The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy

Published on: 12th April, 2009

The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy  | read this item

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The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is an American animated television series that originally aired on Cartoon Network. The show aired from August 24, 2001 to November 9, 2007, but still airs occasionally. On September 21, 2002, it started airing on the European Cartoon Network.

The two main characters, Billy and Mandy, have manipulated the Grim Reaper, usually called “Grim,” into being their best friend for eternity after having won a bet over a sick hamster through a game of limbo.

Overview

The show’s existence is largely the result of a viewer poll. An Internet and call-in event called Big Pick was held from August 24 to August 25, 2000. The three final choices were Grim & Evil, Whatever Happened to Robot Jones? and Longhair and Doubledome. Out of the three, Grim & Evil won the most votes. The first season appeared on Cartoon Network in 2001. Robot Jones would later be made into a full series despite losing; Longhair and Doubledome would reappear with another pilot episode in another Big Pick-style show later on, only to fall short once again.

Originally part of Grim & Evil, Billy & Mandy served as the main show. In each episode, an Evil Con Carne short was put between two Grim shorts. On occasion, it was the other way around, with two Evil shorts and one Grim short. In 2003, the network separated the two and gave both a full length show. The short-lived Evil Con Carne show was canceled once the already-produced season had aired. In 2004, it was given another short-lived run with the newly created intro and end credits, only to be cancelled again. Some characters from Evil Con Carne, usually Skarr (who eventually became Billy’s neighbor), occasionally appeared on The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy.

According to Maxwell Atoms’ blog on MySpace, the show ended post-production in spring 2007, after having 78 full half-hour episodes, which is as many half hours as Cartoon Network has given to any of its original series. It currently airs on Teletoon.
Overview

The show’s existence is largely the result of a viewer poll. An Internet and call-in event called Big Pick was held from August 24 to August 25, 2000. The three final choices were Grim & Evil, Whatever Happened to Robot Jones? and Longhair and Doubledome. Out of the three, Grim & Evil won the most votes. The first season appeared on Cartoon Network in 2001. Robot Jones would later be made into a full series despite losing; Longhair and Doubledome would reappear with another pilot episode in another Big Pick-style show later on, only to fall short once again.

Originally part of Grim & Evil, Billy & Mandy served as the main show. In each episode, an Evil Con Carne short was put between two Grim shorts. On occasion, it was the other way around, with two Evil shorts and one Grim short. In 2003, the network separated the two and gave both a full length show. The short-lived Evil Con Carne show was canceled once the already-produced season had aired. In 2004, it was given another short-lived run with the newly created intro and end credits, only to be cancelled again. Some characters from Evil Con Carne, usually Skarr (who eventually became Billy’s neighbor), occasionally appeared on The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy.

Continuity

There is limited continuity between episodes, allowing for the destruction or alteration of the world, or with the disappearance, horrific transformation, or (implied or not) death of the main characters such as Mandy becoming a giant brain eating meteor in “Little Rock of Horror”. Often the episode will end with no resolution at all. In “Billy Gets an “A”", the show ended with a comical “The End”. Billy once also attempted to end the show early out of boredom.

However, there are a few exceptions to the usual lack of continuity. Characters that have appeared in the previous episodes may return again, such as Pinocchio, who debuted in “Nursery Crimes” and returns in “Billy Ocean”, Lord Pain from “House of Pain” who returns in “Everything Breaks” and Boogey from “Bully Boogie” returns in Billy & Mandy’s Big Boogey Adventure and Billy & Mandy: Wrath of the Spider Queen. The characters usually show awareness of the previous events during these shifts. The events centered around recurring characters may even grow into a larger canon and cause changes to the characters.

Billy & Mandy often breaks the fourth wall, and the characters often mention previous episodes in a humorous manner. However, the one who breaks the fourth wall most frequently is Mandy. She often seems aware of the audience and comments on current events directly to the viewer (her comments are usually insults to the episode). This is commonly at the beginning of every show (except the UK showings of “My Fair Mandy”, and possibly UK showings of “Wild Parts/The Problem with Billy” as well), where she gives the audience some form of message. She may also appear in various guises. What message she gives, and/or what guise she appears in, are specific to the episodes shown. For example, in the case of “Hurter Monkey/Goodbling and the Hip-Hop-Opotamus”, she says to the audience that she’s “only got one nerve left, and you’re getting on it.” In another episode, she literally got up and walked out of the television upon knowing that the episode will, once again, be about pets (something very common in the universe of Billy and Mandy). Billy also breaks the fourth wall a great number of times as well as Grim, who says, I’m pretty good at reading subtitles backwards. Another example is in “Pandora’s Lunch Box”, Mandy says “Who writes this stuff, anyway?”, then it goes to a baby typing on a typewriter. Billy then impersonates Mandy, saying it again.
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