Out There

Before Justin Roiland was finally outed and cancelled as the horrible, horrible despicable person he has always been, he was a principle character’s voice in a short-lived cartoon on IFC by Ryan Quincy.

Out There was Quincy’s semi-autobiographical show about teen life in the boonies circa the mid-Eighties. I could relate. I finished high school in a nowhere North Dakota mining town. He suffered much longer by living all his pre-adult life in the middle of Nebraska.

Quincy plays the reminiscing lead character/narrator Chad reflecting on his youth spent with fellow outcast Chris (Roiland, pre-Morty), pesky kid brother Jay (the ever great Kate Micucci) and sometimes, his big crush Sharla (Linda Cardellini, equally awesome). Their adventures entail trying to see naked women, a part-time job to pay off a debt, a father-son competition the whole town participates in, falling in love with a ‘manic-pixie’ girl and doing stunts to get a section in the yearbook. They have to deal with the town’s bullies, namely Chip (aka Chips a-Roy, watch, you’ll see); Terry, the lazy, deadbeat boyfriend Chris’ mom took in; and a whole town who just thinks they’re weird.

It’s not clear which animal every character is supposed to be. I guess it was Quincy’s choice for design and to get this show to stand out from the competition. Sadly, IFC wasn’t the best place since Out There only had one season of 10 episodes and an A-Team of voice actors: John DiMaggio, Megan Mullally, Fred Armisen and Pamela Adlon with guests you’d expect on Bob’s Burgers, King of the Hill and Rick & Morty. Adult Swim or Comedy Central would’ve been better networks for great exposure and the audience it catered to. Not sure why not the latter because Quincy worked on South Park for many years before creating this masterpiece of coming-of-age. Only he can answer this.

Putting aside my questions, I highly recommend binge-watching this on Hulu. I hope it’s still present. Given the current WGA strike, the streamers are being dicks, pulling down shows to cut off royalties out of spite and so-called “cost cutting,” when we know a better start would be paying moronic assholes such as David Zaslav much less for importing their career of failure. Is it funny? Sure. I put it on par with what I call the John Hughes Scale. If I’m wrong, you’ve only wasted 20 to 200 minutes. We’ve all done something less useful in an afternoon before this.

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