Movies - Clerks: The Animated Series

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	Movies - Clerks: The Animated Series

Clerks: The Animated Series is a cult television series based on Kevin Smith's 1994 film debut Clerks. It was developed for television by Smith, Smith's producer Scott Mosier and former Seinfeld
writer David Mandel.

Overview

The main characters, Dante Hicks, Randal Graves, Jay and Silent Bob, as well as the setting and basic premise, are taken directly from the movie. The show differs from the movie in many ways, however, due to the additional freedom animation provides, as well as the language and content restrictions that broadcast TV demands. For example, the characters of Jay and Silent Bob were changed from drug dealers to mischief makers (selling fireworks instead of marijuana), and the profanity of the film (which was enough to initially achieve an NC-17 rating) is drastically toned down. The series also introduced a new villain, Leonardo Leonardo, named after Leonardo, New Jersey, the town in which the series, and Smith's New Jersey films, takes place. Leonardo was voiced by Alec Baldwin.

The show has a rather hysterical style and pace, quite different from the film (more in line, perhaps, with the frenetic pace of Smith films like Mallrats
and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
), and the creators regularly play around with the medium, parodying different plot devices. For example, the second episode is a clip show, a common format for long running sit-coms where the characters reflect on previous events from the show and the majority of the show is archive footage. There is a long sequence of scenes — several of which are nested multiple levels into each other — that look back on previous episodes, even though only a single episode had run before that one, and thusly, most of the "clips" were actually original material created solely for the joke of the clips themselves.

As with the film, most of the characters are either cynically irresponsible or completely crazy, with Dante being the only really sympathetic "normal guy" around. As a result, Dante is usually the straight man to the hijinks of the other characters.

Besides the original voices of the film characters and Baldwin, the show sported an impressive list of guest performers. Gwyneth Paltrow, Charles Barkley, Grant Hill, Reggie Miller and Dan Patrick playing themselves as well as Gilbert Gottfried playing Patrick Swayze, Michael McKean playing Professor Ram and The Creepy Guy, Kevin McDonald playing Batman Fan in Episode 6, Julia Sweeney playing the mom in Episode 6, Al Franken playing the Mayor of Leonardo, James Woods playing Major Baklava and Judge Reinhold playing a character modeled after himself named the Honorable Judge Reinhold. Walt Flanagan and Bryan Johnson, voice View Askew favorites Steve-Dave Pulasti and Walt Grover the Fanboy in a number of episodes.

Broadcast history

Only two episodes were aired on ABC in 2000 before the series was cancelled. Several factors contributed to the cancellation, including low ratings, the show's not fitting in with ABC's other programming, test-screening to older audiences, and ABC's decision to air the shows out of order (airing the fourth episode first as opposed to the intended first episode and then airing the second episode despite the fact that the second episode is the 'flashback' episode, and derives much of its humor from the fact that it flashes back almost exclusively to the first, unaired episode). In fact, the second episode aired without the scene from "Flintstone's List", the fictional RST Video rental that spoofed Schindler's List
.

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