Ugly Americans (TV series)

For other uses, see Ugly American (disambiguation).

Ugly Americans
Genre	Comedy
Created by	Devin Clark
Developed by	David M. Stern
Directed by	Devin Clark Aaron Augenblick
Voices of	Matt Oberg Kurt Metzger Natasha Leggero Randy Pearlstein Michael-Leon Wooley Larry Murphy
Composers	Bradford Reed Andrew Landry
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	14 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	David M. Stern Daniel Powell
Producer	Devin Clark
Running time	22 minutes
Original release
Network	Comedy Central
Release	March 17, 2010 (2010-03-17) – present

Ugly Americans is an American animated television series developed by David M. Stern and created by Devin Clark. The series focuses on Mark Lilly, social worker at the Department of Integration, in an alternate reality version of New York City with monsters and other creatures. Daniel Powell serves as Executive Producer and Aaron Augenblick is Supervising Producer and Animation Director.

Ugly Americans premiered on March 17, 2010 on Comedy Central. The series is based on an original idea by Devin Clark, which was later developed by former The Simpsons writer David M. Stern. It was picked for seven episodes in May 2009 and renewed for an additional seven episodes to air in October 2010. The cast includes Matt Oberg as Mark Lilly, Kurt Metzger as Mark's zombie roommate Randall Skeffington, Natasha Leggero as Callie Maggotbone, Mark's demon boss and "office fling", Randy Pearlstein as wizard Leonard Powers, Michael-Leon Wooley as Twayne Boneraper, a demonic bureaucrat, and Larry Murphy as Frank Grimes, a law-enforcement officer.

The series features a stark, flat visual style which Variety's Brian Lowry noted "vaguely resembles the EC Comics of the 1950s. (Vault of Horror)

Cast and characters

Main

• Matt Oberg as Mark Lilly – a social worker at New York's Department of Integration, and a newcomer to Manhattan. In the pilot, he had recently moved into his first apartment, a two-bedroom he found on Craigslist, only to discover his roommate was a flesh-eating zombie. Despite the frustrations of his job, where his boss Twayne Boneraper downsized Social Services to two people in the pilot in order to shift funding to Law Enforcement, Mark maintains a positive attitude. He has an on-and-off relationship (sometimes within the same day) with his immediate superior, a moody succubus named Callie Maggotbone. Despite his attitude towards his life, he is dedicated to his job and the people he looks after, coming into conflict with the anti-immigrant Frank Grimes during the course of his attempts to help immigrants in need. However, due to the fact he is still completely undereducated about the different species that inhabit New York, he will often cause mistakes that would be the central point of the episode.
• Kurt Metzger as Randall Skeffington – Mark's roommate, who became a zombie in an attempt to win over a cute girl with a zombie fixation, only to find out she had moved on to warlocks. Now, the unemployed and undead Randall spends his days doing odd jobs to pay the rent. Randall hails from South Jersey, a fiercely anti-zombie community, so he has been forced to hide his condition from his parents (especially his father, who fought in the Human-Zombie Civil War). Due to his zombie nature, Randall is frequently losing body parts to decay, forcing him to find replacements at local flea markets. Like other zombies, Randall finds the smell and taste of human flesh appealing. In "Treegasm", Randall's penis was shown to be a living creature in its own right. He has admitted that he has been living his sexual life so long that he is indiscriminate in choosing sexual partners, which in one instance, is a toaster. He sometimes gets cravings for flesh, causing him to go temporarily insane with desire, and is in a program similar to Alcoholics Anonymous to deal with his cravings. He has rarely missed an opportunity to consume Mark's body parts when it appeared he had been killed or otherwise didn't need them. In "Blob Gets Job", he mentions to Mark that he only has two working taste buds.
• Natasha Leggero as Callie Maggotbone – Mark's immediate superior, and his on-again/off-again girlfriend. In between romantic interludes with Mark, she berates him for being so caring and sensitive, although she loves it when he talks about how violent and malicious she is. She is the half human/half succubus daughter of the Devil and a human mother who was drugged by a cult and forced to bear his child. Callie is frequently marginalized with her demon side, and displays drastic mood swings and physiognomic morphing between her demonic and more human appearances. Although she is drawn to Mark because he is nice, she feels in her heart that she will inevitably end up with someone like Twayne Boneraper, despite being repulsed by the idea, although she seems indifferent to the fact that such a union would bring about the end of humanity. She dislikes her father, seeming to be more turned on to Mark after believing her father hated him but has shown to deeply care about her mother, going to her to seek advice. Being a female demon, her body goes through a process called Painful Mortal Shedding, in which the toxins in her body cause her to shed her skin for a new one, during which she become increasingly deranged where the only thing that can numb the pain is sex.. According to Mark's calendar, her period is three weeks long. Due to her demon side, she gets aroused by the sight of physical injury.
• Randy Pearlstein as Leonard Powers – an over-9000-year-old wizard whose path has led him to a desk job at New York's Department of Integration. This suits Leonard just fine, as his primary goals in life are to drink heavily and not rock the boat. He hasn't done any real work in over three years, usually just literally throwing his case files out of a window, relying on Mark and his union, The Wizard's Guild, to cover for him. Leonard bears much resentment to his older but younger-looking brother, the famous magician Christ Angel (a parody of Criss Angel), due to Christ's abuse of Leonard during their childhood. Leonard has a soft spot for Mark, although this may be because Mark covers for him so much. Despite this he appears to have a vast array of knowledge when it comes to the different types of beings that live in New York, as he often explains the importance of something Mark finds pointless or odd, and seems fairly competent at spell-casting, when he bothers to actually focus on it. In one day he became a tuna canner in Alaska, addicted to spray paint, and gained a lot of weight, and was worshiped as a god in Dà Nang, Vietnam, claiming he really needed structure to function properly. In the episode "Kong of Queens", Leonard mentions to Mark that he currently lives at the YMCA, though in "Kill, Mark... Kill!", it is shown that he lives in an apartment in a townhouse.
• Michael-Leon Wooley as Twayne Boneraper – a demonic, mid-level government bureaucrat who oversees New York's Department of Integration. Twayne loathes Mark's case files and would rather vaporize them than help them, but cannot, because infiltrating the U.S. government appears to be part of some larger demonic plan. Nonetheless, he despises Social Services and their compassionate ways, so in the pilot, he slashes the department down to just Leonard and Mark, the only two he could not get rid of, Leonard due to his union and Mark due to filling the "token caring guy" position, in order to allocate most of its funds to law enforcement. Despite his imposing appearance, Twayne is a bit of a high-status buffoon, often relying on Callie to make sure the department runs properly. Mark has referred to him as a "total douche nozzle". He also suffers from a severe case of Glossophobia and bit of a Momma's Boy.
• Larry Murphy as Francis "Frank" Grimes – the head of Department of Integration's Law Enforcement Division, and like Twayne, has utter disdain for non-humans. Preferring to think of them all as "illegal", he hunts down those who have strayed from the proper bureaucratic procedures that provide a path to U.S. Citizenship—at which point Mark must step in to help. Grimes' encounters with unruly creatures have left him with a lifetime's worth of both physical scars, such as his missing kneecap, and emotional ones, as that stemming from his broken marriage. Thus, he naturally detests Mark and anyone else who sympathizes with the immigrants. Grimes commands a small but well-funded goon squad that operates out of the D.O.I.'s "force floor". He has a daughter who in the first season, became a vampire and got married. He likes to collect model trains and also moonlights as a hospital security guard and contract hit-man. He is also shown to be attracted to older women.

Recurring

• The Brain - A living Brain from Canada. He works as a counter-top sponge.
• Doug - A very timid giant Koala that lives as a human. He never talks, has no genitalia, and is usually seen in the background. He almost always is seen weeping, whether frightened, overjoyed, or otherwise emotional.
• The Devil - Callie's father and the highest ranking demon in Hell. He shows signs of having Mysophobia, and wishes that Callie had been born a boy.
• Croatian Man - A man from Croatia. Possibly a parody on Borat. Works in a hospital as a candy striper.
• Martin - A two headed worm creature. Works in a coffee shop. Oddly for their species, they see themselves as equal, where the right normal is viewed as higher class while the left is treated as a slave.
• Eric - A robot made with senses and emotions, though more often than not has a cynical viewpoint. He is able to read punch cards.
• Kristal - The girl Randall turned zombie for. She constantly is having attractions towards different monsters. However Randall continues to stalk her.
• Buddha - A walking, talking Buddha.
• Medusa - A woman with snakes for hair.
• Kid Wizard - A kid wizard (Kizard) resembling Harry Potter. Has appeared on Top Wizard. He is often portrayed as a jerk and giving people the finger.
• Toby - A man with the head of a fish. Reproduces by fertilizing a pile of eggs.
• Ratso Demon - A demon that wears a trench coat, has a five o'clock shadow and slicks his hair back. Ends every sentence with "ova heah".
• Amoeba - An amoeba that reproduces asexually, yet still manages to get frequently laid.
• Girl Anchor - A news anchor that reports on New York. Always seen smiling even when saying horrible things.
• Grimes' Goon Squad - Shown doing all of Grimes dirty deeds when he is not around.
• Mark's Mom - Seen to have slept with Clark Dungaree, Mark has dreamed about her in crotchless panties.
• Callie's Mom - Callie's human mom, separated from Callie's father the Devil. Was impregnated with Callie when in a cult and in doing so no longer has a soul. However she truly loves her daughter, claiming Callie was the best thing to come from the union.

Species

Human

Zombie

Demon

Wizard

Land Whales

Two-Head Worms

Robots

Gorgon

Werewolf

Vampire

Man-Bird

Tree People

Troll

Yeti

Chicken People

Cyclops

Episodes

Main article: List of Ugly Americans episodes

The first episode premiered on March 17, 2010, following the 14th season premiere of South Park, "Sexual Healing". It was watched by over 2 million viewers. On April 21, 2010 Comedy Central announced that they had ordered 7 additional episodes of Ugly Americans, to begin airing in October 2010.

Production

Pre-production is handled at Brooklyn-based Augenblick Studios, and then the animation, which is produced in Flash, is handled at Cuppa Coffee Studio in Toronto. Sound Design and Mixing is done at Great City Productions in New York City.

Critical reception

Ugly Americans holds a Metascore of 61, gaining positive reviews from the likes of Entertainment Weekly and The Washington Post. Variety's Brian Lowry called it "more a triumph of design and concept than execution" and added, "Not everything works, but with its bountiful supply of visual gags, Americans is just goofy enough to be good." Alex Zalben of "UGO Networks", commending its mix of slap-stick and intelligent humor, as well as actually building relatable characters, says the show "is easily the best animated show on Comedy Central since South Park." David Hinckley of the New York Daily News stated, "If Ugly Americans comes with a message, it is at least equally determined to just be funny, and at that task, it frequently succeeds. The variety of odd creatures keep the visual gags going, and the dialogue runs steadily toward droll."

Largely due to its visual gags and morbid, offbeat humor, the series has also gained negative reception from publications such as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Deseret News. Kris King of Slant Magazine gave Ugly Americans a 50/100 rating and claimed, "The show's dry humor, mixed with a rather troubling visual style where everything is stiff and vaguely deformed, mostly just makes you feel uneasy." IGN's Ramsey Isler also gave the pilot episode a 5/10, stating, "The show struggles to find some kind of funny. . . The whole thing feels more like a film student project that just didn't quite work out."

External links

• Official website
• Ugly Americans at IMDb