Home Movies (TV series)

Home Movies is an American animated television sitcom created by Loren Bouchard and Brendon Small. The show centers eight-year-old Brendon, who makes videos with his friends Melissa Robbins and Jason Penopolis in his spare time. He lives with his divorced mother, Paula, and his adopted baby sister, Josie. He develops a skewed father/son-like relationship with his alcoholic, short-tempered soccer coach, John McGuirk.

Home Movies premiered on UPN on April 26, 1999. The channel cancelled the series after five episodes, but Cartoon Network purchased the rights to the series, seeing potential in it. It premiered as the first program on their nighttime adult-oriented Adult Swim block on the day of the block's launch on September 2, 2001. As part of Adult Swim, it aired 47 more episodes before ending on April 4, 2004.

Home Movies developed a cult following during its run, and is still considered a renowned cult show.^[1] The show was very well received among critics in later years, and in 2009, the series was placed on IGN's Top 100 Best Animated TV Shows list.^[2] Co-creator Small would later go on to help create the Adult Swim animated series Metalocalypse and Bouchard would go on to create the animated Bob's Burgers for the Fox network.

Style

Brendon Small was a co-creator, writer, executive producer, composer and voice actor on the series

Loren Bouchard worked as creator, writer, executive producer, director and an occasional voice actor

In its first season, Home Movies utilized Soup2Nuts' Squigglevision animation but later abandoned that for the cheaper, more malleable Macromedia Flash animation. The switch was initiated for several reasons: scattered negative response to Squigglevision (from both critics and viewers), limitations in regard to movement (fluid motion is rare in Squigglevision), and the producers' view that Squigglevision was inherent to Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist and that Home Movies should develop its own unique style.^[3]

Another quality that Home Movies carried over from Dr. Katz was its initial use of "retroscripting", a process in which an episode's scripts are purposely left vague, and instead of exact dialogue, the plot of a particular scene is merely outlined — the rest of the dialogue is then created through improv by the actors.^[4][5] The use of retroscripting in Home Movies gives the show very casual, realistic dialogue with an often dry, sarcastic wit. Although retroscripting was only used officially in the first season (the entire first episode was improvised from start to finish), the dialogue in the following three seasons remained heavily improvised, with the written script serving mainly as a guide or something to fall back on for jokes if needed.

Another prominent feature of the show was its use of original music written and performed by the series creator Brendon Small, a graduate of the Berklee College of Music, a self-proclaimed shredder, who went on to become the composer, vocalist and guitarist of Dethklok.

A recurring visual theme within the show is lawn gnomes, which tend to make random but subtle appearances in the background of many scenes (even a gnome-shaped guitar appears in a music shop in the episode "Guitarmageddon"). At least one lawn gnome can be found in almost every episode of the series, as well as on the DVD box art, and as a cookie (which is an Easter egg in the DVD menus on certain discs).

Characters

Season plot summaries

Season 1

Animated in Squigglevision and heavily using retroscripting, the first five episodes aired on UPN in 1999. The show introduced the main characters in this season, and mainly consisted of episodes revolving around Brendon's movies. Much of the style of the writing is loose and improvised. The season ends with Brendon saying hello to his erstwhile absent father on the phone.

Season 2

Now animated in Flash, this is the first season commissioned by Cartoon Network as a result of mixed ratings of Season One reruns. The episodes are now heavily scripted, but the creators now have much more freedom, allowing for creative episodes (“History”), introducing new characters (Fenton Mewly, the Adelbergs) as well as a multiple-story season arc, which included:

• Brendon meeting his father Andrew and his fiancée Linda, resulting in therapy sessions, leading up to a wedding.
• Brendon develops a crush on Scäb choreographer Cynthia, and tries to win her over.
• Paula loses her job and searches for a new one. Melissa's dad offers some advice.

The show also develops a writing device that carries through the next seasons, in which the plots of one episode usually all have an underlying theme. Emphasis on Brendon’s movies becomes key here, and the subtext of their creation is finally discussed. At this point, Brendon is still enjoying his life making films and living in a "fantasy" world.

Season 3

A bit looser than Season Two, the show ditches the idea of seasonal story arc, and many of the episodes air out of order. The episodes become racier, with more resounding sexual themes and cursing than before. Secondary characters, such as Fenton and Dwayne, begin to have a chance to shine, as episodes focused on them and others are made. Another noteworthy aspect is that the show begins to acknowledge actual movies more often than it had previously, and starts parodying them heavily. The season ends with Brendon’s stepmother Linda having a child, but afterwards she and Andrew no longer make appearances in the show.

Season 4

The final season: the creators apparently knew they were getting canceled throughout the entire production of the final thirteen episodes. Many of the episodes are straight parodies of movies, including three allusions to Hitchcockian thrillers. The bulk of the episodes consist of plots that involve Brendon doing something other than making films. Part of this revolves around Brendon trying to figure out whether he still enjoys making movies, or if it's becoming more of a chore. An entire episode (“Curses”) dealt with swearing and adult themes. The loose dialogue and long conversations lessen for humorous plot devices and a speedier delivery at jokes and gags. The final episode (“Focus Grill”), was made in mind as a series finale, and brought back the long conversations and loose dialogue, as well as a resolution to the series as Brendon, Jason and Melissa finally make a conclusion to their first film, declaring their friendship before they come to the conclusion that their movies aren't as good as they had always believed. Brendon accidentally drops his camera from a moving car while filming scenery in the final sequence and watches in distress as it gets run over, but is thereafter distracted from his grief by a discussion of fast food prompted by his mother and Coach McGuirk.

Home releases

Season releases

Shout! Factory, through Sony BMG Music Entertainment, releases DVDs of Home Movies seasons, each on three-disc box sets. Each DVD has numerous special features and easter eggs. Shout! Factory later on released all of the Home Movies episodes on Amazon Video on Demand.

Reception

In January 2009, IGN listed Home Movies as the 28th best in the Top 100 Best Animated TV Shows.^[7]

Non-regular cast/guest stars

• Paula Poundstone (first five episodes as Paula; replaced by Janine Ditullio)
• Louis C.K.
• Todd Barry
• Mitch Hedberg
• Sam Seder
• Bill Braudis
• Jonathan Katz
• Laura Silverman
• Patton Oswalt
• Jen Kirkman
• Will Le Bow
• Andy Kindler
• Kelly Kimball
• Paula Plum
• Maria Bamford
• Eugene Mirman
• Emo Philips
• Loren Bouchard
• Larry Murphy
• They Might Be Giants
• Tom Kenny

References

External links

• Home Movies at Adult Swim
• Home Movies at the Internet Movie Database