The Boondocks (TV series)

The Boondocks
Genre	Adult animated series Anime
Created by	Aaron McGruder
Voices of	Regina King John Witherspoon Cedric Yarbrough Gary Anthony Williams Jill Talley Gabby Soleil
Theme music composer	Asheru
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	30 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	Aaron McGruder Rodney Barnes
Producer	Brian J. Cowan
Running time	22 minutes
Original release
Network	Adult Swim
Release	November 6, 2005 – Present

The Boondocks is the American animated television series created by Aaron McGruder for the Adult Swim programming block of Turner Broadcasting's Cartoon Network, based upon McGruder's comic strip of the same name. The Boondocks is a social satire of American culture and race relations (or stereotypes in the world), revolving around the lives of the Freeman family – ten-year-old Huey, his younger brother, eight-year-old Riley, and their grandfather, Robert. The series is produced by Rebel Base in association with Sony Pictures Television and has finished airing its second season on Adult Swim. Season three is currently in production, but all artist work that had occurred at the show's studio, Adelaide Productions in Culver City, has been moved to Korea. The Boondocks takes place in the same place and time frame as its comic counterpart. The Freeman family, having recently moved from the South Side of Chicago to the peaceful, fictional suburb of Woodcrest, Illinois (compare Crestwood) find different ways to cope with this acute change in setting as well as the drastically different suburban cultures and lifestyles to which they are exposed. The perspective offered by this mixture of cultures, lifestyles, and races provides for much of the comedy in this series.

The TV-MA-rated satire premiered on November 6, 2005. The 15-episode first season ended on March 19, 2006. The second season premiered on October 8, 2007 and was, according to McGruder's MySpace page, pared to 13 episodes; however, 15 episodes were created. According to his website, Aaron McGruder claims a third season is currently under production.

Origins

The Boondocks began its life as a comic strip in The Diamondback, the student newspaper at McGruder's alma mater, University of Maryland, College Park. The strip later found its way into The Source magazine. Following these runs, McGruder began simultaneously pitching The Boondocks both as a syndicated comic strip and as an animated television series. The former goal was met first, and The Boondocks debuted in newspapers in April 1999.

In the meantime, development on a Boondocks TV series continued. McGruder and film producer/director Reginald Hudlin created a Boondocks pilot for the Fox Network, but found great difficulty in making the series acceptable for network television. Hudlin left the project after the Fox deal fell through, although McGruder and Sony Television are contractually bound to continue to credit him as an executive producer.

The opening theme song used in the series (slightly remixed for the second season) is performed by hip-hop artist Asheru.

The series has a loose connection with the continuity of the comic strip, though during the final year of the comic strip McGruder made a point to try and synchronize both. He introduced Uncle Ruckus into the strip, and the comic strip version of Riley's hair braided into cornrows to match the character's design in the series.

During the series' first season, McGruder put the strip on a six-month hiatus beginning in March 2006. He did not return to the strip the following November, and the strip's syndicate, Universal Press Syndicate, announced that it had been cancelled.

Characters

Main article: List of The Boondocks characters

Huey Freeman is the series' narrator (with rare exceptions). He is an intelligent ten year-old boy who is portrayed as the voice of reason and a spokesperson for contemporary Afrocentrism. However, he is constantly being verbally browbeaten and generally mocked by his grandfather and younger brother Riley, neither of whom share his beliefs. While Huey makes a point to try and support black causes, he is openly contemptuous of black pop culture popularized in the media for glamorizing superfluous extravagance and ignorance. He never smiles.

Riley Freeman, Huey's trouble-making eight-year-old brother. Unlike his brother, Riley is heavily influenced by gangsta rap culture and black pop culture. Though he is otherwise clever and artistic, he maintains loyalty to those causes even in the face of impending disaster. The bulk of the episodes of the series focus on Riley's misadventures (most of which are fueled by his love for gangsta rap and desire to emulate other street characters in the media) or his various wild schemes involving his grandfather.

Robert Freeman aka Grandad, is the grandfather and legal guardian of Huey and Riley. While he loves his two grandsons, he sometimes gets bent out of shape in response to the constant schemes, misadventures and commentary the two provide on life. Robert himself is no stranger to weirdness; his eager dating pursuits invariably attract strange or dangerous women.

Main article: List of The Boondocks episodes

Like the comic strip, the show is influenced by McGruder's love of anime. He cites Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo as sources of inspiration for fight scenes. Some of the humor is because of the characters' anime style movements. The second season features segments animated by Japanese animation studio Madhouse. As a result, the second season of the series has more detailed animation as well as minor updates for most of the character designs.

Reception

McGruder has defended the show's heavy use of the word "nigga", by arguing that the large-scale usage of the word provides the show with a level of realism, due to the fact that the word is commonly used in the everyday conversations of many African Americans.

In 2006, Reverend Al Sharpton protested Martin Luther King's use of the "N" word in the episode "Return of the King". Sharpton felt it defaced the name of Martin Luther King, and sought an apology from the series producers. The controversy was later referenced in the cartoon strip five times and in the TV episode "The Block is Hot" in the form of a morning radio announcement. According to an article in The Washington Post, references to Rosa Parks were removed from one of the series' completed episodes within a week of her death. In the second episode, "The Trial of R. Kelly", Parks was originally outside the courtroom protesting Kelly when she was hit with a large piece of fried chicken. The scene appears as a deleted scene in the season one DVD set. She is nonetheless seen, unidentified, at the end of the episode being enthusiastically embraced by the woman who had assaulted her with the fried chicken.

In spite of this controversy, the show has garnered praise from critics. Critic Jeffrey M. Anderson of the San Francisco Examiner said "Each episode is beautifully crafted, with an eye on lush, shadowy visuals and a pulsing, jazz-like rhythm... the show is almost consistently funny, consistently brilliant, and, best of all, compulsively watchable." It was named the 94th best animated series by IGN, who describe it as a sharp satirical look at American society.

On January 2006, The Boondocks was nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series at the 37th NAACP Image Awards, alongside The Bernie Mac Show, winner Everybody Hates Chris, Girlfriends, and Half & Half. For the episode "Return of the King," the show won a Peabody Award from the Peabody Institute in 2006. As of November 18, 2007, The Boondocks has a 72% rating on MetaCritic, based on 21 reviews.

Banned Episodes Controversy

During The Boondocks' second season, two episodes were banned from airing without any official word from the network [1]. Originally slated to air on November 16 and December 17 [2], The Hunger Strike and The Uncle Ruckus Reality Show were both heavily critical of BET. An exclusive clip of The Hunger Strike was given to HipHopDX.com in late January 2008, before both episodes were included in full on the Season 2 DVD release that summer. An anonymous source close to the show told HipHopDX.com that they heard BET had been pressuring Sony - the studio behind The Boondocks - to ban the episodes and threatened legal action [3]. However, Cartoon Network publicly stated that "...neither Turner nor Adult Swim were contacted by BET, Ms. Lee or Mr. Hudlin." [4]

Season 3

Aaron McGruder is working on season 3 of the Boondocks. Season three is currently in production and is scheduled to air in the fall of this year.

Soundtrack

Main article: Hip-Hop Docktrine: The Official Boondocks Mixtape

DVD release

The first DVD was released on July 25, 2006 with special features include audio and video commentaries by creator Aaron McGruder and The Boondocks crew. It also featured audio commentaries by Uncle Ruckus, behind-the-scenes features, deleted scenes, un-aired Adult Swim promos, and printable storyboards. The second season was released June 10, 2008, and includes "Behind the Boondocks", and two episodes not aired on Adult Swim (The Hunger Strike and The Uncle Ruckus Reality Show) . The episodes included satirical attacks on the motives of the BET network (and on former executive producer Hudlin), and were shown on the Canadian channel Teletoon.

Network

The Boondocks airs on Adult Swim in the United States, Univision in the United Kingdom, Teletoon in Canada, Season 2 just started on The Comedy Channel (pay tv network) in Australia. It has also been aired on TV6 in Sweden, and in Russia The Boondocks is aired on channel 2x2 under the name of Гетто (Ghetto in English).

See also

• The Boondocks (comic strip)

External links

• The Boondocks official website
• Adult Swim's Boondocks page
• The Boondocks at IMDb
• Template:Tv.com