Regular Show is a 2010 American animated television series created by J.G. Quintel. It was greenlit on August 14, 2009 by Cartoon Network, premiered on September 6, 2010 and ended on January 16th, 2017. It is based on a short made for the scrapped Cartoonstitute and features characters from two of the creator's student films, "2 in the AM PM" and "The Naive Man from Lolliland". It is rated TV-PG (sometimes TV-PG-V). It is one of the first cartoons on Cartoon Network to heavily feature suggestive language.
Filming for the first season began on November 14, 2009. Producers decided to split the first season in half with the episode "Ello Gov'nor" being advertised as the season two premiere and finished on October 17, 2010. The show officially aired on September 6, 2010 with the episode "The Power".
On September 13, 2010 the show was renewed for a third season and began filming on January 4, 2011 and finished on February 6, 2012 and started with the episode Stick Hockey.
The show On December 13, 2011 the show was renewed for a fourth season filming began March 12, 2012 and aired on October 1, 2012 with Exit 9B filming for this season, which finished on February 8, 2013.
Premise[]
The series revolves around the daily lives of two 23-year-old friends, Mordecai (a blue jay), and Rigby (a raccoon). They work as groundskeepers at a park, and spend their days trying to avoid work and entertain themselves by any means. This is much to the chagrin of their manager/boss Benson (a gumball machine) and their coworker Skips (a yeti) but to the delight of their (other) manager/boss Pops (a man with a lollipop-shaped head). Other coworkers include an overweight green male called Muscle Man, and a ghost called Hi-Five Ghost.
Creation[]
Regular Show largely grew out of creator J. G. Quintel's life and experiences in college. Quintel attended the California Institute of the Arts, and many of the characters on Regular Show are based on the characters developed for his student films The Naïve Man from Lolliland (2005) and 2 in the AM PM (2006). Both originated as part of a game called "48-hour films", in which students put words into a hat, pulled out one word at midnight and spent a weekend developing ideas for a film. Quintel attended college with Thurop Van Orman and Pendleton Ward, who both went on to work at Cartoon Network Studios with Quintel; Van Orman created The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack and Ward created Adventure Time. Quintel concurrently worked on Camp Lazlo and as creative director on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack while completing his degree. He was later invited to pitch for Cartoon Network's Cartoonstitute, a project to showcase short films created without the interference of network executives and focus testing.
J. G. Quintel returned to the characters from his films, put them together with newer characters and created a pilot. Quintel wanted to present a visual pitch rather than a verbal one, believing the idea would make little sense otherwise. He storyboarded the idea for the pilot, and Craig McCracken and Rob Renzetti liked his presentation. Regular Show was one of two series from the project that were green-lit (the other show being Secret Mountain Fort Awesome, based on the Cartoonstitute short Uncle Grandpa, which in turn became its own series later on). The project was eventually scrapped and never premiered on television. The character of Mordecai embodies Quintel during his college years, specifically at CalArts; Quintel said, "That's that time when you're hanging out with your friends and getting into stupid situations, but you're also taking it seriously enough." The character of Rigby was randomly developed when Quintel drew a raccoon hula-hooping. He liked the design and developed the character of Rigby to be far less responsible than his companion.
The show is inspired by some British television series and video games. Episodes are produced using storyboarding and hand-drawn animation, and each episode takes roughly nine months to create. Quintel recruited several independent comic book artists to draw the show's animated elements; their style matched closely with Quintel's ideas for the series. The show's soundtrack comprises original music composed by Mark Mothersbaugh as well as licensed songs. While preparing for the beginning of the show, Quintel looked for young, independent comic artists to compose the show's storyboard artists; he thought that the style would closely match that of Regular Show. He looked through blogs and convention panels for the "total package", which he said was the ability to write and draw; something that many independent comic book artists possess. In addition, Quintel attended many open shows at CalArts—an eight-hour festival of student animation. The style and sensibility of Regular Show was difficult to work with in the beginning; the artists struggled to create a natural, sitcom-like sound for the series.
Regular Show was inspired by The Simpsons and Beavis and Butt-Head, and Quintel credited the stylistic elements of Joe Murray's Rocko's Modern Life and Camp Lazlo as working their way into his style. Video games Street Fighter, Shadowrun and ToeJam & Earl—which Quintel played when he was a child—inspired the series, as did some British television programs. Quintel's interest in British television was influenced by his British roommate at CalArts, who introduced him to The League of Gentlemen, The IT Crowd, Little Britain, The Office and The Mighty Boosh; the latter was very influential to Quintel and would later influence the humor in Regular Show.
Production[]
Writing[]
The plots of Regular Show episodes generally begin with a basic problem that the characters must overcome. While the protagonists work on their task, a magical, supernatural, or strange element appears and complicates the initially simple problem. The writers decided to follow this narrative structure to take advantage of the animation.
The series is rated TV-PG-V. Cartoon Network told Quintel early on that they wanted to "age it up from the TV-Y7 stuff we'd been doing in the past". This direction led the crew to use adult-oriented humor with innuendos and drug and alcohol references. One of the program's storyboard artists, Calvin Wong, said that he enjoys the limitations set by writing for the show since the adult-oriented jokes that are approved are satisfying.
The plots of the episodes were influenced by the writers' and Quintel's personal experiences, such as performing prank telephone calls or accepting an eating challenge from a restaurant. The show often references 1980s culture, using music and electronic devices from that era because many factors from the decade left a positive influence on Quintel. The show also makes references to modern social trends such as viral internet videos.
Voice Cast[]
The voice acting of the series is relatively low-key, and the intention was to make most of the characters sound natural and conversational. Quintel wanted to make the show listenable and given contrast to most other cartoons, which often are difficult for adults to listen to. The main cast consists of voice acting veterans Mark Hamill, who portrays Skips and Roger Craig Smith, who plays Thomas. William Salyers plays the voice of Rigby, Janie Haddad portrays Margaret and Quintel's former CalArts classmate Sam Marin voices Benson, Pops, and Muscle Man. Quintel portrays Mordecai and Hi-Five Ghost. Members of the production staff have voiced several characters throughout the series; these include Minty Lewis, Toby Jones, Andress Salaff, and Matt Price. The Regular Show cast recorded their lines together in group as opposed to individual recording sessions for each actor; this helped make the show's dialogue sound natural. The series regularly used guest voice actors for recurring characters; these guests include Steven Blum, Courtenay Taylor, David Ogden Stiers, Robin Atkin Downes, Jeff Bennett, Jennifer Hale, David Kaye, Fred Tatasciore, Matthew Yang King, and Julian Holloway.
Animation[]
Each episode of Regular Show took about nine months to complete. Quintel and his 35-member team developed each episode at Cartoon Network Studios in Burbank, California. The script was illustrated in rough hand-drawn images, known as storyboards. The storyboards were then animated and mixed with the corresponding dialogue to create the animatic, which was then sent to be approved by the network. The show's assets (backgrounds, character designs, props) were then assembled to be sent to Saerom Animation in South Korea, where the actual animation production of the episode was performed. When finished, the episode was sent to Sabre Media Studios back in California. Music and sound effects were created and the final episode is mixed and completed. The process allowed the production team to work concurrently on dozens of episodes at different stages of production.
Although most modern animation had switched to hybrid methods such as the Cintiq, Regular Show was described as "far more low-fi", and was animated traditionally by hand using paper which was then digitally composited and painted with digital ink and paint. Although Cintiqs were initially optioned to be used for the program, Quintel stated that he felt more comfortable working on paper, considering it to be more organic and more representative of each artist's individual style. Board artist Calvin Wong said, "the tools of the trade as being pencils, pens, white-out and occasionally lightboxes and electric erasers".
Music[]
Regular Show has no regular theme music; instead, at the beginning of each episode, a blurred sound (provided by Quintel) followed by a ticking clock is heard over the title cards. The main composer of the series is Mark Mothersbaugh, one of the founding members of the band Devo. As Quintel was developing the pilot he considered asking Mothersbaugh to create the music for the show. The episode's animatic was sent to Mothersbaugh along with a request for him to join the show's staff and crew.
Regular Show occasionally made use of licensed songs—mostly from the 1980s; this began when Quintel and the staff writers started recording the animatics using copyrighted songs for the montage scenes. The network executives watched the animatic and asked the crew if they wanted to use some of the songs for the finished episodes. Quintel said that the songs are chosen for their suitability for the scene, whether they sound good and are affordable. Quintel enjoyed using the songs in the episodes because adult viewers might have remembered them and younger viewers might appreciate older music. Songs have included "You're the Best Around", "Mississippi Queen" and "A Holly Jolly Christmas". The show also used several songs not from the 80s, such as "Pale Blue Eyes" by The Velvet Underground from the movie and "Heroes" by David Bowie from the series finale. Another notable song used in the show is "Here Comes a Regular" by The Replacements, a band often considered as underground.
The show also produced original songs which were used in episodes. These are generally composed by Mothersbaugh and written by one of the staff's storyboard artists. "Summertime Loving, Loving in the Summer (Time)" was written by the staff member Sean Szeles and appeared in the episode "This Is My Jam" (season 2, episode 13).
Series overview[]
| Season: | episodes: | premiere: | finale: |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pilot | |||
| 1 | 12 | September 6th, 2010 | November 22nd, 2010 |
| 2 | 28 | November 29th, 2010 | August 1st, 2011 |
| 3 | 40 | September 19th, 2011 | September 3rd, 2012 |
| 4 | October 1st, 2012 | August 12th, 2013 | |
| 5 | September 2nd, 2013 | August 14th, 2014 | |
| 6 | 31 | October 9th, 2014 | June 25th, 2015 |
| 7 | 39 | June 26th, 2015 | June 30th, 2016 |
| 8 | 31 | September 26th, 2016 | January 16th, 2017 |
| TV movie | November 25th, 2015 | ||
| Shorts | 15 | April 15th, 2011 | January 2nd, 2017 |
Characters[]
Park Employees[]
Supporting[]
- Margaret
- Eileen
- Starla Gutsmandottir
- Audrey
- CJ
- Mr. Maellard
- Thomas
- Don
- Celia
- Low Five Ghost
- Death
- Gary
- Guardians of Eternal Youth
- Gene
- Baby Ducks
- Techmo
- Carter and Briggs
- God of Basketball
- RGB2
- Sensai
- Eggscellent Knight
- Archie the Archivist
- Guardians of Obsolete Formats
- DVD
- Blu-ray
- Muscle Dad
- Muscle Bro
- Johnny Skydiver
- Pam
- Dr. Langer
- Principal Dean
- Francis Jablonski
- Aiden Jablonski
- Milton
- Party Horse 42699
- Chance Sureshot
- Toothpick Sally
- Recap Robot
- Colonel Rawls
- Earl
Villains[]
- Garrett Bobby Ferguson
- Garrett Bobby Ferguson, Jr.
- Anti-Pops
- Klorgbane the Destroyer
- Capicola Gang
- List of Villains
- One-Time Villains
Appearances in other projects[]
In the Adventure Time episode, Ketchup, a Blu Jay resembling Mordecai makes an appearance.
Mordecai and Rigby made cameos as audiences in the Uncle Grandpa episode, Pizza Eve.
Mordecai, Rigby, and Hi Five Ghost all appeared in The Amazing World of Gumball episode, The Boredom.
Mordecai and Hi Five Ghost were featured in the OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes episode, Crossover Nexus. Mordecai appeared as one of Ben 10's transformations to defeat Strike and Hi Five Ghost appeared as stone and restored by Strike's pen.
Video game[]
A video game adaptation known as Regular Show: Mordecai and Rigby in 8-Bit Land was released in 2013 for Nintendo 3DS.
The series was also featured in various crossover video games as well:
Mordecai and Rigby appeared as nanos in an update of Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall. they also appeared as suits in Project Exonaut, as well as playable characters in the FusionFall spin-off, FusionFall Heroes.
Mordecai appeared as a non playable boardwalk customer in the 2018 mobile game, Cartoon Network: Match Land. Rigby was added as an official playable character in the 1.2.0. update.
Home media[]
DVDs[]
- Slack Park (April 3rd, 2012)
- The Best DVD in the World (November 6th, 2012)
- Party Pack (March 5th, 2013)
- The Complete First and Second Seasons (July 16th, 2013)
- Fright Pack (September 3rd, 2013)
- Mordecai and Margaret Pack (February 11th, 2014)
- The Complete Third Season (June 17th, 2014)
- Rigby Pack (September 9th, 2014)
- Mordecai Pack (January 27th, 2015)
- Regular Show: The Movie (October 13th, 2015)
- The Complete Series (February 4th, 2025)
Digital releases:[]
All 8 seasons are on iTunes and Prime Video.
Regular Show was available on Netflix from 2013 to 2015, was released on Hulu in 2015 itself, was released on HBO Max on May 27th, 2020, was available on Max from May 2023 to October 2024, and was released on Disney+ (as part of the Hulu merger) on December 2023.
Trivia[]
- Regular Show consists of some characters from J.G. Quintel's old college films and sketches mashed together in one show.
- Pops, Mordecai and Benson are the only 3 main characters that are in J.G. Quintel's college films and sketches.
- Regular Show never aired in Saudi Arabia.
Languages[]
- English: Regular Show
- Spanish: Historias Corrientes (Spain)/ Un Show Mas (Latin America)
- Hungarian: Park műsor
- French Castillian: Le Regular Series
- Polish: Zwyczajny Serial
- Turkish: Sürekli Dizi
- Italian: La Regular Show
- Romanian: Un Show obisnuit
- Brazilian Portuguese: Apenas um Show
- Bulgarian: Пaрк шoy
- Russian: Обычное Шоу
- Chinese (Taiwan Ver.): 天兵公園
- Filipino: Pang-karaniwang na Palabas
- Korean: 레귤러 쇼 (Regular Show)
- Vietnamese: Chương trình thường nhật (Regular Show)
Gallery[]
External Links[]
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