Squidbillies

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Squidbillies
Early Cuyler
Genre	Animated Comedy
Running time	11 1/2 minutes
Creator(s)	Jim Fortier Dave Willis
Starring	Unknown Hinson Daniel McDevitt Dana Snyder Bobby Ellerbee
Country of origin	USA
Original channel	Cartoon Network
Original run	October 16, 2005–present
No. of episodes	18

Squidbillies is an animated television show produced by Williams Street Studios, currently being written by one of the creators of Aqua Teen Hunger Force on Adult Swim. The background design is by Ben Prisk. The show follows a family of hillbilly squids that live in the north Georgia mountains. The show revolves primarily around two squids, Early Cuyler and his son Rusty Cuyler, living in abject poverty, and trying to reconcile their relationship following Early's fifteen year incarceration for armed robbery.

1 Cast
2 Story as Presented
3 Behind-the-Scenes Controversy
4 Music
5 Georgia References
6 The Trucker Hats of Early Cuyler
7 Trivia
8 Episodes
9 External links

[edit] Cast

Early Cuyler - Unknown Hinson
Russel 'Rusty' Cuyler - Daniel McDevitt
Granny - Dana Snyder
Lil - Patricia French
Sheriff - Charles Napier (Episodes 1-9)
Sheriff - Bobby Ellerbee (Robert A. Ellerbee)
Dan Halen - Todd Hanson
Reverend - Scott Hilley
Narrator - Dave Willis
Clerk - Pete Smith

[edit] Story as Presented

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The first episode begins by introducing the residents of a quiet town nestled in the North Georgia Mountains off of I-575. The first person we meet is the Sheriff, who smokes cigarettes, has an affinity for dancing, sometimes dresses like Elton John, and, as we are told, will die in 3 years from emphysema. The next is a giant snake named Snake Man who sports a red mullet haircut and is usually seen killing or devouring anyone he meets. There's Space Baby who has yet to appear in an episode beyond this first introduction. Then we meet Billy Morton who is the star of the local football team, has no working limbs except sticks duct taped to his body, and is subsequently run-over in the street chasing after his football. And finally we are introduced to corrupt businessman Dan Halen who is the owner of "Dan Halen Sheetrock" which is a conglomerate that dominates the local economy and who specializes in sheetrock, sheetrock mud, sheetrock screws, pharmaceuticals, petroleum, global mass media, third world covert military operations, and tools for infanticide. The Dan Halen corporate logo resembles the logo of the rock band Van Halen.

While the show tells the story of most of the people in the town we are told that it's mainly about Early Cuyler. Fifteen years prior to the present day, Early Cuyler twice robs a store to obtain gifts for his ill-mannered, philandering, and extremely obese human girlfriend, Crystal, who refuses to let Early touch her "front-butt" until he can procure "one of them sport radio things with the ear-buds and auto reverse". After the second robbery, in which he goes back to obtain a cassette tape to put in her "flippin' tape cassette player", Early is arrested and sentenced to the next fifteen years in prison. Unbeknownst to him, in his absence, Crystal leaves him for Snake Man, gives birth to their son, Rusty, and abandons him to be raised by Early's sister, Lil.

Rusty becomes a ward of the state after the discovery of a crystal meth lab in Lil's hair salon, and is placed in his grandmothers care, but flees out of boredom of her stories of Jesus being president when she was a girl. Depressed and dejected, Rusty attemptes to take his own life before he is saved and raised by a family of Wolves, and is torn apart by them many times before filling his body with 300 lbs. of nitroglycerin and blowing them to pieces, which fortunately for the wolves, is only a dream. At the end of his father's sentence, the two reunite, and now live with Lil. While Rusty sports a red mullet haircut Early has gone bald over time and both appear to have a complete and utter lack of any formal education, are fairly ignorant, have trouble pronouncing multi-syllable words, and are fans of NASCAR, namely they like both Dick Trickle and Dale Earnhardt Jr.. Early also tends to wear ever-changing, sometimes topical, sometimes rudely funny, trucker hats.

Initially after his release we find Early has trouble staying employed. This is attributed to his penchant for overbearingly sexual salesmanship, outbursts of brutal violence (throwing knives, beating people to a pulp, etc.), and complete lack of reliability. Which makes him the perfect candidate to eventually be hired by Dan Halen as the new CEO of his sheetrock company. In part to comply with federal Equal Opportunity Employment standards, but mainly to deflect liability from Halen, whose business faces many lawsuits resulting from its increasingly dangerous products. Early is completely oblivious to Halen's machinations and is unaware that he will hopefully be scapegoated into prosecution for the company's offenses.

It later comes to the attention of the Sheriff that Rusty has never been to school. The Sheriff becomes worried that if the board of education ever finds out they are going to come up to town to kick His ass and then he's going to have to kick Earlys ass. They decide not to send him down to the county school because if they keep segregating down there it's going to be nothing but bathrooms and decide it would be best for Early to homeschool him instead. Rusty is taught that there are all kinds of rocks, there's rocks that you can throw and rocks that you can get hit by. Also he learns that scribblin's on a bathroom stall may speak of being "repressed by an Orwellian overlord and about lashing out with Guerilla style poetry".

Also, at times, the entire Cuyler Clan is overtly racist, especially towards white people and call them Chalkys, although they consider the Sheriff to be "one of the good ones". Early also speaks ill towards others who come to this country and take all the damn jobs and laments that he can't shoot any of them because then he would be at fault. But mainly they eschew anything to do with Chalkiness and burn skis to show their anger towards chalkys and being subjucated by the white mans money.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Behind-the-Scenes Controversy

The show was announced in late 2003 with the first episode promoted extensively to air November 7, 2004, but Adult Swim aired the pilot of Perfect Hair Forever in its place. Perfect Hair Forever was followed by a panel discussion of the episode; this panel included Space Ghost, Meatwad from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Early Cuyler, and Sharko from Sealab 2021. This prompted many fans of AdultSwim to believe Squidbillies to be nothing more than an elaborate hoax, but a pilot for the show was in the works, and segments of it aired on April 1, 2005.

The nearly year-long delay was the result of multiple problems that occurred between the shows commission and its scheduled debut. A very early pilot episode was scrapped in early 2004 and more writers (up to 6) were brought on board to help flesh out characters and comedy direction for the series. The writers were eventually whittled back down to two along with a few of the early characters for the show being cut (one being Rusty's older brother who was discharged from the Army). During this time the series original 20 episode order was reduced to 6 due to the aforementioned production problems and time constraints. Many began to wonder if there was ever going to be a series, including those residing in the offices of Williams Street.

Finally without much fanfare or promotion the final pilot aired on October 16, 2005, after appearing on a very early version of the Adult Swim Fix two days earlier.

In spring of 2006 the staff at Williams Street moved to a newly renovated section of office as part of a reward for building a successful Sunday night series of shows on Cartoon Network. Part of this transition involved some management at Turner to move in with them to help over see production. One management member was grossly offended by a large cardboard cut-out of Early Cuyler wearing his "Booty Hunter" hat being displayed in the new offices. She felt it was "sexually harassing" and there was an uproar over having it removed from the offices of those who actually write/work on the show. This was reported on the "Employee Blog" available on the AdultSwim Web site along with many other anonymous employee complaints over the new management staff. Not long after, all links to the Employee Blog were permanently removed from the Web site.

[edit] Music

The opening theme song, Warrior Man, was written by co-creator Matt Maiellaro, and is performed by country artist Billy Joe Shaver. It was recorded in Austin, TX, September 2005.
During Season Two, in several of the episodes, the opening sequence features different verses of the aforementioned theme song and/or songs that follow the "theme" of the main song.
Original music in the show is composed and played by David Lee Powell.

[edit] Georgia References

The county they live in is Dougal County which is fictional and does not exist in the state of Georgia, but there is a Douglas County directly to the west of Atlanta.
Travis Tritt, a famous country musician and a resident of Paulding County Georgia, is referenced by Early who says he wants to be just like "Travis Tritt struttin' his stuff down to Florida".
In "Double Trukin' the Tricky Two" Early's hat "Sonny Lied" is the motto of the opponents of Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, concerning the State Flag controversy.
The Williams Street Studios logo at the end of the show is a a depiction of their offices located on Williams Street in Atlanta, Georgia.
In "Terminus Trouble" Early and Rusty Cuyler are accompanied by the Sheriff to Atlanta despite the Atlanta police still having a warrant for his arrest. There they visited the headquarters of CNN and Stone Mountain which Early had vandalized by spraypainting Pac Man on it. They also went to the corner where Kenny Rogers filmed a section of the movie Six Pack, visited Atlanta's Cyclorama to see a painting of the Battle of Atlanta, and attended a Baseball game with the Atlanta Braves. The Cuylers were arrested at the game and brought to Georgia State Court.
In "Terminus Trouble" Early used the alias "Awesome Bill from Dawsonville", referencing Dawsonville, Georgia's Bill Elliott, NASCAR Nextel Cup champion in 1988.

[edit] The Trucker Hats of Early Cuyler

-This is a brief list of the lines/images that are found on Early Cuyler's trucker hats.

"Free Hat Limit 1"
"World's Greatest Illegitimate Daddy"
"May I Help You, My Child?" (as seen on a combination pope/trucker hat, when Early still had his job at Mattress Christ)
"Breathe If You're Horny"
"Here's The Beef"
"I Love Cock Fighting" (with the word "Fighting" appearing much smaller than the other three) {Seen in School days, Fool days} .
"Groom"
"Remember 9-111 - Irregular"
"Goal Bandit"
"2005 Prom King" {Seen in School days, Fool days}
"Booty Hunter"
"David Allan CEO Live In Macon" (a reference to outlaw country singer/songwriter David Allan Coe )
"GLUG"
A squid drawn in the shape of the Pontiac Firebird logo
A stylized American Flag with a bald eagle's head superimposed. (Seen in Chalky Trouble.)
Four aces drawn such that the ace of diamonds is on top and the rest (clubs, hearts, then spades) are fanned behind it.
A buck (male deer) with scribbles, used as a résumé to obtain employment at Dan Halen Sheet-rock Inc. The hat said "Can skin a buck, run a trout–line, and all my rowdy friends are coming over tonight," according to Dan Halen, the character in charge of the interview. These are references to the Hank Williams Jr. songs "Country Boy Can Survive," and "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight."
"Support Our Troops" (American flag design with a yellow ribbon). After he is struck by lightning it reads "Support Our oops."
"I Love You Daddy" (Written in pencil with a drawing of Rusty)
"Sonny LIED!!!" (Written on a Confederate battle flag designed hat). This is the motto of the opponents of Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue who won his office in part due to his promise to have a referendum on whether to return the Confederate Battle Flag emblem to the state flag but the option to use the "St. Andrews Cross" was not given, he adopted a less controversial design based on the more obscure first national flag of the Confederacy.
"Tricky Two" (Written on a gold hat underneath a hand making the peace sign)
"God's Good Buddy" (Written underneath a semi truck with a cross on it driving out of the heavens.) Seen during a Squidbillies bump and Giant Foam Dickhat Trouble.
"Swayze Crazy" (Written in red lettering on a pink hat with Patrick Swayze flexing right arm.) Seen on an Adult Swim website ad.
"John Beer" (A play on John Deere, with the logo shown as a silhouette of a drunken anthropomorphic deer sprawled out among beer cans).
A bill connected to a donkey with a very obscene protrusion (censored) that offends everyone including Squid Jesus.
"Damn I'm Good"
"Do It To It"
"Hooked On Jesus" (Jesus being in the fish symbol on a fishing hook)
"Hooked on Darwin" (Darwin being in the fish symbol on a fishing hook)
"I'm Going Nucking Futs"
"Science of Faith"
"China of Faith"

[edit] Trivia

In Episode 9 "Double Trukin' the Tricky Two" Jesus & Satan appear as squids.
The premiere episode of Season Two, when Early describes the sheriff crying he references a tourist attraction in Chattanooga Tennessee called Ruby Falls.
In "Double Trukin' the Tricky Two" Dan Halen's reading from The Lottery are the verbatim lines of Shirley Jackson.
Earlys' "Weekend Hat" was won by Granny showing her Tee-Ta's down on PC Beach in 1992.
Terminus was the name for Atlanta before it became a city.
In episode 6 "Office Politics Trouble" Crystal is listening to a cassette tape of the Georgia Phonebook, the first number read starts with 678 which is an actual area code in the state of Georgia.