Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions, cleaned up for readability. Speaker labels are best-effort, bleeped words are marked [bleep], and a few personal tangents have been trimmed.

John: Hey everyone, John here from the Swimcast. I wanted to start the show off by sending our thoughts and wishes to the friends and family of Adult Swim icon George Lowe, who passed this week at the age of 67. George was a powerhouse in the Adult Swim community, beloved by all his Space Ghost fans and Brak’s Dad fans. This was recorded prior to his passing, and that’s why you won’t hear us discussing it. Still, it’s a great episode and you should listen. We’ll be back with another episode, and hopefully we’ll be able to talk at length about his passing, his memory and how it impacted all of us. You can also check us out at adultswimcentral.com. There’s going to be an in memoriam write-up that I’m working on for George Lowe, and hopefully many more fond memories of Space Ghost. Until next time, enjoy the show.

George Lowe (as Space Ghost): Hello, young Swimcast citizens! Space Ghost here, AKA George Lowe, inviting you in for all of the creamy, enjoyable listening goodness. Let’s ladle some up right now, shall we?

[Music]

Trish: Hey everybody, it’s that time again. That’s right, we’re here more than once in a year. It’s amazing. It’s the Swimcast! Joining us today are your ever-beloved hosts, John J. Galbo and Mr. Jason, and I’m here, Mrs. Trish Henson. Hi! I like saying “Mrs.”

John: Can we just dive right into Common Side Effects? I don’t think we really have anything to plug until the end.

Trish: Absolutely. I’ve got to say, you have to watch Common Side Effects. It is poignant, it gets you in the feels, it’s funny, and it really makes you think. I love that about it. I’m trying to get my parents to watch it. My mom hates cartoons, and my dad likes Family Guy, but I think this would be right on their level. I think the world would be a better place if more people watched Bob’s Burgers, but that’s me.

John: This is true.

Jason: I haven’t been keeping up with television. I cut the cord like three weeks ago, so it’s just whatever’s on streaming. I haven’t been paying attention to much outside of wrestling for a while, so I’m getting back into things. And now I’ve been keeping up with Common Side Effects every week since it aired.

Trish: How do you feel about it?

Jason: I’m in. I love it. I think it’s amazing. I saw the pilot over the summer, because they streamed some stuff on the YouTube channel, a night of new things. They had the one with the shoulder pad, which was funny. Those two aired at Comic-Con too, along with one of the new YOLO episodes, and they surprised me because they were funnier than I thought they were going to be. I think they showed an episode of Invincible Fight Girl in there too, which I haven’t gotten around to yet. I got to the stream late, and the episode of Common Side Effects had already started, so I rewound the stream and watched the whole thing. I’ve been looking forward to this for months, and it really has been excellent.

John: That’s the thing. It’s Mike Judge and Greg Daniels, who already know how to make a great show, and they’re producing it, and it’s the guys that were behind Scavengers Reign. I never watched Scavengers Reign, but I know a lot of people love it.

Jason: I haven’t watched much of Scavengers Reign either, but I’ve seen the animation and it’s gorgeous, and that carries over into this. This one doesn’t even need to be all that beautiful for what it is, but it looks fantastic, especially in the sequences after people take the mushrooms.

John: It’s so good. It is very funny at times, but it’s also just an excellent show all around. I feel like if the network treats this one right, it could be like a Breaking Bad for them. This could be a big deal for the network.

Trish: I haven’t really watched Breaking Bad at all.

Jason: It’s not a comedy. It’s more like prestige TV, event TV.

Trish: I was kind of thinking of how Venture Bros. has bits of comedy injected into it, but it’s not necessarily a comedy.

Jason: Kind of the same idea, but I think this is more of a drama than even Venture Bros. Venture Bros. is more of an action-adventure comedy. This is more of a dramedy.

Trish: I don’t even think it’s a dramedy. It has its funny moments. I love the FBI agents, Harrington and Copp. I can tell he has the biggest crush on her, and I think she’s gay, so she’s not interested in him. Or maybe she’s bi, because I think they mentioned the two of them possibly having had a thing at some point.

John: Do you remember which episode that was?

Trish: Maybe the third one, because wasn’t Harrington going to go out with the mushroom girl? I think it was that episode. I see a lot of tension there, a lot of will-they-won’t-they, which I love. I’m so into the romance stuff now. I bleed Sarah J. Maas, as anyone from the Carl’s Pool chat on the ACPN Discord will know. It’s the chat that’s supposed to be about Adult Swim, and in actuality it’s book discussion. Blame your wife.

John: I always blame her. I love her.

Trish: I love her too. She read the romance novel about the ice creatures.

John: Oh God, Ice Planet Barbarians. Coleen was cool before it was cool. I’m trying to remember if she did an episode on it when she did her podcast with her friend. The shtick was that since I was producing the show, I’d come on for a five-minute bit and try to summarize the book just from the title.

Trish: I’d like to see you summarize A Court of Thorns and Roses from what you know. Actually, this is completely off topic, but I would like to do a show with you, Adam and Coleen where we just talk about ACOTAR and how much Adam hates it.

John: It’s not that I’m not interested in it. It’s easier for me to read it than to listen to it, so maybe audiobooks aren’t for me.

Trish: But let’s talk more about Common Side Effects, because this show is incredible. It’s groundbreaking. It really makes you think and makes you feel. So the main character, what is his name?

John: Marshall.

Trish: Marshall is an expert on mushrooms and plants and saving the Earth, and he finds these blue mushrooms in Peru.

[A dishwasher interrupts. The hosts debate whether to keep it in.]

John: Sidebar: I’ve been toying with the notion of re-releasing some of the older episodes. I might have to review them first for any questionable content.

Trish: Maybe put up one of those pop-ups, like “viewer discretion is advised.” This came from a time when things were less PC, and we were angsty and said a lot of things that don’t fly now.

John: The mid-2000s were when a lot of those words and phrases you don’t hear as often were more commonplace. That episode was all about good hygiene and dead fathers, I think. Somewhere around there, and we kind of bonded for a split second over that.

Trish: You should always wash your hands after you pee.

John: Oh, absolutely.

[The hygiene tangent spirals into a joke romance novel called “Poop Hands.” The hosts eventually get back on track.]

John: Oh my God, I miss doing Swimcasts.

Trish: I came into this exhausted, like, Trish is running most of the show tonight, I don’t know how this is going to work. And then I have those snappy moments. I’m so manic right now. Don’t tell me to run the show, Jason.

Jason: Nope. I’m the last person to run a show.

Trish: So anyway, there are these blue mushrooms, and they can make everything better. Any medical disease. If you’re about to die, you eat the mushroom and you’re back to life. Or if you’re dead.

John: Technically, yeah, because that does happen.

Trish: I would like to warn people who haven’t seen Common Side Effects that there is a lot of violence in this show. It’s not horrible, but there is a lot, especially in the last episode. Oh my God, the last episode.

John: Like I said right before we started, it’s apropos for the current political climate, with the Department of Health and everything going on.

Jason: It’d be funny if they parodied him in an episode. I find it funny that they have the Russians involved too.

John: And even more apropos, they got Danny Huston, who usually plays the baddest bad guys in movies. He’s Anjelica Huston’s half-brother. He was the Nazi general in the first Wonder Woman movie, and Stryker in the bad Wolverine movie. He’s one of those character actors who knows how to play bad guys.

Trish: Kind of like Mike Judge can only play Hank Hill. Every time his character talks, all I hear is Hank Hill.

Jason: It’s every time any of his characters talk, because it’s not even just Rick. He was also that sheriff, and he sounded even more like Hank in that one. And doesn’t he play the twins too? At least one of them.

Trish: I should do another content warning. The most recent episode, last week, not this week, had a little antisemitism. But it’s set in the South, and it does kind of put people in their place about how antisemitism is wrong.

[A tangent about Southern pride, Staten Island and local politics has been trimmed.]

John: Anyway, back to Common Side Effects for the fifth time.

Trish: Yeah, so Marshall. I’m so bad with names in these shows. I can tell you the exact plot and things people said, but I don’t know their names. What is her name? Frances. Marshall and Frances were friends from high school, and Frances works for a drug company. Her boss is Rick, AKA Hank Hill, and he’s very self-centered. He has more money than God and gets very angry when they put him in the wrong hotel room, and she’s his assistant. Marshall explains the mushroom to her, and he actually kills a bird, which I was like, oh my God. But then he feeds it a mushroom, and the bird kind of looks around and flies away perfectly fine. So they become friends again, and she’s like, I could make a lot of money off of this. She tells Rick, what if I could make us a lot of money, and he’s like, do whatever you’ve got to do. She tries to meet up with Marshall a lot, but the FBI is chasing him, the Russians are chasing him, basically anybody that wants to make a profit off of people’s illnesses is chasing him. It’s a very poignant show, and it’s got its really funny moments. I love the FBI agents. I love the show.

John: Sidebar: Emily Pendergast, who voices Frances, is on Bluesky. She seems very nice. She’s actually reposted the Adult Swim Central account a couple of times.

Trish: Oh, cool. Well, shout-out to her. We would love you on the show.

John: Of course. I never turn down anybody to be a guest on the show.

Trish: Can I be a guest somewhere? I’ve met Dave Willis, you know.

John: I’ll vote for you to be a guest on Dana and MC Chris’s podcast.

Trish: Oh my God, I couldn’t do it without you. I’d be so scared. I’d be like, “Hi, MC Chris. I did an interview with you in an alley, and it was really windy, and nobody heard your best answer, and I don’t remember what you said anymore.” And to Dana, I’d say I’m sorry I cleaned up your 3,000 pounds of feral cat [bleep], because I have feral cats living at my house now.

[Trish’s cat interrupts the recording.]

Trish: So let’s talk about something else on Adult Swim, now that we’re clearly done with Common Side Effects.

John: That’s the current stuff. What else do we have? This is out of order on our list, but Family Guy’s back on Adult Swim. And they’re not showing the same old episodes from the first seven seasons where Peter’s eyes are really weird. They’re showing newer episodes, from like season 15. I think I discussed this when we talked with Rilo back when Venture was first cancelled. There’s only so much Adult Swim can really have on the network at this point, because Disney owns Family Guy, The Simpsons, Bob’s and so on. Now it’s become a thing where they make a profit selling the syndication rights. Last year the big thing was Comedy Central getting exclusive rights to Family Guy, and all of a sudden, wait a minute, now Adult Swim has the rights back, but only for the new stuff.

Trish: I guess however Disney wants to break it up. I literally watch it on three different channels. We put it on TV when we’re about to go to bed and need to unwind. It comes on FXX, it comes on Comedy Central, and now it comes on Adult Swim too.

Jason: Is it still on Freeform? Freeform is Disney, so I don’t see why not. Like I said, I cut the cord, so I don’t get any of them. Everything Fox-related I watch is on Hulu now. Bob’s, The Great North, and occasionally Grimsburg, because that’s an amazing show.

John: I think they just started season two of Grimsburg. The big news at Comic-Con was Martin Short playing one of the main characters this season.

Trish: Oh, nice. You know what I really want to check out is Only Murders in the Building. It looks good, but I don’t know if Adam would stick with it with me. We started watching Barry, and I thought Barry was hilarious, but it’s pretty violent, because he’s a hitman, and Adam doesn’t like the violence. I’ll be like, “Want to watch Barry?” And he’s like, “No, let’s watch Family Guy or Steven Universe or something we’ve watched a trillion times.” But that’s basically all we have to say about Family Guy, isn’t it? It’s back.

John: I really don’t watch it that much anymore. My go-tos are Bob’s, The Great North and Grimsburg.

Jason: I’ve never been much of a Family Guy watcher since the second cancellation. It was cancelled three times.

Trish: I didn’t know that. I thought it was just the once.

Jason: Nope. I watched it on Fox way back, and after it finally came back, it was never something I cared for. I like American Dad a lot, though.

Trish: I like newer American Dad. I heard it gets insane.

Jason: American Dad just never stopped getting better. I haven’t seen anything from the last couple of seasons, but I used to keep up with it fairly regularly. The first season or two, it’s still trying to be Family Guy Lite. Once you get past that and it becomes its own thing, it just gets better and better. The episodes get more high-concept and really fun.

John: The Rapture episode is what hooked me. And the hot tub episode is excellent.

Trish: That’s one of Adam’s favorites, with CeeLo Green. It’s amazing.

John: I thought it was going to get the kiss of death going to TBS, because think of how many other animated shows have gone there to die. I’m surprised they’re still pumping them out. I thought when Fox was done with it, maybe it’d get a season or two on TBS and be done.

Trish: It’s funny as [bleep] now. I liked it before, it was something to watch, but since TBS bought it and started making new episodes, I really enjoy it. My favorite episode is one where Stan has to go out on a mission and can’t take Francine out for their monthly date, so he gives Jeff a list of things Francine can’t have and can’t do. Jeff’s like, “Why?” And Stan’s like, “Just don’t let her take off her shoes,” and so on. Turns out Francine is kind of a freak and likes to get into all kinds of crazy trouble. They have this wild adventure, they end up at a drug dealer’s house, he ends up dying somehow, the police are coming, and they have to steal his car to get out. It’s total chaos and I love it. I love Francine. She’s the housewife I wish I could be.

John: Let’s talk about Robot Chicken real quick. The 20th anniversary special is coming up. We don’t know that much about it.

Jason: You know how I feel. Cool, it’s been around for 20 years. Is there anything memorable about it, from my point of view? Nothing I care to speak about.

John: Not even the Ninja Turtles bit with “Reaganomics”? They put the Ninja Turtles in Call of Duty this week, and that was the first thing that popped into my head. So it has had its moments. Eleven seasons over 20 years, which is kind of like Aqua Teen.

Trish: Except I think Aqua Teen is better.

Jason: What they’re doing is harder than Aqua Teen, though, because it’s stop motion. No wonder there’s only eleven seasons in 20 years.

John: They perfected it, too. But Aqua Teen, I don’t know if it’s because I met all my online friends through Aqua Teen, or because I met my wife through Aqua Teen. I became a more well-adjusted person through Aqua Teen.

Trish: It’s just funny as [bleep]. Except the part with the kittens in the first movie. I did not like that, or the microwaving-the-kittens one either. I don’t know what Dave and Matt have against kittens.

John: Maybe we should have Matt on one of these days. He’s doing a lot more stuff online these days. I know he’s been doing Ronnie’s show every other week. We’ve never had him on, and we’ve never had Carey on.

Trish: I would like Carey on. An interview with him would be nice. So Carey, if you’re listening, hit us up. We’d love to chat with you. Matt, if you’re listening, you’re probably not, but we’d love to chat with you too. I think I met him, didn’t I?

John: Yeah, you did a whole interview with him and Todd and Craig.

Trish: Craig hates me.

John: No, he doesn’t. Craig’s just a clown. He was clowning around with me the last time I saw him at New York Comic Con.

[A political tangent, including a debate over how Carl would vote, has been trimmed.]

John: When I asked Dave what he thought the anthem for New Jersey should be, since there is none, the answer was exactly what I thought it should be: “Livin’ on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi.

Trish: One of my best friends and I used to go to the gym together in college, and I don’t know how it started, but halfway through our cardio I’d give her one of my earbuds. This was 20 years ago, when your iPod earbuds had wires. We’d be on our machines listening to “Livin’ on a Prayer,” and some days it was the only thing that got us through.

John: So, Aqua Teen aside, what else have we got going on? Well, we’ve got a third season of YOLO: Rainbow Trinity.

Trish: Oh my God, YOLO. I’m so excited.

John: Suffice to say, I’ve seen the new episodes. I can’t divulge them. Rilo said he’d have a review up on the site.

Trish: I have not seen the episodes. I should, because it’s one of my favorite all-time Adult Swim shows. Michael Cusack can do no wrong.

John: I can talk about the one that aired at New York Comic Con, the Pelican episode, because they’ve shown clips of that too.

Trish: Isn’t Pelican married to Sarah’s sister? There was the whole wedding episode.

John: That was the second season. In this season, you find out there’s a bunch of different Pelicans, different colored jewels or something. It kind of came across as Voltron to me.

Trish: Steven Universe! I love Steven Universe.

Jason: Voltron was the robot that combined from the lions. They spoofed it with Titan Maximum, which is a show that should have continued. It sucks it didn’t go further than one season. That was one of those shows from around the same time period as Saul of the Mole Men, Frisky Dingo, all those shows with balls-to-the-wall concepts. And then it was, “No, we don’t want to continue with these, Family Guy is our bread and butter.”

Trish: I feel like Adult Swim is having a second coming because of all these shows premiering literally this month.

John: I think they were starting to, and a lot of things kept them from continuing. First it was, oh, 12 oz. Mouse is back, then YOLO started and a couple of other shows in between, and it felt like the network was coming back. Then COVID hit, and a few years later the strikes hit, and all the mergers and acquisitions in between. It was owned by AT&T, then AT&T dropped it and it merged with Discovery, and David Zaslav is cutting everything for tax purposes. And now we’re starting to see an emergence again. There are rumors that Warner Bros. might spin off its TV properties, which I don’t know if that’s going to happen or not.

Jason: It’s weird to look at the network now, because it’s slowly taking over more and more channel space from Cartoon Network. At this point I think it’s fully 50% of the channel’s airtime.

Trish: Are they still doing Checkered Past, with the old-school cartoons? Like all of us that grew up with Cartoon Cartoons. I don’t think we have any listeners younger than millennials. I wish we did, because we’re old now and we have good advice, like wash your hands after you pee.

Jason: It’s actually slightly more channel time than Cartoon Network has now. It runs from 5 p.m. until 6 a.m., and then goes back to Cartoon Network.

John: That’s 13 hours, which is insane for a network that used to be one night a week for a few hours. It was on Thursdays, and eventually they put it on Saturdays with the action stuff.

Jason: Adult Swim in Canada was surreal. Knowing how the Canadian network is, I don’t know if I’d want to see it be a 24-hour network, because there are some big chunks of airtime in Canada that are just random live-action movies thrown in there. But if they have enough programming to make it work, I could see it being a 24-hour network at some point.

Trish: We don’t see a lot of Canadian stuff, do we?

John: Not really. Psi Cops was imported from Canada. I think it aired there first and then they ported it over.

Trish: What about the movies on Saturday nights? Did they stop that?

John: They used to have Acme Night. As of a month or two ago they still were, I think. It’s January now, so they might have stopped for the winter.

Trish: We definitely watched Space Jam once. I love that they were getting the more obscure titles, like the night they had the original Super Mario Bros. movie. I had to tune in for that, because it’s not available anywhere.

John: I have the RiffTrax version, so if I really feel like watching it, I can watch it with RiffTrax.

Trish: Please send that to me. I need that in my life. But let’s go back to Rainbow Trinity. I wonder what adventures the girls will get into this time. As one of very few women who does Adult Swim podcasts that I know of, it is so good to see a girl power show. I love Tuca & Bertie. I wish it would come back. Ali Wong is just phenomenal. I was today years old when I realized how much stuff I love has Ali Wong in it. But YOLO is funny as [bleep].

John: Sarah’s voiced by a woman, but she was portrayed by Michael Cusack in the live-action one, the Double Terry one.

Trish: Oh my God, I love that. I could just watch that for 12 minutes. He was so perfect at the dance. It’s girl power, it’s girl friendship. It’s written by men, I think, but they’re Australian men, so of course it’s going to be zany and off the wall. Adam loves Australian everything. He watches this guy on YouTube who repairs machines, like he’s rebuilding a crane he got for cheap, and you can hear a train in the background every so often, and he yells, “[Bleep] off, train!” Now we have a coffee mug that says that on it. I would like more Australian shows.

John: Koala Man was really good. I have to finish that. I slid off after a while.

Trish: The producer, is he the person that killed Rick and Morty for me?

John: Yes, the guy who’s not involved with that anymore. Well, technically he wasn’t much involved after the first season or two. It’s more Dan Harmon, and I know a lot of people have [bleep] on Dan Harmon, but I should give it a second chance. This last season felt more like the original show.

Trish: I did watch a lot of the episodes, I just didn’t watch it religiously like I would any other Adult Swim original, because I have the ick. I feel like that’s how I felt with Squidbillies after they recast it.

John: It didn’t take away from the show, but at the same time it felt like the show had run its course. I don’t think Rick and Morty has run its course, because you have Harmon behind it. And a lot of the people who worked on it were against that guy. But I will give him the improv.

Trish: I feel like a lot of that was Harmon too. Mr. Sneezy! Every time my husband and I see a little car, we talk about Mr. Sneezy.

John: Every time I see something that says “Two Brothers.” There’s a pizza place by my mom’s house called Three Brothers, and I’m like, it’s just two brothers. There was a hotel you guys used to like to stay at downtown called Two Brothers, and I looked at Coleen like, “Two Brothers,” and she’s like, “What?” Anyway, YOLO. I’m really looking forward to it.

Trish: I can’t wait to see more of Rachel. I view myself as Rachel. On one hand that’s hilarious, and on the other hand, I don’t want to be seen as Rachel. Though she has her moments.

John: Without breaking the embargo or spoiling anything, there are some really good Rachel moments in the new episodes.

Trish: We are a Rachel household. We’re Team Rachel. We ship Rachel and the crocodile.

John: Was that the season where she fell in love with the crocodile, and then he died and she kept his bones?

Trish: That was the second season. The beach episode was where Sarah fell in love with the crocodile, and Rachel killed him because she was trying to get Nan’s precious rubies. But I know we can’t go too deep into it. I haven’t seen the episodes, but girl power all the way. YOLO: Rainbow Trinity, I cannot wait. And that leads me into another girl power show.

John: Speaking of girl power, there’s another show with a female lead coming out.

Trish: I’m so excited for this. I’ve seen the episodes, and I just wanted more.

John: I’ve only seen the pilot so far. What’s the full name? Oh My God… Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances. I wrote the article, I should know. Since you’ve seen more of it than I have, did I summarize it right? I said it reminded me of Cyberpunk meets The Boondocks.

Trish: That’s accurate-ish. I wouldn’t say The Boondocks. The animation doesn’t remind me of it. It’s three best friends who are all girls, so it’s kind of Tuca & Bertie.

John: Now that you put it that way, I’d amend my original statement to say it’s Tuca & Bertie meets Cyberpunk, because of all the dudes with the robotic enhancements and all the crazy stuff in the background. In the trailer, which I hope you’ve all seen, there’s a strip club with a sloth on a stripper pole, and a lot of anthropomorphic animals. It’s funny as [bleep]. That’s all I can say without breaking the embargo.

Trish: I don’t remember any details, because it was late at night when I watched it, and I watched it in Reno. But it was really good, and I’m looking forward to watching it again when it premieres. Come on, Trish, you didn’t write down when it premieres.

John: March 9th at 12:15, after the new season of YOLO, with next-day streaming on Max. So to your point earlier, they’ve got a stacked lineup now.

Trish: I’m really amazed at how they’ve been piling it on. I feel like Adult Swim is having a second coming of brilliance.

John: Gone are the days of Williams Street, though. That’s the unfortunate part. People ask me what’s going on at Williams Street, and I’m like, I don’t even think there is a Williams Street anymore. Even the last season of Aqua Teen was done by Floyd County.

Trish: Oh, I’m glad Floyd County did it.

John: I went to Todd first and foremost, like, “Dude, your company is doing this. Tell me you’re going to have a hand in this.” And he’s the director now.

Trish: Does he still draw Carl with brooms in his ass? We should have him on.

John: I told him we’d have him on for the show’s anniversary last year, and we never did.

Trish: Well, let’s have him on the next show. Get an interview set up for April.

[A scheduling tangent has been trimmed.]

Trish: Can we talk about one more girl power show? I finished Invincible Fight Girl.

John: I’ve got to finish that. I’m a couple of episodes out.

Trish: The creator, Justin, it was a fun interview. I like doing the interviews when they give them to us, because a lot of them are the new shows. Like the women who did Teenage Euthanasia. I’m so sad I missed that one. Can I tell everybody why I missed it? I thought one of our feral cats was going to die. I thought she’d been eating lilies growing in our yard, because lilies are poisonous to cats, and she wasn’t eating. Many dollars and a trip to the vet later, it turns out she had gas. They knocked her out, because she’s feral and very feisty, gave her an appetite stimulant, took X-rays, the whole thing. We took her home, kept her in the laundry room overnight, let her go the next morning, and that evening she was eating everybody’s food.

John: That was the first one where I was like, okay, if Trish can’t be here, I’m going to suck it up, because otherwise we’d miss out on it.

Trish: I thought you did really well. Maybe next season, if there is one. That was a good show too. But back to Invincible Fight Girl. Andy is so amazing. I love her character because she doesn’t back down from anything. She’s strong-willed and determined, and you don’t see that with women in shows. It’s always the guys, especially in anime, going, “I will defeat you with my might and my power.” Then Andy says it, and I’m like, yes, finally a girl is saying this. I love what Justin did, making a female lead. I always ask creators what made them write a main character of a different gender, because it shows a lot of empathy. I want season two out yesterday. You can find it on Max. It’s not hilarious, but it has its moments.

Jason: It’s one of those shows where there’s comedy in it, but it’s more action-adventure.

Trish: And I hate Craig. Can we all agree we hate Craig? He’s shady as [bleep]. He’s got a good heart, obviously, which you see by the end of the show, but I’d like to punch him in the face anyway. Next topic?

John: The new podcast. MC Chris put out a new podcast with Dana. It’s supposed to be a rewatch podcast, which sounds cool on paper, but will it be, or will it just be MC Chris and Dana? Because that’s cool too.

Trish: I listen to things when I clean my house, which is every day, and I really should listen, because MC Chris and Dana are so funny. I’d pay to watch them read the phone book. So MC Chris and Dana, anytime you want to come back to the Swimcast.

John: We almost had him on during his last tour, but it was a timing thing. We should invite them both on for an interview. “Hey, you’re doing a podcast, come talk to us.”

Trish: They should have you on their show. They’ve already had Ronnie. I never knew they were friends. I knew they worked together, and everybody at Williams Street seemed kind of buddies with everyone else. It seemed like a very friendly place during the early days of Adult Swim. I saw a lot of camaraderie behind the scenes.

John: I think at one point it was, and then the writing was on the wall, people left and things went downhill. I haven’t been to Dragon Con or Williams Street in something like ten years. The golden age is gone, but I feel like we’re getting another golden age. If they release two more new shows this year, I think Adult Swim can bounce back. And if they’re not going to do Aqua Teen this year, maybe they’ll bring back another old show.

Trish: Frisky Dingo!

John: I was just going to say Frisky Dingo. Imagine. Even a wrap-up movie. Now that they’ve got the Venture Bros. and Metalocalypse movies out of the way, and pretty much wrapped those up, what could we possibly see next? I read an interview with Adam Reed shortly after Frisky Dingo was cancelled, where he said he had all kinds of adventures planned for them in space. But would Adam touch Adult Swim again after his success with Archer? I don’t know.

John: Mike Ouweleen, the president of Adult Swim, who co-created Harvey Birdman, was asked about this at a Comic Con panel. It was during the writers’ and actors’ strikes, so they couldn’t have the talent there. It was just Mike and two producers, and the poor moderator didn’t know what she was asking. She asked him how they came up with the animation style for Aqua Teen, and that’s not really a question for him. That’s a Dave and Matt, or even a Todd, question. Watching her interview the Hazbin Hotel panel last year, she was actually really good, and it dawned on me she was probably floundering because of the strike. Anyway, a fan asked Mike about bringing back shows like Xavier or Frisky Dingo, and he said, “Well, I don’t know if they want to do it.”

Trish: That’s what I think too. I know Reed was pissed when they let him go. He saw the writing on the wall and quit, and then Matt Thompson and crew tried to keep it going, and Adult Swim said no.

John: That was a weird time, because we were also supposed to get a reboot of Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil from Loren Bouchard. He supposedly developed it, and Adult Swim went, “Nah.”

Trish: Which was probably the best thing for Loren Bouchard, because then he developed Bob’s Burgers.

John: They’ve made a lot of dumb moves. There was the year they did the pilot contest, and they never did anything with it. They passed on SuperMansion, and it went to Crackle and won an Emmy.

Trish: I will never forgive them for passing on Cheyenne Cinnamon. That show was [bleep] funny. It was a girl who sings and takes people on adventures to help them out of a problem. It would have been great. Neko Case was amazing in it.

John: Was Dana in that? Now I’m checking IMDb. Dana was Man with Baby. And the voice of the girl was Kristen Schaal.

Trish: Yes! I forgot that was her. I think of her in that role often. Cheyenne Cinnamon was basically me. She had a giant unicorn and could fly through the air and help people out of their problems. That whole show was so hilarious, and I don’t know that they could get away with it today.

John: I haven’t finished What We Do in the Shadows yet.

Trish: Same. I’m not ready for it to be over.

John: I think that really sums up our podcast, besides one piece of special news.

[The hosts wrestle with a shared Google Doc that has renamed everyone “Anonymous Alligator,” which turns into a running joke that Ali Wong is going to eat them.]

Trish: You don’t want to tell everyone your super exciting news?

John: I think people who know me know by now. There is another Skywalker, and by Skywalker I mean Galbo.

Trish: You created life!

John: I feel like it’s come full circle. When Aqua Teen was starting, Matt and Dave were having their kids, and now their kids are doing voices on the shows. Last night was the 12 oz. Mouse party for 2/22, and someone said that’s Matt’s son doing the voice of the kid. Props to Speedbeats, who took over the Corn Dog Central website. He’s done a bang-up job every year. This year it was Aquarium Day, because as a joke he streamed it so it felt like it was underwater, which is very fitting for 12 oz. Mouse. He had a meat cam on the side where he smoked some meat, and apparently Yoda was involved somehow.

Trish: 12 oz. Mouse was always really hard for me to understand.

John: Someone, maybe somebody who used to work on the show, compared it to Twin Peaks, where everything is crazy.

Trish: It’s like a fever dream for me. I can’t watch it. One thing I did want to talk about, when you mentioned Xavier: I think the kids are really into Xavier right now.

Jason: You’re right, though. I see it with people in other Discord servers. I think bits and pieces of the show got chopped up and wound up on TikTok. It goes well with a lot of the sense of humor people have now.

Trish: I feel so old now. I got it when it came out and thought it was hilarious, and now I’m like, oh my God, this is so cringe. When did that come out?

John: It was after Frisky Dingo. 2007, I think. The mid-2000s were when they were doing all the crazy experimental stuff.

Jason: PFFR was doing everything. Alyson Levy did Teenage Euthanasia through PFFR too. And Wonder Showzen is one of my favorite shows of all time.

Trish: There were parts of it I couldn’t stand. One time they had a dead rabbit being eaten by maggots.

Jason: There was a lot of really absurd, gross-out stuff in it. The big segment in the pilot was old stock footage of a hot dog factory, narrated by kids, because that’s the whole point of the show, and it gets very dark. It’s very funny, though. Every time somebody brings up Xavier, I tell them to check out other PFFR stuff. I hate doing the whole “you couldn’t make this today” thing, but a lot of Wonder Showzen probably wouldn’t fly on television now. There’s also a lot of really clever stuff in it, and a lot of what wouldn’t fly is tongue-in-cheek and satirical about the things it’s talking about. There’s an episode about patience where the first half plays normally, and after the commercial break they play the entire first half in reverse. And it has one of my favorite series finales ever. Their puppet Clarence went around New York City asking people what their problem was with television and challenging strangers to make good TV, which mostly meant holding the camera on someone until they got agitated or actually did something. Some of them were into it, and some of them started chasing them. The grand finale is them in a helicopter over the Hudson River, throwing Clarence into the water.

Trish: Nothing makes me go “oh, Jesus Christ” as much as PFFR does. Teenage Euthanasia is the tamest thing they’ve ever done, and it was beautiful.

John: I’m going down a PFFR hole. I didn’t realize Heather Lawless was on Wonder Showzen. And I forgot they did the Neon Knome pilot.

Jason: I love Neon Knome. It’s a shame it turned into The Problem Solverz, which wasn’t great. My sister and I watched that pilot so many times, and we used to quote it all the time.

Trish: We still quote it. “Water? What are you talking about?” “Root beer salad!” “I need my wallet and my glasses.” I’m a very anxious and nervous person, which probably doesn’t surprise anybody listening, and whenever I get nervous about something, Adam will go, “Horace doesn’t like the forest!” Neon Knome and Cheyenne Cinnamon should both have been greenlit.

John: Good times. Welcome to your 40s, kids. Someone else is going to overtake you in the Adult Swim podcast community.

Trish: Damn it, Ronnie. No, I’m kidding. He’s super nice.

John: He came up with kind of the same concept 20 years after I did. I’m basically Kevin Costner at the end of Field of Dreams: I built this whole thing, what am I getting out of it?

[A personal tangent has been trimmed.]

Trish: You’ve done great stuff. You’ve met so many people in Adult Swim, and you share your experiences with people. Your experiences are so unique and impactful.

John: That’s what my adventures are all about: community and storytelling.

Trish: How many people become besties with people like Todd Redner and Nick? You should get Nick on the next show. I love the way Nick is raising his kids, because the stuff they draw is just amazing. If you’re old like we are and you have Facebook, please follow Nick Gibbons. He is so funny, and I can’t say enough good things about him.

John: I know Todd started a website, and I think Nick did too. We’ll put them in the show notes. Anything else to plug?

Trish: My cooking videos, which are for adults only. Jason, anything?

Jason: No, I’ve got nothing.

John: You can find the website at adultswimcentral.com. The other site is acpnet.net for a bunch of podcasts and writings. [Note: ACPN has since merged into adultswimcentral.com.] We’re on Bluesky and Threads as Adult Swim Central. If anyone wants to help contribute to the show or the website, hit us up at podcasts@acpnet.net. [Note: for contributions now, use the contact page.]

Trish: I’m on Instagram as Trish Henson, and if you like cat pictures, you’ll love my Instagram. My cooking show is on YouTube as trishhenson7821. You have to be 18 or older to view it.

John: I think that’s it. Good night, everybody.

Trish: Good night, we love you, bye!

[Music]

George Lowe (as Space Ghost): This has been an Adult Swim Central production.