The Cartoon Network series creator riffs on the studio’s ‘green light’ to do most anything with its library, including bringing back classic HB characters, most likely no one wants to see, in the all-new third season, now airing.
‘Jellystone!’ Season 3. Now airing on Cartoon Network and streaming on Max. All images courtesy of Cartoon Network.
Coupes making three a crowd, barbarian barbers and one of the weirdest – and greatest – Cartoon Network character reunions TV has ever seen; nothing was off the table for Jellystone! Season 3, now available on Max.
Created by C. H. Greenblatt, known for his work on SpongeBob SquarePants and Chowder, Jellystone! is a 2D-animated comedy series featuring modernized ensembles of Hanna-Barbera characters now living and working together in the same town: Jellystone. Huckleberry Hound is the town’s mayor, Cindy, Boo Boo and Yogi are the medical staff, and Jabberjaw – the daughter of the original drummer shark from 1976 – works at a clothing store. Then there’s Doggie Daddy, a lighthouse keeper who is overprotective of his daughter Augie Doggie, and the local criminal group, The Banana Splits. We could go on.
But as packed as Seasons 1 and 2 were with classic cartoon cameos, Greenblatt says he and the team went “whole hog” for Season 3, dragging once forgotten characters back into the spotlight, whether audiences wanted them or not. It was clearly a third fun season.
Check out the trailer:
AWN chatted with Greenblatt about some of his favorite characters, the hefty challenge of that final Cartoon Network crossover episode, and what could be in store if the show is renewed for Season 4.
Victoria Davis: Carl, when we chatted in 2021, you said you were like a kid in a candy store with this show. Does it still feel that way now three seasons later?
C.H. Greenblatt: I definitely feel like I got to play with all the toys. We really went whole hog, especially this last season, with all the cameos we wanted to do. Beyond all the Cartoon Network characters, we got to use The Herculoids. We got to use Thundarr the Barbarian. We got to use Space Ghost again. We got to use Secret Squirrel, Sealab and, my favorite, Devlin from 1974, which nobody even knows or cares about.
VD: Who is Devlin?
CHG: He was basically a stunt guy inspired by the motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel, who looked like he was in a circus. The creators did the series with their own version of the stunt rider, and it was not good. But I was like, ‘Man, that'd be really fun to have him in the show,’ because everybody understands stunts, and putting Devlin in the YouTube era as a stunt guy with this Jackass sensibility was super fun.
There are still more characters like that we would love to do. I don't know if it’ll ever happen but, if it does, great.
VD: Back in Season 1, you said you looked at this show not just as a revival of the popular Hanna-Barbera cartoons, but as an homage to ones that other people and even you don't even know about. In addition to Devlin, what were some characters you had fun playing with this season and reviving with new life?
CHG: Well, Secret Squirrel was already a really popular character. But our version made him into a James Bond movie star. But we also did an episode with Wheelie from Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch, who was this anthropomorphic car and was kind of like Herbie the Love Bug, which was this old Disney live-action series. Wheelie was basically a Herbie knockoff. He would make little sounds, there were these antagonistic motorbikes that would chase him around, and there was this girl he was in love with. The characters… well, they were what they were.
But, for Jellystone! we got the comedian Brian Posehn in to do a really funny voice for him in "Third Wheelie" and made Wheelie kind of this weird sad sack.
VD: It’s almost like Jellystone! has become a lifeboat for characters who have been left out at sea.
CHG: I think our deepest, weirdest cameo that no one will get was this incidental side character from The Three Musketeers cartoon. It started with one of our writers saying, “I want to make Yogi get into eating out of troughs instead of using silverware.” And I was like, “That sounds funny. Let's figure it out.” So, we have this strange story in “Turn Your Head and Trough” where Yogi started this thing called “troughing,” where he would eat out of a pig trough. Then he gets in trouble with this secret Illuminati group that is all about manners. It’s weird, but Jellystone! is a weird show. We needed a fancy, uppity character for the episode and, as we scoured, found Lady Constance. No one will recognize her.
VD: Someone might. There are people out there who make it their mission to find these Easter eggs.
CHG: I know a lot of people will recognize Sealab for sure.
VD: With all these cameos of lesser-known characters, and changing up their characters a bit to fit the show, was there any red tape from Warner Bros. Animation or Cartoon Network when it came to you guys proposing ideas and delivering them?
CHG: We just had to get clearance to make sure Warner owned the characters. Typically, we gave them a big list of characters we wanted, and they would either say, “Yes, we own those” or “No, we don’t own them.” And that was really it. The executives never pushed. They were always like, “You want to do that? That's funny.” There was a lot of trust established after Season 1 and by this season they understood what we were doing, even when we brought in Goober and the Ghost Chasers, these Scooby-Doo knock-off characters, in “Frankenhooky.”
We did a reverse Scooby-Doo where Yogi and Boo Boo are in monster masks because they want a day off from work and get chased by Goober and all of them. It was already really silly and then at one point I said to Warner, “We should have the real Scooby gang show up.” And they were like, “Do it.” They were always really open to us doing what we wanted.
VD: Like you said, if the toys were in the toybox, you got to play with them.
CHG: Yes. The most feedback we got was when we did the Cartoon Network crossover, “Crisis on Infinite Mirths,” and that was really just to make sure that we did the characters right. The hardest part was finding the right design models for dozens and dozens of characters. It's not like there's a library we could just go to and pull from. We had to contact original artists and get people to send us stuff. And we had to look on the internet to make sure we were pulling from the correct era.
In that episode, we weren’t doing our own version of these characters. We were bringing in the real deals. They had to be the right styles from the right episodes.
VD: I’m surprised there wasn’t an already existing inventory on those character designs handy. It must have been a lot of work to track them all down.
CHG: We're lucky that Maxwell Atoms worked on our show. He's got all The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy designs and he did all those segments. I've got Chowder art sitting around and we’re friends with all the people who worked on Dexter’s Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls. We got Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken to look at and give us feedback on the sequences and make sure it fit stylistically with what they did for the shows. We did a pretty good job at nailing that stuff down. But it was a lot.
VD: Was that one of the biggest challenges of this season, gathering all the Cartoon Network intel?
CHG: That was a big challenge. We had to match the character designs and the backgrounds, too. The music had to match, the colors had to match, and the effects had to match. Snipple’s animation team did a great job. They nailed it. But there were a lot of logistics trying to get everything right. I mean, we saved that episode pretty much for last in production because we knew it was a big one.
We also spent a long time working on the writing. One of the big challenges for that was we only had 21 minutes to tell the story, and shoehorn as many characters in as we could. Honestly, in our original vision, we could have done a 40-minute story. We had enough material. We had to cut out lots of fun cameos and things just to get the story to fit.
VD: What are some other episodes you’re excited for people to see in this latest batch of episodes that’s just released?
CHG: I do like “Snowdodio.” That was an idea we had way back when we first started the series. The episode talks about how these snowmen migrate through Jellystone every year like the swallows and Augie decides to keep one, which then freezes the town. It was fun to finally get to do that one, especially with us including The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest’s special agent Race Bannon as this weird, old recluse. The “Thundarr the Barber-barian” episode is also so weird, and I love it. So, I loved Thundarr as a kid and I kept thinking, “This is the version of Thundarr nobody wants, and no one asked for it.”
VD: Before we wrap, I wanted to ask about the possibility of a Season 4. But I’m not sure how much you’re allowed to say?
CHG: We’re not in production for anything right now. But we’re cautiously optimistic.
VD: Well, if a Season 4 were to happen, what are some other crazy ideas you’ve had in your back pocket that you’d like to bring to Jellystone?
CHG: One thing we wanted to do was a dog show with all the Hanna-Barbera dogs. Almost like Toddlers & Tiaras but with every Scooby cousin and knock-off and other dogs we can find.
VD: You guys need to do that. That needs to happen. It has my vote.
CHG: If we get the opportunity to do more, we've got ideas ready to go.
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
