Grojband

Grojband
A promotional poster depicting the main characters; from left to right: Laney, Corey, Kin and Kon.
Genre	Comedy
Created by	Todd Kauffman Mark Thornton
Written by	Mike Kiss Craig Martin Kyle Hart Laurie Elliott Amy Cole Meghan Read
Voices of	Lyon Smith Alyson Court Bryn McAuley Tim Beresford Sergio Di Zio Denise Oliver Graeme Cornies Dwayne Hill
Composers	Brian Pickett Graeme Cornies
Country of origin	Canada
Original languages	English French
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	26 (52 shorts) (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	Tom McGillis Jennifer Pertsch George Elliott Bob Higgins Sander Schwartz
Running time	22 minutes (11 minutes per short)
Production companies	Fresh TV Neptoon Studios
Original release
Network	Teletoon Télétoon
Release	September 5, 2013 (2013-09-05) – present

Grojband is a Canadian animated series developed by Fresh TV and distributed by FremantleMedia, Ltd. (FME). The series is created by Todd Kauffman (co-creator of Sidekick) and Mark Thornton, and co-directed by Kauffman and Thornton. Executive Producers are Tom McGillis, Jennifer Pertsch, creators of the hit animated reality franchise Total Drama. The series is rated C8 in Canada and TV-PG in the United States. It is geared toward children ages 6 to 11.

The series first aired on June 10, 2013 on Cartoon Network and June 25, 2013 on Boomerang in the United States and on September 5, 2013 on both of its original channels, Teletoon and Télétoon in Canada. On March 31, 2014 Cartoon Network released the remaining 13 half hour episodes on to their online platform "Watch Cartoon Network", giving it exclusive online US release, it is unknown if Cartoon Network will air those 13 episodes on TV or not in the US.

Synopsis

Grojband follows Corey and his three best friends, Laney and twin brothers Kin and Kon, as they work to propel their garage band to international stardom. When they don't have the lyrics, Corey and his friends get Trina into an emotional diary mode to write lyrics in her diary, so that Corey and his friends can perform a perfect song.

Characters

Grojband

• Corey Riffin (voiced by Lyon Smith) – Corey is the charming and quirky 13-year-old leader, vocalist, main protagonist of the series and guitarist of Grojband. Although kind, he will do whatever it takes to play music, which is usually by angering his sister, Trina, who will write in her diary. He then translates her venting into lyrics for their songs.
• Laney Penn (voiced by Bryn McAuley) – Short in stature, but tall in ambition. Laney is the bassist and self-proclaimed band manager of Grojband. A fiery redhead, she is the only female in the band. She tends to be most rational member of the band, but is prone to giving in to Corey and his schemes, mainly due to her crush on Corey. A running gag on the show is despite her clearly being female, nearly everyone assumes her as a boy.
• Kin Kujira (voiced by Sergio Di Zio) – Kin is the keyboardist of the band, and Kon's twin brother. He has a knack for technology, and usually builds strange gadgets that help the band.
• Kon Kujira (voiced by Tim Beresford) – Kon is the drummer of the band, and Kin's twin brother. Kon is overweight and sometimes dense, but is usually well-meaning with a childish demeanor.

The Newmans

The Newmans are a gender-reversed doppelgänger band to Grojband.

• Carrie Beff – Carrie Beff is Corey's doppelgänger gender opposite and the secondary antagonist next to Trina. the leader, lead guitarist, and lead vocalist of The Newmans. Her personality and appearance is the exact same as Corey's. The only difference between the two of them is their personalities. Carrie is always having very bad ideas as well as plots to make her band a bigger and better band than Grojband which wlways end up failing. She is also Mina's little sister.
• Larry Nepp – Laney's gender-bend rival: bassist and band manager of The Newmans. Larry seems to be the only member of The Newmans who has any sense. Over all of the members of the band, Larry is the smartest. Larry always tries to stop Carrie from having her bad ideas and he always tells her why their wrong but he is always being ignored. He has a secret crush on Carrie.
• Kim Kagami – Kin's gender-bend rival, who is also the keyboardist of The Newmans.
• Konnie Kagami – Kon's gender-bend rival, who is also the drummer of The Newmans.

Other characters

• Trina Riffin (voiced by Alyson Court) – Trina is Corey's 16-year-old sister, and the main antagonist of the series. She is mean and cruel, and always determined to make Corey's life miserable. Whenever she gets into a fit of rage, she impulsively writes her diary, which provides Corey with lyrical inspiration for their songs. She had a crush on the cute neighborhood boy, Nick Mallory.
• Mina Beff (voiced by Denise Oliver) – Mina is Trina's best friend and sidekick. Despite wanting to express her own opinion, she wishes to be as cool as Trina, and does whatever she tells her to do.
• Nick Mallory (voiced by Graeme Cornies) – Nick is the coolest kid in school, whom all the girls in school adore, especially Trina. He always refers to himself in the third person, but isn't inherently antagonistic, and will sometimes aid the band when they see use of him.
• Kate Persky and Allie Day (voiced by Addison Holley and Madelyn May respectively) – Allie and Kate are Grojband's adorable groupies and their biggest fans.
• Mayor Mellow (voiced by Kedar Brown) – The mayor of Peaceville, who is always seen carrying a picture of his mother around, and speaks in rhymes.

Episodes

Grojband consists of 26 episodes (52 segments).

Main article: List of Grojband episodes

Humor

Grojband very commonly has metahumor and puns for it's humor. Jokes that often happen in the show are jokes the mislead the viewer into thinking that they're about to make a certain clichéd joke, but then they pull some sort of a twist on it in the end. The puns in the show are very recurring and sometimes, entire episodes even revolve around one or a whole bunch of puns. Grojband is also very rich in fourth wall jokes.

There is a vast majority of running gags in the show. For instance: Diary Mode. In every episode of Grojband except for "Dreamreaver Part 1," Something happens to Trina that makes her get so angry that she blasts into the air on a geyser of fire and lava and she will fly through the air in a red background while heavy metal music plays. She writes in her diary and fire comes out of her pen and leaves a trail of flames behind to burn in her diary, causing destruction to happen all around her. This is how Corey gets lyrics for all of his songs. In some episodes, they change it up and make Trina go into a different kind of mood for her diary mode. In the episode "Pox N Roll," Trina was so in love that she blasted up on a geyser of hearts into a pink background while happy love music plays. A trail of hearts come out of her pen when she writes in her diary and beautiful things happen around her when she does this. In the episode "All You Need is Cake," Trina became so sad and depressed that she floated up into the air and drifted through the air in a dark blue background and storm clouds came out of her pen as she wrote in her diary. In the episode "A Knight to Remember," Mina went into diary mode.

Another running gag is for Corey to tell a moral that he learned from his experience of what he did in the episode. A random spotlight will come out of nowhere and shine on Corey no matter where they are. Then Corey will quickly teach his friends a valuable lesson he learned, making a very profound and well worded speech. After he does this, Laney mostly nags him for not using those words for their song in the first place instead of going through all the trouble of getting words from Trina's diary. At the end of this, he says "Thanks for coming out everybody!" and pulls a garage door down from the air out of nowhere and closes it over the screen ending the episode.

Another running gag in the show is for Laney to be mistaken for a boy by the other characters of the show. The only people who seem to know that Laney is actually a girl are the other members of Grojband who still however call her names like "man," "dude," "guy," "bro" etc. In the episode "Rock the House" it was revealed that Laney's male counterpart Larry is always being mistaken for a girl.