Drawn Together

Drawn Together is an American adult animated sitcom which ran on Comedy Central from October 27, 2004. The series was created by Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein, and uses a sitcom format with a TV reality show setting.

Like that of MTV's The Challenge and VH1's The Surreal Life, the show's eight characters are a combination of personalities that were recognizable and familiar prior to the series. Differently, however, Drawn Together used caricatures of established cartoon characters and stock characters. In addition, their character traits parody personality types that are typically seen in reality TV shows.

Comedy Central advertised it as the first animated reality show, and in some episodes, characters participate in challenges that are similar to reality TV challenges, although the premise is largely dropped in later seasons.

Main Characters

 * Captain Leslie Hero (voiced by Jess Harnell): A sociopathic, chauvinistic, perverted, antiheroic, pansexual, necrophilic andlecherous spoof of Superman and other superheroes, with a visual style taken from the cartoons of Bruce Timm and Max Fleischer. Being primarily macho, he is prone to occasional random fits of hysterics akin to posttraumatic stress disorder, playing off the "tragic origin" stories of many superheroes.
 * Wooldoor Jebediah Sockbat (voiced by James Arnold Taylor): A bizarre children's show character in the mold of SpongeBob SquarePants and Stimpy who displays many of the typical reality-defying behaviors of Looney Tunes characters.
 * Princess Clara (voiced by Tara Strong): A pampered, religious and bigoted princess who is a spoof of Disney princesses such asAriel from The Little Mermaid (1989) and Belle from Beauty and the Beast (1991). She is homophobic, passionate about singing, and likes to wear a lavender-purple dress and white, pearled earrings.
 * Foxxy Love (voiced by Cree Summer): A sharp-tongued ghetto-spoof of Valerie Brown from Hanna-Barbera's Josie and the Pussycats, she is a promiscuous mystery-solving musician.
 * Toot Braunstein (voiced by Tara Strong): An overweight alcoholic retro-style sex symbol from black-and-white 1920s cartoons, reminiscent of Betty Boop. Toot demands to be the center of attention, cuts herself with razor blades, eats excessively when depressed and often instigates conflict in the house.
 * Xandir P. Wifflebottom (voiced by Jack Plotnick): A hypersensitive, homosexual, overemotional and effeminate spoof of video game heroes like Link from The Legend of Zelda series and Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII.
 * Spanky Ham (voiced by Adam Carolla): A sex-obsessed, toilet-humored, obnoxious pig and a parody of various Internet Flash cartoon characters as well as The Real World: San Francisco cast member David "Puck" Rainey,[1] visually reminiscent of theLooney Tunes character Porky Pig.
 * Ling-Ling (voiced by Abbey DiGregorio): A homicidal spoof of Pikachu from the Pokémon franchise, who battles using various supernatural powers/abilities (represented in anime-like style) and speaks in pseudo-Japanese gibberish (or "Japorean" - a portmanteau of "Japanese" and "Korean" - as Ling-Ling's voice Abbey DiGregorio calls it) with English subtitles.

Recurring Characters

 * The Jew Producer (voiced by James Arnold Taylor) - The sadistic producer of in-series version of Drawn Together. The Jew Producer is a man with a speaker for a head and a shiny mullet that parodies that of Donald Trump's. He often times appears in the show for special events in the series such as season finales or clip shows to make it into a special event for the viewers. Most of the time, The Jew Producer is setting up the gang with some challenges or surprising them with an unexpected visitor to spice things up in the show.
 * Octopussoir (voiced by Jess Harnell) - Princess Clara's living monster vagina. The Octopussoir is a green tentacled beast that is the result of a curse made by Clara's evil stepmother. The Octopussoir is a living being who has grown quite fond of Clara and has developed an emotional bond with her. However, the Octopussoir is always being treated like a terrible beast even though he is of good heart. The Octopussoir wants nothing more than to be treated like another human being.
 * The King (voiced by Jess Harnell) - Princess Clara's bigoted father and king of Fairytale Kingdom. The King is the reason for all of Clara's mindless bigotry and stupid intolerance and he will sometimes visit the house if he hears word of something occurring there that he does not approve of.
 * Bleh (voiced by Sarah Silverman) - Clara's mentally retarded cousin. First appearing in the episode The Other Cousin, Bleh started a relationship with Captain Hero. Clara, however, doesn't approve of this relationship and she doesn't like her being around him.
 * Jun-Jee (voiced by Jess Harnell) - Ling-Ling's very old and wise father who will sometimes come to the Drawn Together house and force something into Ling-Ling's lifestyle that he does not like. Ling-Ling and Jun-Jee love each other dearly, but Ling-Ling will have his problems with him and Jun-Jee will have his shame in him. One of the most notable dishonors that Ling-Ling has brought to his family is being the star of a reality TV show.
 * Child Services (voiced formerly by Paget Brewster and currently by Tara Strong) - A woman who works for the Child Services company who usually visits the Drawn Together house if she hears that there is a child or baby there who is being raised inappropriately. This causes conflict, mostly because this usually results in the children being replaced in even more unfitting foster homes.
 * Judge Fudge (voiced by James Arnold Taylor) - His name says it all. He's a piece of chocolate fudge who works as a court judge. Most of the time, when a housemate or other character goes to court, Judge Fudge will be the judge, but he's not going to be very useful, because almost everything he says is "I'm sorry, but I don't have time for (subject of the scene). I'm far too busy being delicious." Judge Fudge also spawned his own spin-off series called The Judge Fudge Power Hour which originated from a short at the end of the episode The Lemon-AIDS Walk.
 * Steve from Long Island (voiced by James Arnold Taylor) - An open-shirted, laid-back partygoer who has become great friends with everyone at the Drawn Together house and will sometimes stop by to party with them. He's a cool guy who lives his 20s to the fullest, mainly by clubbing and banging chicks. Steve is very popular with women because he's really cool. He's dressed so that he's never seen without his shades and he's never seen with a shirt. He spends the majority of his life shirtless and even on the rare occasions where he does wear a shirt, it's an open shirt that's barely ever even covering his shoulders.
 * Unusually Flexible Girl (voiced by Tara Strong) - An elastic superhero who is Captain Hero's crazy college girlfriend. First appearing in Captain Hero's Marriage Pact where she parodied a love triangle with Captain Hero and Wooldoor. She's a girl who does not want to die alone and is always freaking out over who her new boyfriend or husband will be. She will fall madly in love with boys and dramatically break up with them, crying just as quickly because she's completely insane. Her final appearance was in the episode Alzheimer's That Ends Well, where she finally made up her mind and became happily married to Octopussoir.
 * Ni-Pul (voiced by Cree Summer) -  is a purple female battle monster with whom Ling-Ling's father paired Ling-Ling in an arranged relationship.

Animation style
The show's visual style is that of traditional cel animation, which is actually a departure for Comedy Central, since they usually favor more specialized approaches to animation. The style was chosen both for the retro feel it gives the show and for the versatility it allows the animators, providing an environment in which it is possible to combine many different styles of animation. Another unique aspect of the show is that, where most cartoons present their characters, though animated, as real within the show's world, theDrawn Together characters retain their identities as cartoon characters even within their animated world, and acknowledge their status as animations. The show has cameo appearances by famous characters (or in some cases, copyright-avoiding clones) 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 show 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, high-contrast monochrome of her era's technology.

The show 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 show.

The movie was produced by Six Point Harness, and done completely with Flash animation.

Content
The plots and humor of Drawn Together is adult-oriented and laden with shock comedy. The humor is largely humorously dark and satirical in nature, its primary focus being the mockery of stereotypes and the casual exploration of taboo subject matter, such as masturbation, paraphilia, kinky sex, BDSM, homosexuality or gay marriage, abortion, rape,incest, pedophilia, spousal abuse, racism, homophobia, antisemitism, necrophilia, terrorism, 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, the main characters will subsequently return alive and uninjured, either in the subsequent episode, or within the time frame of the same single episode. The show breaks the fourth wall regularly; on one occasion, the show mocks Adam Carolla, the voice of Spanky Ham.

Despite the show's overt and underlined sexuality, the characters' innocent and sensual sides are often the main driving force of the plot (alongside comedic non-sequiturmoments 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 of 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 show 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.[5] 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 movie, 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 show, though the intent is actually to make fun of bigotry. As Jess Harnellstates 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 authoritarian 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. However, 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. However, 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 on the show; many Drawn Together stories are parodies of overused plots from TV and films.

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.

In terms of continuity, events in different episodes contradict each other, as there is a loose sense of canon. One such example is in "The Other Cousin" and "N.R.A.y RAY", in which Toot is pictured with a penis, something that is not consistent with other episodes. Another is Foxxy's various and contradictory stories about her son Timmy (one involves selling him on the black market, another involves her accidentally shooting him after believing him to be rabid, when he was really just brushing his teeth). Plots and gags are often used that do not make any type of internal sense, but are used as one-off jokes, as when Foxxy, who is in her twenties, is said to have a teenage grandson. Some episodes begin with a fake recap of events supposed to have happened in a (non-existent) previous episode. According to executive producer Bill Freiberger, "Very little on Drawn Together can be considered canon. If you try to find continuity on this show you'll drive yourself nuts. The only thing that's consistent is we try to make the show as funny as possible. And we'd never let a little thing like continuity get in the way of that."[citation needed]

Occasionally, episodes of Drawn Together are shown with less editing for content during Secret Stash, a Comedy Central program aired on weekends at 1am that showcases films (i.e. Not Another Teen Movie), comedy specials (Comedy Central Roast), and animated programs (this and South Park) with uncensored language. Though Secret Stashprograms typically have the nudity still censored, Drawn Together is an exception to this. Some nudity not seen in the original broadcast is shown in the Secret Stash version, while the nudity in other scenes is censored with a caption reading "DVD only"; this is done as a way of promoting the show's DVD releases.

Voice cast
Drawn Together features a cast of voice actors, which contains a mix of veteran voice actors (Tara Strong, Cree Summer, Jess Harnell and James Arnold Taylor) and newcomers to the field (Abbey DiGregorio and Jack Plotnick). Comedian Adam Carolla rounds out the cast.

Members of the show's voice cast collaborated with each other on other projects prior to Drawn Together. Taylor(Wooldoor), Summer (Foxxy) and Strong (Clara and Toot) all performed in the Square Co./Square Enix-developed video games Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2 as Tidus/Shuyin, Lady Belgemine/Young Tidus/Lenne (speaking voice) /Calli and Rikku, respectively. On a similar note, Taylor, Strong and Jess Harnell all performed in the video game Kingdom Hearts II (also developed by Square Enix) as Captain Jack Sparrow/Timon, Rikku and Doctor Finklestein/Lock, respectively, while Taylor and Strong both performed in Mark Hamill's Comic Book: The Movie and the Insomniac-developed Ratchet & Clank video game franchise.

Tara Strong and Cree Summer worked together on other projects, most notably Nickelodeon's Rugrats and its spinoff All Grown Up!, Danny Phantom, Cartoon Network'sCodename: Kids Next Door, Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater, Disney's The Buzz on Maggie (which also features Jess Harnell) and Transformers Animated. According to the DVD commentary for the episode "Hot Tub", the two have known each other since childhood (both grew up in Toronto, Ontario).

Three of the show's voice actors had worked with creators Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein on other projects: Jack Plotnick on Action, and Adam Carolla and Abbey McBride onThe Man Show. Two of Drawn Together 's guest stars also came from the casts of earlier Jeser/Silverstein projects: "The Other Cousin" guest star Sarah Silverman (from Greg the Bunny), and Carolla's Man Show co-host Jimmy Kimmel, who guest-starred in "Xandir and Tim, Sitting in a Tree" and "Alzheimer's That Ends Well".

Principal cast member Tara Strong has stated that she deeply loves the show, as it was such a departure from the family-friendly productions that she was used to working on at the time. The only problems that she had with it were a few jokes related to Anne Frank.[4]

Originally, Xandir was to have been played by Nat Faxon, but he was fired following the first table read because the network felt his portrayal of the character was too stereotypically gay. Gay actor Jack Plotnick ended up being cast because he could play a gay man without resorting to stereotypical mannerisms such as the gay lisp.[6]

In addition to their regular roles, the show's cast provides many of the minor roles and guest voices on the series, Summer, Strong, Harnell and Taylor in particular. In the DVD commentary for "Hot Tub", Tara Strong jokes that this is because the show does not have a lot of money to pay guest stars. Chris Edgerly appears in the majority of Season One and Two episodes despite not having a regular role on the series.

Critical reception
The pilot episode, "Hot Tub", was given mediocre reviews, which focused mostly on its crudity. USA Today deemed Drawn Together "the smutty offspring of Real World andSuperfriends," stating that the pilot pushed the limits of taste, being overpowered by violence, sex, and disgusting subject matter.[7] According to The New York Times, "Hot Tub", while it had many good sight gags, did not go far enough in parodying reality television. The domination of Clara's racism in the story was criticized as being a weak attempt to "send up racism while still showcasing its cruel excitement." Toot's cutting was praised as a good parody of self-harm present on reality shows, but Spanky's flatulence was considered more disgusting than humorous.[8]

The pilot episode was given an F rating from Entertainment Weekly and the subplot for a second season episode, "Xandir and Tim, Sitting in a Tree", involved the majority of the housemates seeking revenge for this rating. The latter episode also received an F from the magazine.

TV Guide named "Drawn Together" in its 60 Greatest Cartoons of All Time list in 2013.[9]

Episodes
Main article: List of Drawn Together episodes

Music
One of the hallmarks of a Drawn Together episode is music. (All episodes except "Lost in Parking Space, Part One" and "Nipple Ring-Ring Goes to Foster Care" have music in some form, not including the theme song and other incidental music.)

Online Streaming
Drawn Together episodes are available to watch at the official website here.
 * Due to a labeling error, "Terms of Endearment" is mistakenly labeled as "Dirty Pranking No. 2". "Dirty Pranking No. 2" is in turn mistakenly labeled as "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist."
 * "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist" is absent from the website.