it pays homage to pop culture of the 1980s and 1990s while
ostensibly being set in the present time – or, possibly, the future as the
final season is set in outer space. Its canny humor and retro Saturday-morning
feel appeal to those who grew up with network blocks of cartoons, nascent
cable, VHS tapes and New Wave. Beneath the hipsterish inside jokes and
fourth-wall winking, however, Regular
Show is really just a very clever show about a group of work friends trying
to get through the days together. This particular group of friends just happens
to often summon otherworldly enemies, travel to strange dimensions, or end up
having to save the universe from malevolence – or their own blunders.
Unlike a lot
of modern television animation, though, Regular
Show doesn’t pander. Its quality lies in the elements which make up the
series, from its webcomic-inspired design to its synth-laden music (composed
largely by Mark Mothersbaugh), and the diverse array of its unusual cast of
characters voiced by the likes of Quintel himself, William Salyers and even
Mark Hamill. This is a genuinely funny cartoon, with moments of heart thrown in
at just the right times to endear its characters to audiences of all ages, and
it will be sorely missed.
Some of the
best moments of Regular Show have
been mixtures of ridiculous, over-the-top comedy and just plain good character
writing. While it never went as far as fellow Cartoon Network programs Adventure Time or Steven Universe, in that it didn’t follow a wide story arc or have
a lot of world-building mythology, it still maintained itself with a core group
of likeable goofballs whose intergalactic exploits were treated just like its
insular stories of mundane life at the park. Whether dealing with time travel
and evil space overlords or with Mordecai’s difficult love life and Rigby’s
journey back to high school to get his diploma, Regular Show always stayed true to its roots as a buddy comedy with
a flair for adventure and a genuine affection for its cast and the references
it often parodied. Quintel’s obvious love of 1980s pop culture permeates the
series without dating it – and one would be hard-pressed to find a modern
television cartoon with a better synthpop soundtrack.
There has
been so much that is wonderfully absurd about this series. At the heart of it
all is a complex relationship between two very different characters, which
through every conflict out of eight seasons and a movie has weathered
everything from romantic drama to the fate of the universe. Mordecai’s nervy
insecurity and Rigby’s blasé, overconfident laziness have remained core
character traits – but even blue jays and raccoons earn some development in the
Regular Show reality. With its
trademark simple weirdness and lack of sentimentality, both characters have
grown both as individuals and as friends; Mordecai and Rigby have both done
some maturing without losing what makes them who they are, and the sweetest
moments of the final season remind us that they, and their relationship, are at
the heart of it all.
We’ll miss
you, Regular Show, with your
colorfully animated brilliance and crazy situations. We will miss every
“monster of the week” villain, every moment Benson threatened to fire Mordecai
and Rigby, every time Muscle Man set up for a “my mom” joke. We’ll miss the
wisdom of Skips, the innocence of Pops, and the perfect symmetry of the
brotherly affection between Mordo and Rigs. We’ll miss your scores of bizarre
side characters and the deep, but never sugarcoated relationships between many
of them with the main cast. Most of all, we’ll miss how much we laughed, and
how the insanity of life at the park made no pretentious metaphors for the real
world – and yet, we related nonetheless to so many of the conflicts. We can
only hope that, whatever J.G. Quintel decides to do next, it will be as
marvelously bizarre and hilariously, endearingly real.
-Dana Culling