Mission Hill is an American animated sitcom created by Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein for the WB. It originally aired for five episodes from September 21, 1999, The series follows Andy French, a retail worker who lives with roommates Jim and Posey as well as their dog, Stogie. Andy's lifestyle is taken for a turn when his younger brother Kevin moves in with him.
Stylistically, the series is recognizable for its bright, neon color palette, and features a peculiar mixture of modern animation and traditional "cartoonish" drawings (dashed lines coming from eyes to indicate line of vision, red bolts of lightning around a spot suffered). The style was made to be reminiscent of 1930s rubber hose cartoons such as Fleischer Studios, Walt Disney, Warner Bros., and MGM, as well as mid-century modern cartoons with the likes of Hanna-Barbera, UPA, Jay Ward, and The Pink Panther. The designs were done by Lauren MacMullan, who cites the comic series Eightball as her source of inspiration for her overall design.
Despite garnering poor ratings during its initial run, Mission Hill has since gained a cult following, and is also popular outside of North America, receiving broadcasts in Australia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Spain and New Zealand.
Premise
The series centers on a group of young adults, primarily focusing on Andy French, whose sheltered suburban teenage brother, Kevin, moves in with him and his roommates in a metropolitan loft.
The show's narrative is set in the titular Mission Hill, which exists within the larger city of Cosmopolis. Cosmopolis is portrayed as a major modern urban metropolis, drawing visual and cultural parallels to cities such as New York City and Chicago. According to the series’ official website, Mission Hill is inspired by several real-world neighborhoods, including the Mission Hill in Boston (situated a few miles away from where creator Bill Oakley attended college), the Mission District in San Francisco, Silver Lake in Los Angeles, Wicker Park in Chicago, and Williamsburg in Brooklyn. The precise geographic location of Cosmopolis is deliberately ambiguous, combining characteristics of both East and West Coast cities. While most episodes are situated within Mission Hill, the skyline of Downtown Cosmopolis is occasionally visible in the background.
In the DVD commentaries, Josh Weinstein noted that considerable effort was dedicated to developing Mission Hill as a fully realized fictional city. Writers and animators collaborated to create original elements such as advertisements, musical acts, local foods, and public transit schedules. The Boston neighborhood of Mission Hill, located in the Roxbury area, shares several notable similarities with its fictional counterpart.
Characters
Main
- Andrew "Andy" French (Wallace Langham) is a 24-year-old in his third consecutive "post-college slump year." Andy is an aspiring cartoonist. From the pilot episode to "Unemployment, Part 1," Andy worked at a waterbed store where his boss was a lecherous, short, ill-tempered, foul-mouthed man who frequented strip clubs. From "Unemployment, Part 2" to "Plan 9 from Mission Hill" (and including the unproduced episodes "Supertool" and "Pretty in Pink"), Andy works as an artist at the same advertising agency as Jim. Often bored and mellow, Andy is easily annoyed by his younger brother, Kevin, though it has been shown that Andy does indeed care about him. However, he often has a habit of calling him and others "douchebag".
- Kevin French (Scott Menville) is Andy's 17-year-old nerd brother. Kevin moved in with Andy when his parents left for Wyoming, bringing his sheltered, suburban mindset to Mission Hill. He hopes to attend Yale University, and prides himself on his SAT scores. He has a habit of "bling-blonging", saying "bling blong" over and over again while doing homework to drown out any/all distractions and is prone to heavily overreact to trivial matters. Actor Andy Dick also auditioned for this role and was nearly cast.
- Gwen (Jane Wiedlin) – Early 20s. Andy's on-and-off girlfriend, Gwen completed two years of community college before settling in Mission Hill. She met Andy working at Ron's Waterbed World. Someday she would like to be an accomplished person who achieves her goals and makes a serious contribution to society. She likes The Go-Go's, referring to Wiedlin's membership in the band.
- Toby Mundorf (Josh Weinstein) – In his late teens and one of Kevin's best friends in Mission Hill. His overprotective mother worries a great deal about him, as he frequently has allergies, asthma, and hunger. Despite his large size, he is a born coward.
- George Bang (Bill Oakley) is Kevin's other best friend. George works long hours after school in his father's market. George is extremely competitive in everything from taking tests to playing video games. He shares all the same interests as his best friends and is particularly proud of owning the complete Babylon 5 Collectible Card Game. Unlike his friends Toby and Kevin, his parents don't seem to be overprotective, so he is more sarcastic and aggressive than either of them. George has an older sister named Tina who goes to Polytech. George is of Korean descent.
- Ron (Nick Jameson) is a sleazy, immoral Armenian man and former boss of Andy (who loathes him). In "Unemployment, Part 1," Ron was arrested and sentenced to five years imprisonment for tax evasion, his store was also confiscated by the government as a result. He has an extremely short temper and often takes his rage out on his employees.
Production
Mission Hill was conceived in 1997 by Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, former executive producers/showrunners of The Simpsons, with the original artistic designer being Lauren MacMullan. Oakley has mentioned that one of the main inspirations for Mission Hill was the 1997 MTV series Austin Stories, which followed a group of 20-somethings in Austin, Texas. Both Castle Rock and The WB were part of media conglomerate Time Warner, later known as Warner Bros. Discovery. At the 1997 pitch, network executives from the WB were presented with three designs for Andy, Jim, Kevin and Posey. One depicted them in a drastically different, more cartoonish art style; the other two drew closer resemblance to the final designs, but one featured slightly more realistic designs for Andy and Kevin, with another featuring less realistic designs for Jim and Posey. When one of the WB executives saw the alternate designs for Jim and Posey, he thought that they were the parents of Andy and Kevin. MacMullan states that the final design chosen for Posey looked "much more attractive" when compared to the two alternate designs. MTV's production of the similarly titled adult animated series Downtown eventually forced a name change. It featured the voices of Wallace Langham, Scott Menville, Brian Posehn, Vicki Lewis, Nick Jameson, Tom Kenny, Herbert Sigüenza, Jane Wiedlin, Tress MacNeille and Lisa Kushell. The theme song is a faster, instrumental version of "Italian Leather Sofa" by Cake, who Oakley and Weinstein were fans of.<!-- During the WB's 1999 upfront presentation to advertisers, the drama shows received applause from the advertisers in the audience, while Mission Hill was met with two minutes of silence.
Although 18 episodes were planned, only 13 were produced. The series was put on hiatus by The WB after two episodes due to poor ratings. It returned in the summer of 2000 with smaller promotion, and was canceled on July 18, 2000, after four more episodes aired to poor ratings. The series went on to develop a cult following, thanks to repeated airings of all 13 episodes on the Time Warner-owned cable channels Cartoon Network and TBS. On Cartoon Network, it aired on the popular late-night programming block Adult Swim, while on TBS it aired on Too Funny to Sleep, a late-night programming block. In Australia, it aired on the local version of Cartoon Network/Adult Swim (via News Corporation's Australian pay-TV provider Foxtel), and in Canada it aired on Teletoon (part of its "Unleashed" block). Warner Home Video released all 13 completed episodes on DVD on November 29, 2005.
Bill Oakley has since voiced his dissatisfaction with the way Warner handled the series, and has said he does not mind if people pirate the series.
In June 2022, Oakley claimed that they were still in the process of pitching the project, and that if this version was picked up, then it would continue under the Mission Hill moniker, rather than being titled Gus and Wally. during the Q&A period with the writers, a fan who had attended the event was asked about the reboot of the show afterward, on the Mission Hill subreddit, stating that the creators "said it's essentially dead. They shopped it around to every major streaming service and none of them were interested in the characters. WBD also forbid them from doing self-distribution or crowdfunding, so they were pretty blunt about it not happening." -->
In March 2023, Oakley confirmed in a tweet a spin-off about Gus and Wally is "not gonna happen".
Episodes
Note: Thirteen episodes of the series were produced while five more were written, but never completed. Animatics for some of these episodes were in production at the time of the series' cancellation. It was planned to put these animatics on the DVD for the series, but this never came to fruition. However, several of the animatics—including a completed video animatic and synchronized audio read-through of the episode "Pretty in Pink (Crap Gets in Your Eyes)"—have been released through various internet outlets.
Unfinished episodes
Home media
thumb|right|200px|DVD cover
Warner Home Video released all 13 completed episodes on DVD on November 29, 2005. The collection replaced some of the original soundtracks with stock music, most glaringly "Everybody Hurts" by R.E.M. in the episode "Andy Vs. The Real World". The DVD collection also dubbed over some of the original voice tracks to remove any references to the replaced music, for example changing Andy's voice track from saying "Gordon Lightfoot" to "Scott Joplin" in the episode "Unemployment Part 1".
Awards
Mission Hill received the 2000 Pulcinella Award for "Best Series for All Audiences"; the award cited the series' "stylized design and honest approach to sexual and moral issues."
The series won an award from GLAAD for its positive portrayal of a gay relationship. The series is the first instance of a gay kiss on American network television, predating the kiss between Kerr Smith and Andy Kaufman on Dawson's Creek by a year.
See also
- Cult television