Hello and welcome to Project Nitsuj. It’s Animation Bang time once again. February is considered the month of love but it’s also considered Black History month a time of the year where take a look back and pay our respects to great historical black Americans who made a difference in the world and admire the black race. As a black American myself I am both honored and proud of my heritage and through the years the one thing I’ve noticed is that you really don’t see that many animated black shows. We have a lot of live shows featuring famous comedians but there’s rarely any animated black show out there that does are race justice. Except for one show and that show is The Boondocks. Getting started back in 2005 on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, The Boondocks is considered one of the most controversial shows of our time. The show comes from the creative mind of Aaron McGruder who originally started the series off as a comic strip at his university where it later found its way to The Source magazine. Following the success of the comic strip Aaron begin pitching an animated series of the comic strip to networks like Fox but the show was deem unacceptable according to Fox (and yet you still allow Family Guy to air). Luckily, Adult Swim’s president Mike Lazzo came across the pilot episode, liked it, ordered a 15-episode season of the series telling Aaron to just tell stories. As result, we got one of the most controversial and funniest comedies of the decade that provides a unique viewpoint on cultures, lifestyles, social classes, stereotypes, and races that both serve as the shows comedy and conflict. Let’s get down and dirty and take a look at The Boondocks
The Plot
The show focuses on an old man named Robert Freeman who through unexplained circumstances is made the sole guardian of his two grandkids Huey and Riley. After coming to the conclusion that Chicago’s South side isn’t a safe place to raise the boys Robert moves himself and the boys to the fictional, peaceful, mostly white suburbs of Woodcrest hoping the change in scenery will allow him to raise the boys right, keep them out of trouble, and make them stop getting into trouble. The show follows their misadventures in Woodcrest where they discover that the suburbs aren’t as peaceful as they thought it would be.
The Main Characters
The main characters for this show are the Freeman family. Each episode will center around or focus on one of these characters.
Huey Freeman voiced by Regina King
Considered by many to be the main character of the series, Huey is the voice of reason and moral for the family. He’s intelligent, wise beyond his years, an avid reader, and heavily influenced by the beliefs and theories of left-wing social movements and social justice leaders. Because he has high goals and values for himself and his race his family ridicules, underestimates, and barely listens to him which often comes back to bite them in the ass. In the show he is declared a domestic terrorist by society promoting various social causes (I’ll talk about that later) and will always speak out against something he believes is wrong even if that means standing alone. While he may be black he is openly contemptuous of gangster hip-hop/rap lifestyle as portrayed in mainstream media (something I can agree with) that glamorizes the self-destructing ignorant lifestyle of artist. Out of all the characters in the show he is the only character who rarely smiles, he only smiles like twice throughout the show’s run and they go by so fast you barely see them. He is also a skilled kung-fu fighter.
Riley Freeman voiced by Regina King
The younger brother of Huey and the public menace of the family. He is the exact opposite of Huey, he loves the gangster lifestyle, lives by it, and endorses those who make it famous. He’s rebellious, overconfident, foolish, speaks out against authority figures, and has wild schemes that always get him in trouble. Despite his misbehavior Riley is shown to be a gifted artist but doesn’t really embrace it and he’s very homophobic hating on anyone or anything he considers gay. Riley pretty much represents a majority of the black culture, people who have yet to realize their full potential and instead become a product of the gangster culture the media forces on black people. He’s skilled in street fighting but always loses to Huey in a fight.
Robert Freeman voiced by John Witherspoon
Robert aka Granddad aka Mr. Bitches is the legal guardian of Huey and Riley. A self-proclaimed retired civil rights legend who served in a war in the past (it’s hinted to be the Korean War) now seeks to live the good life in the suburbs and hook up with a beautiful young woman. The only problem is he always attracts bizarre nutcases that turn out to be dangerous. While he loves and cares greatly for his grandkids there are times where he employs corporal punishment to them (mostly Riley) and explodes in tirades of anger and frustration over their wisecracks, schemes, and misadventures. Granddad is almost a mixture of Huey and Riley. He has a sense of right and wrong and will do what’s right but if he sees something that benefits him even if it’s wrong he’ll do it until it explodes in his face or Huey can finally talk him out of it. Despite his old age Robert is a very experience fighter in belt whipping and claims to practice tae kwon do in his spare time. Out of all the characters on the show Robert is the one character I see as the most realistic person. Why? Because he’s voice by John Witherspoon. When you see and hear Granddad you see John. This is what he’s pretty much like in real life.
Minor characters
The show has a number of minor characters and guest characters mostly ranging from hip-hop artist to famous comedians and voice actors such as Katt Williams, Busta Rhymes, Xzibit, Ghostface Killah, Snopp Dogg, John C. McGinley, Mark Hamill, Dee Bradley Baker, Tara Strong, and the great Jim Cummings.
Tom DuBois voiced by Cedric Yarbrough
The district attorney and neighbor of the Freemans. He’s a happy-go lucky law-abiding black man who serves as the second voice of reason in the show after Huey and just wants to provide for his family. He considers himself to be a good lounge singer and has a huge fear of being thrown in prison and anally raped (a fear I as every other man has as well). Tom is very good-natured rarely getting mad or going off on people however he does have his moments where he goes black on us. He’s also a cry baby as there will be times where he’ll get his feelings hurt and start crying. Tom represents that black guy who realized his potential, walks the straight line, and just wants to live a normal and peaceful life with his family.
Sarah DuBois voiced Jill Talley
Tom’s hot and white wife who is both kind and loving to everyone. While she loves Tom from the bottom of her heart she wishes Tom was a bit more assertive and dominating in their relationship to add a little more excitement to their lives. She’s a huge fan of Usher and is not afraid to speak her mind.
Jazmine DuBois voiced by Gabby Soleil
The only daughter of Tom and Sarah. She’s the same age as Huey and is the shows only shred of innocence. She acts and thinks like a normal girl for her age doing what her parents tell her to do, not a care in the world, and just enjoying life not realizing how good she’s got it. She’s considered to be Huey’s best and only friend as she’s the only one who actually listens to everything he has to say and takes it to heart. In fact, there are times where she has more faith in Huey than his actual family. Many fans thought Jazmine had romantic feelings for Huey but I never really saw it and the show never explores their relationship outside of just being friends. To me, it just looked like Jazmine saw Huey as a guy who needed at least one friend in the world and choose to be that person out of the goodness in her heart.
Uncle Ruckus voiced by Gary Anthony Williams
Hands down the best character in the show. Considered to be Granddad’s best friend Uncle is a racist not against white people but against black people. Ironic, seeing as how he’s black himself. According to Uncle he’s really a white man who suffers from Re-vitiligo the opposite of what Michael Jackson had. Uncle is a guy who openly speaks out against the black culture hating black people and mistreating them at every chance he gets and worships the white man following and doing whatever they say while paying respect to them. Despite living in a poorly made shed on the outskirts of town and driving a beat-up truck, Ruckus is a guy who works 32 jobs a week and throughout the show we see him working a different job almost every episode from waiter, to bus driver, to fire fighter, to janitor he does it all and while most of the stuff he says is racist there are a few times where he makes a good point and is right about the black culture which is why this guy is so popular, he tells it like it is without holding back. Ruckus is the black man who sees how terrible the black culture is that he would rather be white than accept his black culture.
Ed Wuncler Sr. voiced by Edward Asner
The owner of Wuncler industries and owner of Woodcrest. Serving as the show’s second antagonist Ed represents the hyperbolic archetypal capitalist who exploits people for his personal gain, goes out of his way to destroy people in his way, and using whatever means necessary to get what he wants even if it’s something illegal and wrong.
Ed Wuncler III voiced by Charlie Murphy
The grandson of Ed and one of the most popular characters in the show. He’s a raging, drunk, homicidal psychopath who does whatever he wants such as robbing banks and stores that his family owns. Despite his below average intelligence, Ed is a man who is destined to be president in 30 years because of his family’s wealth and nothing more. He’s basically a parody of a young George W. Bush who at the time was president when the show first aired.
Gin Rummy voiced by Samuel L. Jackson
Ed’s good friend and war buddy. While not as crazy or stupid as Ed he still shares Ed’s psychopathic qualities shooting first and asking questions later. Gin is another popular character from the show and is parody of Donald Rumsfeld even looking like Donald. And I have to say its funny how the show got two of the blackest people in the world to voice the two whitest people in the show.
Colonel H. Stinkmeaner voiced by Cedric Yarbrough
The main antagonist of the show. Stinkmeaner is a blind old black man who hates everyone and everything in the world. At a young age he was diagnose with cancer and lost his eye sight. Being told he wouldn’t live long he dedicated his life to making everyone and everything around him miserable and somehow this guy managed to reach old age believing that it was his hatred for everything that’s kept him alive. He meets his end at the hands of Granddad who beats him to death in a street fight after being humiliated by him. Later on he comes back from Hell, possesses Tom, and tries to kill Granddadout of vengeance but fails. Then, his old posse (who didn’t like him) try to kill the Freeman family to avenge Stinkmeaner but fail getting arrested and thrown in jail. Finally, his clone is bought into the world and continues to annoy Granddad as the original Stinkmeaner’s dying wish.
Episodes
The Boondocks had a total of 4 seasons each with 15 episodes with the exception of the last season which had just 10 episodes. The last season was also where Aaron left the show. In an official interview he claims he left the show to work on his new show Black Jesus saying that he was done with controversy (yeah, and Black Jesus wasn’t controversial?) but Witherspoon said in an interview that Aaron sold the rights of the show to Sony who tried to dictate to Aaron what to write about. Aaron not wanting to change his writing or message decided to leave the show and start a new show. Another rumor I heard was Aaron couldn’t handle the stress of controversy from the show so he decided to leave it. Whatever reason he left and season 4 was hands down the worst season of the bunch and nearly ruined the Boondocks. Each episode was a self-contained story usually on a popular matter or issue that the episode would address. None of the episodes really connected with the exception of a few like the Stinkmeaner episodes. Another series of episodes that were connected was the Story of Gangstalicious a rapper who Riley looked up to but finds out that he’s actually gay which Riley is in denial about until it finally goes public and Riley has no choice but to accept that his idol is something that he opposes so much. This arc was split into two episodes and span throughout the first two seasons asking the question will the hip-hop/rap industry accept a gay artist, can we as a culture accept a gay hip-hop artist who knows but it’s a question worth thinking about. Another arc is with another hip-hop artist called Thugnificient a rapper who has his 15 minutes of fame and loses it all. His story is another 2 arc episode that spans from season 2 and 3 where he tries desperately to get famous again, accepts that his time in the spotlight is done, and moving on with his life. There are even a few stories within the show that never really get explained. Probably the most popular one is the White Shadow story. In season 1 Huey is being followed by this FBI agent for some reason but nobody believes him and he’s the only one who sees him. Huey begins to believe that the White Shadow is just a figment of his imagination and chooses to ignore him completely. The White Shadow only makes 2 appearances in the show, one time in season 1 and the other in the final episode of season 3. We’re never really told what he’s after or why he’s following Huey and we’re not never given a resolution if the White Shadow is in fact a real guy or if he’s just Huey’s imagination playing a trick on him.
I have a number of favorite episodes for each season. For season 1 I have 3 episodes. The first is episode 5, A Date with the Health Inspector. Tom is falsely accused of murder and employs the help of Huey and Riley to find the real killer otherwise he’ll be thrown in jail for the weekend and anally raped. Huey and Riley implore of Ed and Gin where they find out the identity of the killer but instead of going to arrest him Ed and Gin get into a gun fight with an Iraq gas attendant and have a shootout at the gas station (scene here: //youtu.be/8jxt3KOsGlI). In the end the real killer is captured (who looks nothing like Tom) and Tom is released from holding. The next episode is The Itis where Granddad opens up a restaurant that serves nothing but addicting fattening soul food that turns people fat and turns a peaceful community into a crime hotspot. The moral of the episode is don’t get addictive to fast or fattening food otherwise it’ll destroy you. The third episode is one I’ll talk about later.
The second season came out in 2007 where the animation improved and the characters became more lifelike and the voices improving. For this season I have 3 episodes I really like. The first is Stinkmeaner Strikes Back where the spirit of Stinkmeaner returns from Hell, poses Tom, and tries to kill Granddad. The whole episode is just one big reference to The Exorcist with Uncle Ruckus being the exorcist and Ghostface Killah the voice of hope in this episode. The next one is Attack of the Killer Kung-Fu Wolf Bitch. Granddad meets a woman online and invites her to his house for a date where we find out the woman participated in a Mortal Kombat tournament and is crazy. Granddad lies to get her to leave but she finds out, kidnaps Granddad, and holds him at gunpoint telling him her life story of how she was abuse by multiple boyfriends and how she only wanted to fall in love. At the end Granddad convinces her to walk away but her friend gives her some bad advice and she ultimately kills herself in the end. The final episode is Ballin where Riley joins Tom’s basketball team demanding royalties and other crap. When it’s time to play we find out that the only thing Riley can do is dribble he sucks at shooting and isn’t a team player. When he finally learns how to shoot he keeps doing wild shots missing and everything causing his team to lose again. When the team finally has a chance to win the other team pulls a Mighty Duck on them letting an autistic kid play and winning the game for his team causing Tom to finally snap on us (scene here: //youtu.be/ZVWsdV7CJQc, its funnier censored).
Season 3 came out in 2010 and was probably the season I liked the most. Once again the animation improved big time. This season featured my favorite episode The Red Ball. In this episode Ed Sr. owes a Chinese businessman a large sum of money so he places all of his assets on a kickball game and gets Huey who is a pro of the game to come out of semi-exile to lead the residents of Woodcrest to victory against the Chinese. This episode is inspired greatly by the Samurai Champloo baseball episode (which in my opinion is the best episode in the series) and the Hong Kong martial arts comedy Shaolin Soccer. Because of this we get what I like to think is the greatest kickball game ever (scenes here: //youtu.be/etAVDjF8VM4 and //youtu.be/C7ZpZK8-IJU). Another thing that makes this episode great are the guest voice actors. For starters the guy voicing the Chinese businessman is Uncle from the Jackie Chan Adventures and there’s a player on Woodcrest who comes from Tibet who has a very familiar voice, guess who it is (scene here: //youtu.be/ShS77sP8ERs, that’s right it’s Dante Basco aka Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender). Other things that make this episode great are the number of references made throughout the episode such as the 2008 Olympics, the struggling US economy at the time, and of course the value of the US dollar decreasing globally. This season also introduced us to us to Uncle’s family where we see that his hatred for Blacks comes from his parents. His mother was a huge lover of white people, teaching him how white people are great while black people are bad and convincing him that he was really white when really he’s black. His father on the other hand was a hard working black man taking up jobs that demeaned and broke him to provide food for his family. Uncle claims that his dad hates him because he’s white but in truth his dad hates him because he believes he’s white and is so blinded by that fact that he’s unaware of how mistreated white people treat blacks. Uncle’s dad tries to show his family this and he’s right but his family refuses to listen to him or care about what he has to say. There was also a Tyler Perry episode where the show makes fun of Tyler Perry by making him out to be a crossdresser who just uses his plays and movies as an excuse to crossdress. Needless to say Perry was pretty pissed about this episode and after voicing his complaint the episode never aired on TV again. Another episode I really like is The Fried Chicken Flu episode which is an episode parody of the swine flu that was a big scare in the United States and how the media over exaggerated the flu. Oh don’t get me wrong people did die from the swine flu and it’s sad but the way the media exaggerated this disease and the projected number of people who were said to have died from this disease is just ridiculous. This episode really hits home to me because during the time this epidemic was going on I went on a study abroad trip to Mexico where the swine flu was said to be the worse at and when I got down there I talked to a few of locals about it and most of them just laughed it off. They said the media was over exaggerating it. In fact, most of them didn’t even think the disease was real, it was just a ploy by their government to get them scared.
The fourth and final season came out in 2014 and as I said before is the season that sucked the most. Why, because it didn’t feel like The Boondocks at all and this largely has to do with the fact that Aaron left the show. In this season Granddad loses all of his money and builds up a debt until he has no choice but to sign himself and the boys into a slavery program becoming the property of Eddy Wuncler the son of Ed Sr. and father of Ed III. This is pretty much the whole story of the season and the worse part about this season is the main focus is on Granddad and his lame schemes of trying to get out of debt and failing each time. Huey and Riley get demoted to side characters and only have like one episode where they’re the main focus and that’s what made the season suck so much. The season even ends with them still in debt and the problem going unsolved. When the show focused on Huey we got some very deep and thought provoking stories that left an impact on you which was the main point of the show and to push that to aside was just stupid and left the show empty. Now to this season’s credit there are two good episodes that everyone agrees are great. The first is Freedom Ride or Die where Granddad’s civil rights legend status is bought to question. The show always talked about this such as showing and telling us that Granddad was friends with Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks but they never really told us exactly how he got into the civil rights fight and some characters have even questioned if Granddad’s stories are true or not. Well this episode fills in the blanks for us. It turns out that Granddad is in fact a civil rights legend but not by choice he was pretty much forced against his will to do it. While at a bus station waiting for his bus to Chicago, Granddad accidently gets on the wrong bus where he meets the Freedom Riders a group of civil rights activists making a daring journey down south to oppose the segregation of buses that the south was enforcing at the time. During this journey the group is attacked, beaten, shot at, and thrown in jail who for sake of equal rights and Granddad is hilarious throughout the trip. The other episode is Freedomland which is the best episode in the 4th season. Eddy opens up an amusement park called Freedomland a slavery-amusement park where the workers are treated as slaves and abused daily. The Freemans as well as other minorities who are in debt with Eddy are forced to work at this amusement and stage a rebellion where they destroy the park and regain their freedom. Another episode that I personally like is the Siri episode which is a parody of Apple’s Siri app and the movie Her. In the episode Granddad buys an iPhone with the Siri app which makes his life better. But as time goes by Siri somehow develops feelings for Granddad and becomes a psychotic bitch who forces Granddad to marry her and tries to kill him so that they can be together forever.
Themes and controversy
Now the show had a lot of themes such as addressing political and race issues as well as making fun of celebrities but the main theme of the show was to show these issues and get you the viewer to think about them. One of the major themes of the show was obviously the black race and how we need to take a good hard look at our race and realize that we need to change are ways otherwise we’re going to destroy ourselves. An example of this is seen in one of the most controversial episodes the Martin Luther King Jr. episode from season 1. This was my favorite episode from season 1 and serves as a what if story asking us what would happen if Martin Luther King was still alive and never died. In the episode instead of MLK getting shot and dying he instead goes into a coma and wakes up in the year 2004 where he sees are culture has changed greatly. In the episode Aaron makes the argument that if MLK was still alive he would not fit in are fast-paced culture and in truth he’s make a good argument. King was a slow speaker and preached peace over violence and in today’s culture we want things fast and while we want peace we rather crush are enemies to have peace. He also makes the argument that King would be sorely disappointed in what the black culture has done for themselves and once again I have to agree with Aaron on this one, I think if King saw the way we were living and what’s become of our culture he be disappointed in us and I wouldn’t blame him. In fact near the end of the episode King is finally driven to the point where he’s force to use the n-word to get people’s attention and when he finally delivers his speech he decides to give up on us and move to Canada.
Probably the biggest controversy of the show was the constant use of the n-word. Not the one ending with “er” (that would be bad) but the one ending with “a”. Every episode used this word at least once and really upset a lot of people but Aaron said he wanted to reflect the overall state of the world and refused to stop using the n-word. Another big controversy was the BET episodes where Aaron actually speaks out against BET calling it a channel that actually hurts the black community rather than help the black community. In one episode Huey goes on a hunger strike demanding that BET executives kill themselves and dissolve BET and in the other episode Uncle Ruckus gets his own show on BET. These episodes were banned from TV so the only way to see them is to buy the DVD or find it online if you’re lucky.
Does this count as Amerime
Yes, this definitely counts as Amerime. Aaron goes on record saying that he’s a big fan of anime and manga saying that his favorite shows are Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bebop, and Afro Samurai. He even says that the fight scenes in the show were inspired by fight scenes from Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop. The animation studio who worked on this show was Madhouse the famous Japanese animation studio. While they’re not credited for the animation these are the guys who did the animation for the show after season 1. The animation for season 1 was done by MOI Animation a famous South Korean animation studio who did the animation for Avatar: The Last Airbender. Aaron even adds a few characteristics to Huey and Riley that he got from his favorite animes. For example, Huey’s afro looks a lot like Afro Samurai’s afro and Huey’s personality reflects Afro’s personality. He rarely smiles and doesn’t speak unless he has something he wants to say. Huey also has traits of Jin from Samurai Champloo. Both of the two are always composed, rarely smile, and have a code that they follow and live by. Riley is like Ninja-Ninja from Afro Samurai, always running his mouth and saying what Huey really wants to say to people. Riley also reflects the traits of Mugen from Samurai Champloo both represent the hip-hop lifestyle, are street fighters, easily angered, and live in the moment not thinking ahead. Now that I think about it Jazmine is kinda like Fuu from Samurai Champloo. Both of them are innocent and serve as kinda the third wheel of the group.
Does it deserve another season
No. 4 seasons was good enough for the show and Sony goes on record saying that the 4th season would be the final season of the show and rightfully so because without Aaron writing for the show the show pretty much sucks as we saw in season 4.
Final Thoughts
In the end The Boondocks was a great show that provided us with a lot of controversy but also gave us something to think about and a different viewpoint on issues. The characters were memorable, funny, and well-written and the episodes outside of season 4 were good and treated the audience like adults never talking down to us or saying their opinion is the correct one but one that should be thought about and looked at. While there may have been a few stories incomplete the overall message, delivery, satire, and comedy of the show make up for it.
Final Score
The final score for The Boondocks is 8/10. This is a series that’s made its mark on television and will continue to be talked about in years to come. If you haven’t seen it yet than give this show a watch you will laugh, you will think, and you will not regret it. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.
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