The Brothers Grunt
Television series From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Television series From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Brothers Grunt is an adult animated comedy television series, and the earliest series made by Ed, Edd n Eddy creator Danny Antonucci. It originally aired from August 15, 1994, to April 9, 1995, on MTV. It centers on five humanoids, named Frank, Tony, Bing, Dean and Sammy, who are in search of their lost brother Perry.[2] The series had a short run and was met with a generally negative reception, with many considering it one of the worst animated TV shows ever made.[3]
| The Brothers Grunt | |
|---|---|
| |
| Genre | Black comedy Surreal humor Off-color humor |
| Created by | Danny Antonucci |
| Developed by | Dennis Heaton Danny Antonucci |
| Written by | Dennis Heaton Danny Antonucci Rod Filbrandt |
| Directed by | Danny Antonucci |
| Voices of | Doug Parker Jennifer Wilson Danny Antonucci Julie Faye Phil Hayes Terry Klassen Ed Hong Louie David Mylrae Drew Reichelt Lee Tockar Camella Rhodes Kevin Hayes |
| Opening theme | "The Brothers Grunt" by Brendan Whelan and Geoff Whelan[1] |
| Composer | Patric Caird |
| Country of origin | Canada United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of episodes | 42 (11 unaired) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer | Danny Antonucci |
| Running time | 4-7 minutes |
| Production company | a.k.a. Cartoon |
| Original release | |
| Network | MTV |
| Release | August 15, 1994 – April 9, 1995 |
| Related | |
| Ed, Edd n Eddy Cartoon Sushi | |
The series centered on an ensemble cast of pale, rubbery, twitchy, yellow-eyed, blue-haired, green-tongued and shirtless humanoids called "The Brothers Grunt" or simply "The Grunts" with prominent bulging varicose veins, generally clumsy and dim-witted, able to bend, twist and contort their bodies into various forms, all of them ostensibly male, wandering around in their signature attire of boxers and wingtip shoes. Their main food staple is cheese and martinis; nevertheless, they are able to eat other foods (at least potatoes, according to the episode "Not My Potato").
The Grunt's single parent is a large, floating, mute and fat male humanoid called Gruntus Primus Maximus or simply "The Maximus", often leaking various noxious bodily fluids, to whom they are born as embryos inside skin warts, much in the way of the common Surinam toad. They live in a monastery in an unspecified location in the American wilderness, which the sewers lead to.
A group is formed, composed of five of a group of sextuplets born from the Maximus in a rare occurrence, in a quest to bring back their sixth brother, Perry, who has abandoned his involuntary position of "Chosen One" (leader of their order) and is now living the "high life" among human beings (who seem to deal with the bizarre nature of the Grunts by ignoring them and pretending everything is normal).
Due to the Grunts being practically silent characters, whose speech mostly consists of grunts with occasional subtitles (hence the name), most of the humor relies on physical comedy, particularly the Grunts enduring heaps of physical abuse.
In music video segments that are intervened with some episodes, supervised by Kathy Karp, there are additional animated portions of the main characters grunting.
As shown in the episode "Grunt Moments in History", Grunts' earliest known ancestor was a pale, veiny hippo-like creature called the Gruntus Not Quite Us, which can be presumed to be a relative of the Gruntus Primus Maximus as it is shown birthing Grunts from its back. A prehistoric Grunt called the Neandergrunt had invented the cocktail glass using a cone-shaped bone. An influential Grunt named The 5th of Kevin was born centuries later. While the others fell off the Gruntus Primus Maximus at birth, Kevin remained and lived on the body of the Maximus his whole life. He built the monastery as a safehaven to protect his fellow Grunts, including the Maximus, from human persecution. The Brothers Grunt are therefore not only religious brothers, but biological brothers as well. Not much is known about the Grunt religion (itself seemingly a spoof on Catholicism due to the brown monk's habit worn by the brothers on occasion) other than that it involves the almost monomaniacal reverence, production and eating of cheese, as well as a variety of bizarre rituals overseen by the Gruntus Poobah. As shown in the episode "The Filling of the Shorts", the Grunts' trademark boxer shorts, invented by Brother Wayne, contain massive amounts of cheese stored in some sort of hammerspace pocket.
A sporting event is held on occasion called the Grunt Games, as shown in the episode of the same name, including such sports as necktie-folding, sumo, doing a clean and jerk using a giant cheese called the Great Dane before swallowing it whole, diving off the Maximus into a pool of melted cheese, throwing a giant olive into a sandwich, and a relay race involving assembling a martini.
The main characters were named after famous crooners of the 1950s: Frank (Sinatra), Tony (Bennett), Bing (Crosby), Dean (Martin), Sammy (Davis Jr.), and Perry (Como), all voiced by Doug Parker. They are sextuplets, all born from the same wart on the Maximus' skin, a rare occurrence among Grunts.
The characters that would become The Brothers Grunt were first seen in one of MTV's numerous 30-second promos. This particular promo consisted of close-up shots of the then-unnamed character's faces who seemed to be straining to do something (veins in their heads would bulge, the characters would squint and grunt) until the scene cut to the MTV logo landing in a pool of sludge followed by a satisfied "Ahhhhh" (suggesting that the characters were suffering from constipation and the MTV logo was the 'turd' as it were). It is unclear when this promo aired if the storyline and characters for The Brothers Grunt had been developed already or if it had been developed into its own show after the success of the promo, in the wake of Beavis and Butt-Head.
The show's origins can be traced back to 1993 when the MTV ad "Grunt MTV" aired. At the time Danny Antonucci had animated several MTV ads to find work outside of International Rocketship Ltd., who he had worked for since 1984. Although Danny enjoyed the success of Lupo The Butcher, he wanted to leave International Rocketship Ltd. and start his own animation company. The result was a.k.a. Cartoon, which began on April 1, 1994. The studio began as a way to locate his work for The Brothers Grunt after MTV executive Abby Terkhule liked his MTV ad so much, he asked him to turn it into a television series.[4] In production order, each episode of the show would consist of three to four segments.[5]
"I still think it's a cool show and I really enjoyed doing it. For what I wanted to do I thought it was quite successful. That's the key for me. I really dig what I do and it's important for me to like what I do. I don't regret anything. I just look at it as something I did, and move on."
Danny Antonucci, in response to the show's obscurity[4]
The Brothers Grunt had a short run and was met with generally negative reception from critics. Kenneth R. Clark of the Chicago Tribune said that, with the series, MTV "created the most repulsive creatures ever to show up on a television screen" and "accomplished the seemingly impossible."[6] Charles Solomon of the Los Angeles Times called the show "an effortful, sophomoric half-hour that leaves the viewer longing for the refined good taste of Alice Cooper."[7] In their book North of Everything: English-Canadian Cinema Since 1980, William Beard and Jerry White called the series a "failure".[8]
The show was often compared to Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, an animated series that aired on MTV's sister channel, Nickelodeon. Gábor Csupó, co-creator of Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, rejected these comparisons, claiming that his show was more character-driven, while The Brothers Grunt was an idea-driven series, also pointing out that both shows have different visual styles.[9] When looking back on the series, creator Danny Antonucci stated that the series "didn't really do too well", also saying that the show has since become MTV's "dirty little secret".[4]
Note: All episodes directed by Danny Antonucci
| No. | Title | Written by | Storyboard by | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "The Ceremony" | Danny Antonucci and Dennis Heaton | Hilary Phillips | August 15, 1994 | |
|
During an initiation ritual involving the sextuplet brothers and a duck, the duck flies off Perry's face revealing him as The Chosen One. He then abandons said title and flees the monastery, leading the Poobah to send the other brothers to find him. | |||||
| 2 | "Make Mine a Grunt" | Danny Antonucci and Dennis Heaton | Mike Grimshaw | August 22, 1994 | |
|
While looking for Perry, Frank swallows a microphone at a karaoke bar, leading to his arrest. This marks the Detective character's debut. | |||||
| 3 | "The New Fish" | Danny Antonucci and Dennis Heaton | Russell Crispin | August 29, 1994 | |
|
In jail, Frank meets an inmate who is obsessed with brushing and flossing the teeth of his fellow inmates and wardens alike. He manages to escape during a fight with guards. | |||||
| 4 | "Where Angels Fear to Grunt" | Mike Grimshaw | Hilary Phillips | September 5, 1994 | |
|
Frank meets a biker gang and hangs out with them, only to leave then when the biker gang is involved in an altercation with the Detective and a pizza boy. The Poobah appears at the end stating that this episode is how "Frank came to fulfill the prophecy of Darren, more or less". | |||||
| 5 | "Viva Grunt Vegas" | Rod Filbrandt | Greg Sullivan | September 12, 1994 | |
|
Dean travels around Las Vegas and meets a man who tells him to pull the arm on a slot machine only to get his own arm pulled off, which Dean attaches to an amputee Elvis impersonator. Later two gangsters take him to see a Tom Jones concert (represented by footage of Tom Jones' music video for his cover of Kiss. | |||||
| 6 | "Scrub Me Sammy" | Danny Antonucci and Dennis Heaton | Russell Crispin | September 19, 1994 | |
|
Sammy arrives on a boat and falls in love with an anthropomorphic female lamp, despite flashbacks of the Poobah telling the Grunts to deny love, before slapfighting a one-eyed French man to win her affections. This is followed by a montage of Sammy and the Lamp in various romantic situations, set to (Everything I Do) I Do It for You. | |||||
| 7 | "The Detective" | Sam Johnson & Chris Marcil | Russell Crispin | September 26, 1994 | |
|
The Detective interrogates Frank, who squeezes his body through a handcuff to escape mid-interrogation session. He meets Bing on the street, Tony at a diner and Dean at a cheese restaurant. | |||||
| 8 | "If I Could Grunt to the Animals" | Rod Filbrandt | Hilary Phillips | October 3, 1994 | |
|
Dean visits a miserably low-quality roadside attraction scam disguised as a "zoo", with a man in a monkey costume, a snake eating the monkey that was meant to be in that exhibit, and a puppet alligator. He is found by FBI agents and taken to an actual zoo, where he is featured in an exhibit labeled "Albino Wingtip". | |||||
| 9 | "Grunt Moments in History" | Unknown | TBA | November 7, 1994 | |
|
We see the history of Grunt civilization, from the earliest known Grunt (the Gruntus Not Quite Us) and the Neandergrunt (inventor of the cocktail glass) to the construction of the monastery by the 5th of Kevin, the first Grunt to live on the Maximus' body for most of his life. | |||||
| 10 | "Perry Molo" | Unknown | TBA | November 14, 1994 | |
|
In the jungle, Perry falls ill from a mosquito-borne disease and is rescued by a masked native tribe, who worship him as their deity "Mar-Ti-Ni". | |||||
| 11 | "Tony and Salsa" | Unknown | TBA | November 21, 1994 | |
|
After one two many drinks in Mexico, Tony mistakes a luchador wrestler for his brother Perry, leading the wrestler to challenge him to a match. | |||||
| 12 | "A Call to Grunts" | Unknown | TBA | November 28, 1994 | |
|
Bing joins the army and learns how to throw grenades, clean rifles, crawl under barbed wire and storm a beach. | |||||
| 13 | "Clean Up in Aisle Grunt" | Unknown | TBA | December 5, 1994 | |
|
Frank and Dean hunt down Perry in a grocery store while the Detective hunts them down. Barcodes are placed on Frank and Dean's bottoms, and they are bought by two women. The Detective discovers a newspaper article showing Sammy and the Lamp at a Wisconsin motel. | |||||
| 14 | "Land of the Midnight Grunt" | Unknown | TBA | December 12, 1994 | |
|
In the freezing Arctic north, an Inuit hunter discovers Tony in the belly of a whale. Tony wanders off and goes to the hunter's wife's igloo, where she stretches him into a thin sheet and turns parts of his body into boots. Tony then regains his original shape (as per the superhumanly flexible nature of Grunts) and places the boots back on his body where they merge with him. After wandering around hopeless, disheveled and without food or fire, he sees the moon turn into the Poobah's head saying "remember Tony, you will never be alone!" Tony howls at the moon as if he were a wolf, which draws the attention of the other Grunts around the world who howl in turn (except for Perry who is being waited on by two showgirls). The episode ends with the Poobah exclaiming "yes my children, yes!" | |||||
| 15 | "Close Encounters of the Grunt Kind" | Unknown | TBA | December 19, 1994 | |
|
Frank is taken aboard a meat grinder-shaped spaceship where a massive alien butcher seasons and tenderizes him before selling him off at the alien butcher store. Together with other aliens who were captured for food, he attempts to escape but is chased by the butcher into a corner with a can of olives. Using his can opener he slices a hole into the ship's wall and is sent hurtling back to Earth, where he is wiped from Perry's car windshield. Guest Stars: Mike Judge as Beavis and Butt-Head. | |||||
| 16 | "The Scent of Grunts" | Unknown | TBA | December 26, 1994 | |
|
The Detective visits the Mexican cantina from "Tony and Salsa", a surgery room seen later in the episode "Paging Dr. Grunt", the tribespeople from "Perry Molo", the fake zoo from "If I Could Grunt To The Animals" and finally the park bench in "The Ceremony". He chases the Grunts through the sewers and discovers the Monastery. | |||||
| 17 | "Paging Dr. Grunt" | Unknown | TBA | October 10, 1994 | |
|
Tony emerges from a surgery patient's belly. Doctors attempt to cure his broken neck. After it is discovered his condition is incurable (all the cells in his body are Tony heads looking upwards as he usually does), Tony is made to become a surgeon himself. | |||||
| 18 | "Perry's Appliance Repair" | Unknown | TBA | October 17, 1994 | |
|
At his appliance repair shop, Perry attempts to fix an old phonograph, which is revealed to be haunted. Various small demons emerge from the phonograph who torture and play pranks on Perry using various appliance and tools before Perry pulls the plug. When the old woman who owns the phonograph plug it back in, the demons descend onto her. | |||||
| 19 | "Timmy's Best Friend" | Unknown | TBA | October 24, 1994 | |
|
A young boy named Timmy, tired of being used as living sports equipment by neighbourhood bullies, adopts Sammy as a pet and attempts to befriend him, but Sammy constantly tries to escape and track down Perry. | |||||
| 20 | "No Quest Today" | Unknown | TBA | October 31, 1994 | |
|
We get a glimpse into the Poobah's day to day life as he gets a back massage from Ringo, officiates a cheese-eating ceremony, feeds the Maximus and taste tests some cheese in the cheese-making room. | |||||
| 21 | "Eat My Grunt" | Dennis Heaton | Mike Grimshaw | January 2, 1995 | |
|
Sammy, the Lamp and Dean mess around and make mischief in a car while being chased by police officers sent by the Detective. The cars crash into a drive-in theater screen playing the music video to the song "Elephant's Graveyard" by the Boomtown Rats. The Grunts escape while the Detective watches on. | |||||
| 22 | "They Stole Tony's Veins!" | Dennis Heaton | Rod Filbrandt | January 9, 1995 | |
|
A shady man in a trenchcoat steals the veins off Tony's neck. In a panic, Tony witnesses hallucinations of veins. The veins are revealed to be alive and independent beings as they slither away from their restraints when the trenchcoat man kidnaps them and reattach themselves to Tony. | |||||
| 23 | "Not My Potato" | Dennis Heaton | Russell Crispin | January 16, 1995 | |
|
Perry and an Irish man fight over a single potato. Mid-fight, a horse steals the potato. | |||||
| 24 | "Squeal Like A Grunt" | Jono Howard | Angus Bungay | January 23, 1995 | |
|
Dean emerges from the fingernail of a man watching a televangelist show in a barber shop in a Southern town. The show features Perry as the televangelist attempts to heal him of "constipation" by slapping him. Dean is tied to the back of a truck and dragged down a dirt road by two hilbillies, causing damage along the way. | |||||
| 25 | "The Big Crapple" | Mark Sawers | Russell Crispin | January 30, 1995 | |
|
Frank, Tony, Bing, Dean and Sammy finally reunite in New York City. They cram themselves into a bizarrely contorted position in a phone booth where they call Perry, who is relaxing in the pool of his lavish mansion. His answering machine message plays, and the phone booth collapses before the Grunts, having melted into a puddle, slip into a sewer drain. | |||||
| 26 | "Grunt Fare" | Mark Sawers, Dennis Heaton and Danny Antonucci | Rod Filbrandt | February 13, 1995 | |
|
Frank and Tony incessantly laugh at a tomato inside a taxi. Thinking the Grunts are deliberately trying to annoy him, the taxi driver drives all across America as revenge in an attempt to drive the fee increasingly higher. | |||||
| 27 | "Sammy in a Varicose Vein" | Rod Filbrandt | Hilary Phillips | February 6, 1995 | |
|
Sammy emerges from the head of an old man at a nursing home and is mistaken for an elderly patient. He eyes a bingo ball machine and is called to host the game himself. He meets the family of Timmy from "Timmy's Best Friend", who mistakes him for his grandfather. Sammy attempts to escape but is caught and tortured using a rack, and returns with an unnaturally lanky figure. | |||||
| 28 | "To Hell with Bing" | Unknown | TBA | February 20, 1995 | |
| 29 | "Cream Style Tony" | Unknown | TBA | February 27, 1995 | |
|
After hearing multiple people around him say it, Tony learns his first English word "Corn". He attains worldwide fame from it (known as "Cornamania") leading to the establishment of a corn themed dictatorship led by Tony. During a speech, Tony speaks in his grunt language about how he's looking for Perry, before saying the English word "Potato", leading to mass riots. | |||||
| 30 | "The Ugly Gruntling" | Unknown | TBA | March 5, 1995 | |
|
A hen's egg hatches into Sammy, who attempts to blend in with the other chickens. Sammy then enters a cow milking machine and is made into cheese, left to ferment making him extremely smelly, and entered into the county fair. The cheese judge is none other than Perry, who begins unknowingly eating his brother Sammy. | |||||
| 31 | "5 Card Grunt" | Unknown | TBA | March 12, 1995 | |
|
The two gangsters from "Viva Grunt Vegas return" and take Frank and Sammy to the boot of their car. After the Grunts hand them Dean Martin concert tickets, the gangsters challenge them to a game of five-card stud. The Grunts win triumphantly and the car starts flashing lights like a slot machine and awarding piles of cash, which blast them out of the car boot. | |||||
| 32 | "The Stench of Grunts" | Unknown | TBA | March 19, 1995 | |
|
Various people ask the Detective about his time spent at the Monastery. It is shown that the Detective was chased out a few times before being invited in, and is frightened by the sight of there being much more Grunts than he once thought. His story is cut off from this point. | |||||
| 33 | "Grunt Games" | Unknown | TBA | March 26, 1995 | |
|
The Grunt equivalent of the Olympics is shown: necktie folding, sumo, clean and jerk using cheese, cheese fondue diving, olive-throwing and martini relay race. | |||||
| 34 | "Requiem for a Sammy" | Unknown | TBA | April 2, 1995 | |
|
The one-eyed Frenchman from "Scrub Me Sammy" returns and challenges Sammy to a staring contest over the Lamp. Sammy remembers advice given to him by the Poobah when he was involved in a stare-fight with a fellow Grunt in the past, and inflates his eyeballs massively leading to the Frenchman's surrender. The doctors from "Paging Dr. Grunt" place a second eyepatch on the Frenchman's remaining eye, rendering him blind. | |||||
| 35 | "Smells like Dean Spirit" | Unknown | TBA | April 9, 1995 | |
|
Dean uses his own sweat to help another Frenchman (not the one from "Scrub Me Sammy" and "Requiem for a Sammy") stay hydrated in a desert. Together, the Frenchman and Dean make a fortune by selling martinis made of Dean's sweat to various starving dehydrated people in the desert, leading to Dean being milked by machines in a successful factory. Perry makes a brief appearance at the beginning when he crashes into the desert. | |||||
These episodes are unreleased, but have been uploaded to YouTube in June 2019. Three of these episodes might have been produced, but are currently unconfirmed.
| No. | Title | Original release date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 36 | "Perry Come Home" | 11 June 2019[10] | |
|
Throughout his day-to-day life, Perry sees the Poobah everywhere telling him to return to the Monastery. It is revealed the visions are induced by the Poobah using hallucinogenic incense smoke and a radio signal of his own voice. | |||
| 37 | "Bring Me the Head of Perry the Grunt" | 11 June 2019[11] | |
|
Perry's likeness becomes a popular Halloween mask, leading Dean to chase down various children dressed as Perry believing them to be the real deal. After unmasking a child, he bursts into tears believing he has accidentally beheaded his brother. | |||
| 38 | "Black Balled Grunt" | 11 June 2019[12] | |
|
It is revealed that in the past, the Grunt Monastery adopted a human child, Vince, to join their brotherhood. Vince, in addition to being openly hostile towards his brothers, attempted to feed them tofu and even attempted to lead a rebellion against the Poobah. He was promptly kicked out of the Monastery. The episode ends with the Poobah stating "and that's the last I saw of Vince, I hear he's a network executive– who's to say he didn't get his revenge? GULP!" This is a fourth-wall-breaking reference to The Brothers Grunt's cancellation. | |||
| 39 | "Perry's Off Day" | 11 June 2019 | |
|
While working as a car mechanic, Perry overhears several conversations and decides to earn "big money" as a horse jockey, sitting on a bus, and as an art critic. While doing said activities he encounters and narrowly escapes the grasp of Sammy, Dean and Tony. The Detective makes a brief appearance tailing the bus Perry and Dean ride in. At the end Perry returns to his old job believing he will earn "big money as an auto mechanic" only to have his head explode in a mushroom cloud when he overhears a conversation implying that he will earn "big money" as a nuclear physicist. | |||
| 40 | "Tony & Lace" | 11 June 2019 | |
|
Tony must relearn how to tie his shoes as he attempts to track down Perry, who is now working as a forest ranger. | |||
| 41 | "The Filling of the Shorts" | 11 June 2019 | |
|
Dean returns to the monastery to have his shorts filled with massive amounts of cheese. We learn the story of Brother Wayne, who invented the Grunts' trademark shorts to be used in such a manner. | |||
| 42 | "Poobah Blues" | 11 June 2019 | |
|
The Poobah reminisces of his ventures in the human world as a traveling beatnik poet. | |||
| 43 | "Hunt for Grunts" | Unconfirmed | |
|
This episode's story is unknown other than that it has two Nazi German skunks called The Smein and Krischmäßante. | |||
| 44 | "Friends! Romans! Grunts!" | Unconfirmed | |
|
This episode's story is unknown other than that it might involve Romans. | |||
| 45 | "The Wedding" | Unconfirmed | |
|
This episode's story is unknown other than that it might involve the wedding of Sammy and the Lamp. | |||
| 46 | "The Grunts Who Came For Turkey" | Unconfirmed | |
|
This episode's story is unknown other than that it has Santa Claus. | |||
Fleer released in 1995 trading cards based on the series, as part of the MTV Animation Fleer's Ultra set.[13] The show's theme song, written by Brendan Dolan and Geoff Whelan, was featured in Television's Greatest Hits: Volume 7, which was released in 1996 by TVT Records' soundtrack imprint, TVT SOUNDTRAX.[1]
There were also few tshirts, boxer shorts, socks and calendars sold to promote the show between 1994 and 1995.
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