The Regular Show is a wacky, extremely creative animated series that ran for 8 seasons about a couple of guys that work at a city park. It's a simple premise, yet the show is anything but simple or "regular". The main characters of the show, Rigby and Mordecai, are perpetual slackers working under a grumpy, unforgiving boss. The premise came across more like a sitcom than a cartoon. Sure, the characters are weird looking, a blue jay, a raccoon, a ghost, and a walking talking gumball machine. Look past that, though, and you’ll see the very human characters. Quite frankly, the show is amazingly written even if it is very strange.
Mordecai is an early 20’s guy with a crush on girl who works down the street at a coffee shop. He’s an art college dropout passing his days as a groundskeeper of the park. He just happens to be a human sized blue jay! Mordecai’s crush pans out after a while and becomes his girlfriend.
Eventually, though, that relationship ends up in a love triangle. When he and his coffee shop crush breakup, Mordecai flails for a few episodes until meeting his rebound girl. Of course, his original crush returns. It may be animated, but the resulting fallout of the love triangle is possibly the most honest, rawest, and true telling of a breakup and heartache that I’ve ever seen on television.
Mordecai’s best friend since childhood, Rigby, works alongside him, always encouraging him to ignore work and just have fun. Rigby is a raccoon. Though he was also in his 20’s, he was stunted in his mental and emotional growth, refusing to grow up and refusing to take life seriously. Over the seasons, you get to watch him grow, slowly deciding to act a bit more like an adult. After quite some time, he decides to date a girl he’d been denying feelings for and eventually finishes his own schooling.
The duo would rather do donuts with a park golf cart or play video games instead of doing actual work. They spend so much time covering for their slack behavior or fixing the effects of their madcap adventures that they do more work every episode than what they’d have done if they’d simply done the actual work in the first place.
The guys’ boss, Benson, has a hate-to-love relationship with the two. Mordecai and Rigby constantly get on his nerves by always avoiding work, but he has a soft spot for them. However, that doesn’t stop him from screaming at them on most episodes until his face turns red. While some characters are anthropomorphic animals, Benson is weirdly a gumball machine. He’s also an ex-drummer from a band that had one hit and now lives out his day to day as the manager of the park. He stays stressed at work, generally because of Mordecai and Rigby, but he unwinds by eating hot wings, which oddly cause him to act drunk.
Other park employees include the wizened mechanic, Skips, who happens to be a gorilla. Skips also happens to be voiced by none other that Mark Hamill. He’s the park’s go-to problem solver and advice giver. Pops is the park owner’s son, who is quite old himself and very childlike in his demeanor. Then, there’s the other groundskeeper duo, Muscle Man and High-Five Ghost. All of these characters have their own storylines over the years that allows their personalities to be fleshed out as well, leaving most to be well-written and three-dimensional.
The characters are all very human, even if they’re drawn as birds or gumball machines. They struggle with jealousy, anger, feelings of inadequacy, and heartache. They get mad at each other, they make up. They love, and they lose those loves. It doesn’t matter what these characters look like, the writers make their humanity shine through.
See what I mean? This is all sitcom territory.
Then, the show gets a bit weird. Well, weirder. Each episode, something goes monumentally crazy, like attacking demons or mole people, or even the Grim Reaper showing up to collect souls. Most of the time, these cataclysmic events were caused by whatever tomfoolery Mordecai and Rigby were up to in the beginning of the episode. I thought the whole thing was silly at first. However, over 8 seasons, the show solidified to become one of the best cartoon series ever, in my opinion. The characters are done so well, you grow to care about them.
While you have the weekly recurring plot of the main two guys goofing off and getting into trouble while simultaneously endangering, yet saving, the park or the world, there are also ongoing plot lines. Eventually, you discover the park itself is a sort of experiment meant to train staff members to work as a team so that they can save the universe.
Yes, the concept of park groundskeepers going into space to save the universe is out of this world nuts. Yet, that’s what the show does. It constantly toes the line between the outrageous and the mundane, the realistic and the surreal. Putting these ordinary, purely human characters into crazy circumstances brings out the hilarity and absurdity of the situation every time.
With recurring characters ranging from the Grim Reaper to odd space entities or a park intern turned spy and time travelers, the show runners created a very unique show with its own very unique universe. You watch for the comedy, but the characters and the ongoing plots bring you back as well. The comedy itself is hilarious. I found myself laughing quite often, every episode.
The series finale wrapped up all storylines of the show, even closing a few plot holes. The crew all return home with a touching homecoming. The show then does something amazing. It fast forwards through the years, for each character. Viewers are treated to a quick look at the lives of all the characters they’ve grown to love. You see marriages, kids, job changes, and more. The main two guys grow up and finally take life seriously. It’s quite beautiful storytelling actually. It may even bring a tear to the eye. It did for me.
8 years, 247 episodes, and a TV movie later, and The Regular show became more than an enduring hit. It became memorable, it became beloved. Just note, before you start binge-watching the show, it is PG. The action and love stories, even the humor, aren’t for every kid. Remember, though, cartoons don’t have to only be for kids! However, if your kid is ready for a show like this, they’ll love it.
And, you? You’ll love The Regular Show whether you watch it with your kids, like I did, or if you enjoy the entire run on your own, while reminiscing about the days where you too didn’t take life so seriously.
Be sure to check out our other Movie and TV Reviews.
My kids love this show so much..they all wanted t-shirts for xmas...