Drawn Together is an American adult animated sitcom created by Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein. It aired on Comedy Central from October 27, 2004, to November 14, 2007, spanning three seasons. The series is a parody of house-based reality shows and follows the misadventures of the housemates in the fictional series of the same name. The series uses a sitcom format with a reality TV show setting.
Drawn Together uses caricatures of established cartoon characters and stock characters. These character traits parody personalities that are typically seen in reality television shows. Comedy Central advertised it as the first "animated reality TV series" and in some episodes the characters participate in challenges that are similar to reality television challenges. This premise is largely dropped in later episodes.
The series was cancelled after three seasons. A direct-to-video film which serves as its series finale, The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie!, was released on April 20, 2010.
Characters
Captain Leslie Hero (voiced by Jess Harnell): A sociopathic, chauvinistic, idiotic, immature, perverted, heteroflexible, necrophiliac and lecherous parody of superheroes. Being primarily macho, he is prone to occasional random fits of hysteria, akin to post-traumatic stress disorder, playing on the "tragic origin" stories of many superheroes. His character is based on the "flying brick" superhero archetype, especially DC Comics' Superman and Shazam, though he refers in one episode to his "hero cave", an allusion to Batman's Batcave. Wooldoor Jebediah Sockbat (voiced by James Arnold Taylor): A hyperactive, bizarre, gullible and simple-minded yellow creature reminiscent of characters like SpongeBob SquarePants, and Stimpy. In addition, he displays many of the typical reality-defying behaviors seen in characters from the Looney Tunes franchise and Tex Avery-directed cartoons of MGM. Princess Clara (voiced by Tara Strong): A pampered and bigoted princess. A Christian, she is passionate about singing, but repeatedly demonstrates homophobic and racist behavior. Aside from being partially based on The Real World: New Orleans Julie Stoffer, she is a spoof of Disney Princesses, mostly Ariel from The Little Mermaid franchise. Foxxy Love (voiced by Cree Summer): A sharp-tongued and promiscuous mystery-solving musician who is a parody of Valerie Brown from the Josie and the Pussycats franchise. Toot Braunstein (voiced by Tara Strong): An obese, egotistical, depressed and alcoholic sex symbol who is a parody of rubber hose-animated cartoon characters from the golden age of American animation, particularly Fleischer Studios' Betty Boop while being partially based on Big Brother 3s Amy Crews. Toot demands to be the center of attention, cuts herself with razor blades, practices poor personal hygiene, eats excessively when depressed and often instigates conflict in the house. Xandir P. Wifflebottom (voiced by Jack Plotnick): A homosexual and effeminate spoof of young, blonde and handsome swordsman protagonists in video games, particularly Link from The Legend of Zelda series and Cloud Strife from the Final Fantasy series. Spanky Ham (voiced by Adam Carolla): A horny, crude-humored, obnoxious and greedy anthropomorphic pig-based parody of various Internet Flash animation characters, specifically from Newgrounds and Adult Swim; his likenesses was inspired by The Real World: San Francisco cast member David "Puck" Rainey. Ling-Ling (voiced by Abbey McBride): A psychopathic and homicidal anime-styled battle monster from somewhere in Asia who is a spoof of Pikachu from the Pokémon franchise. He battles using various supernatural powers/abilities, represented with a matching anime-like style, and English subtitles are shown on-camera due to Ling-Ling speaking pseudo-Japanese gibberish (or "Japorean", a portmanteau of Japanese and Korean, as McBride calls it).
Production Animation style
Drawn Togethers visual style is that of digital ink-and-paint. The style was chosen both for the retro feel it gives the series and for the versatility and freedom it allows the animators, providing an environment in which it is possible to combine many different styles of animation. Another unique aspect of the series is that, where most cartoons present their characters, though animated, as real within the series' universe, the Drawn Together characters retain their identities as cartoon characters even within their animated world and they acknowledge their status as such. The series has cameo appearances by famous characters (or in some cases, clones to avoid infringing copyright) from all across the animated spectrum. In keeping with the various animation styles for the characters, Wooldoor and Toot have four fingers on each hand, whereas Clara, Foxxy, Hero and Xandir have five. In promotional artwork for the show, Toot and Wooldoor are drawn with the standard five fingers, but in the series itself they have four. Whereas most of the characters are drawn with black outlines, Clara and items belonging to her are drawn with soft edges, a reference to Disney animation techniques, which involve "cleanup" of any black outlines. Contrasting, Toot is drawn in the grainy and high-contrast monochrome of her era's technology.
The series was made by Rough Draft Studios in Glendale, California, with much of the animation done at the studio's facilities in South Korea. A gag in "The Drawn Together Clip Show" is that they show a list of all the Korean children who died animating the series.
The film was produced by 6 Point Harness and done completely with Flash animation due to budget cuts.
Cancellation A total of three seasons were produced. Season 3 began airing on October 5, 2006, and took a mid-season break which started on November 15, 2006. The second half of season three began airing on October 4, 2007. In March 2007, it was announced that creators Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein had left Comedy Central and later created DJ & the Fro for their sister channel MTV in 2009, and eventually signed a two-year contract with 20th Century Fox Television to create new series and/or work on the studio's existing programs.
The season three finale included multiple jokes about the series' cancellation. TV Guide listed this episode as a series finale and described the episode as follows: "The series wraps up with the housemates participating in a singing competition as they look back on their recent misadventures.".
In March 2008, Tara Strong confirmed that the series had been cancelled, and the back of the third season DVDs box refers to it as the "third and final season".
Since cancellation, the series has partial rotation late-nights and airs uncensored on Comedy Central's Secret Stash and on Logo.
In response to the cancellation, the official page of Drawn Together on Myspace had suggested the fans call Comedy Central and convince them to make a new season.
Content
The plots and humor of Drawn Together are adult-oriented and heavily loaded with shock comedy. The humor is largely raunchy, morbid and satirical in nature, its primary focus being the mockery of stereotypes and the casual exploration of taboo subject matter, such as profanity, masturbation, paraphilia, kink, homosexuality or gay marriage, abortion, rape, incest, pedophilia, bestiality, menstruation, spousal abuse, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, antisemitism, necrophilia, terrorism, graphic violence and death. Episodes such as "Gay Bash" or "A Very Special Drawn Together Afterschool Special", for example, feature the exploration of homosexuality as a central theme. Nearly all episodes feature at least one death, and several episodes feature characters going on killing sprees or perpetrating or becoming victims of mass murder, though the main characters subsequently returned alive and uninjured. The series breaks the fourth wall regularly; on one occasion, it mocks Adam Carolla, the voice of Spanky Ham.
Despite the series' overt and underlined sexuality, the characters' innocent and sensual sides are often the main driving force of the plot (alongside comedic non-sequitur moments intended to parody standard plot lines). This adds romantic comedy, melodrama, action film, war film, court drama and other genres to the pool of spoofing material. Sincere feelings the characters are forced to experience (and comic disregard thereof) seem to add integrity to the plot and imbue every episode with a genuine moral message, made more efficient by constant spoofing of moral message clichés like "character X has learned a valuable lesson".
Comedy Central's original tagline for the series was "Find out what happens when cartoon characters stop being polite... and start making out in hot tubs", referring to Clara and Foxxy's kiss in the pilot episode. The line is a parody of The Real World's tagline, "Find out what happens when people stop being polite... and start getting real." The aforementioned hot tub kiss is considered one of the show's defining images; Comedy Central based nearly all of its first-season promotional material for Drawn Together on it. In The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie!, a billboard featuring the hot tub kiss is a major plot point in the film and is the main reason why the Network Head is hunting the housemates down in order to kill them in the film, due to the billboard being the cause of his wife and daughter's death.
The extensive use of stereotypes is another controversial aspect of the series, though the intent is actually to make fun of bigotry. As Jess Harnell states in the DVD commentary for "Hot Tub", "Most of the racism on the show is coming from people who are so obviously stupid about it; it really isn't that threatening". (Jewish people are mocked, including creators and principal cast member Tara Strong.) Other content known to be featured on some episodes are occurrences of natural disasters, depictions of dictators and sexual fetishes.
Drawn Together is heavy with popular culture references. Animation is a major source of material; as mentioned above, many characters from comics and animated cartoons make cameo appearances and often are the subjects of parody. Numerous live-action films, TV shows and video games are referenced as well. Reality shows are another prime inspiration, not surprising given that Drawn Together is presented as a reality show that takes place in a cartoon world. Although many of the first-season plots made extensive use of the reality show scenario, this aspect of the show has largely been de-emphasized in later episodes. The spoofing of film and television clichés is another common theme in the series; many Drawn Together stories are parodies of overused plots from film and television.
One notable factor of the series are musical numbers. Some are parodies of real songs (i.e. in "Hot Tub", the song "Black Chick's Tongue" is a parody of "A Whole New World" from Aladdin; in the episode "Super Nanny", the song at the DMV is a riff on "Who's That Guy?" from Grease 2; in "Freaks & Greeks", the song at the end is a take on "Summer Nights" from Grease; and "You'll Really Love Being Abandoned Here" in "Alzheimer's That Ends Well" is a reference to "I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here" from Annie). Other songs are those written by the show's creators/writers, like "The Bully Song" from "Requiem for a Reality Show" and "La-La-La-La-Labia" in "Clara's Dirty Little Secret". Only two episodes ("Lost in Parking Space, Part One" and "Nipple Ring-Ring Goes to Foster Care") do not feature a musical performance.