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Squidbillies is an animated television show produced by Williams Street Studios, currently being written by one of the creators of Aqua Teen Hunger Force on Adult Swim, about a family of hillbilly squids that live in the north Georgia mountains. The show revolves primarily around two squids, Early Cuyler and his son Rusty Cuyler, living in abject poverty, and trying to reconcile their relationship following Early's fifteen year incarceration for armed robbery.
Cast Story as Presented The first episode begins by introducing the residents of a quiet town nestled in the North Georgia Mountains off of I-575. The first person we meet is the Sheriff, who smokes cigarettes, has an affinity for dancing, sometimes dresses like Elton John, and, as we are told, will die in 3 years from emphysema. The next is a giant snake named Snake Man who sports a red mullet haircut and is usually seen killing or devouring anyone he meets. There's Space Baby who has yet to appear in an episode beyond this first introduction. Then we meet Billy Morton who is the star of the local football team, has no working limbs except sticks duct taped to his body, and is subsequently run-over in the street chasing after his football. And finally we are introduced to corrupt businessman Dan Halen who is the owner of "Dan Halen Sheetrock" which is a conglomerate that dominates the local economy and who specializes in sheetrock, sheetrock mud, sheetrock screws, pharmaceuticals, petroleum, global mass media, third world covert military operations, and tools for infanticide. The Dan Halen corporate logo resembles the logo of the rock band Van Halen. While the show tells the story of most of the people in the town we are told that it's mainly about Early Cuyler. Fifteen years prior to the present day, Early Cuyler twice robs a store to obtain gifts for his ill-mannered, philandering, and extremely obese human girlfriend, Crystal, who refuses to let Early touch her "front-butt" until he can procure "one of them sport radio things with the ear-buds and auto reverse". After the second robbery, in which he goes back to obtain a cassette tape to put in her "flippin' tape cassette player", Early is arrested and sentenced to the next fifteen years in prison. Unbeknownst to him, in his absence, Crystal has given birth to their son, Rusty, and abandons him to be raised by Early's sister, Lil. Rusty becomes a ward of the state after the discovery of a crystal meth lab in Lil's hair salon, and is placed in his grandmothers care, but flees out of boredom of her stories of Jesus being president when she was a girl. Depressed and dejected, Rusty attemptes to take his own life before he is saved and raised by a family of Wolves, and is torn apart by them many times before filling his body with 300 lbs. of nitroglycerin and blowing them to pieces, which fortunately for the wolves, is only a dream. At the end of his father's sentence, the two reunite, and now live with Lil. While Rusty sports a red mullet haircut Early has gone bald over time and both appear to have a complete and utter lack of any formal education, are fairly ignorant, have trouble pronouncing multi-syllable words, and are fans of NASCAR, namely they like both Dick Trickle and Dale Earnhardt Jr.. Early also tends to wear ever-changing, sometimes topical, sometimes rudely funny, trucker hats. Initially after his release we find Early has trouble staying employed. This is attributed to his penchant for overbearingly sexual salesmanship, outbursts of brutal violence (throwing knives, beating people to a pulp, etc.), and complete lack of reliability. Which makes him the perfect candidate to eventually be hired by Dan Halen as the new CEO of his sheetrock company. In part to comply with federal Equal Opportunity Employment standards, but mainly to deflect liability from Halen, whose business faces many lawsuits resulting from its increasingly dangerous products. Early is completely oblivious to Halen's machinations and is unaware that he will hopefully be scapegoated into prosecution for the company's offenses. It later comes to the attention of the Sheriff that Rusty has never been to school. The Sheriff becomes worried that if the board of education ever finds out they are going to come up to town to kick His ass and then he's going to have to kick Earlys ass. They decide not to send him down to the county school because if they keep segregating down there it's going to be nothing but bathrooms and decide it would be best for Early to homeschool him instead. Rusty is taught that there are all kinds of rocks, there's rocks that you can throw and rocks that you can get hit by. Also he learns that scribblin's on a bathroom stall may speak of being "repressed by an Orwellian overlord and about lashing out with Guerilla style poetry". Also, at times, the entire Cuyler Clan is overtly racist, especially towards white people and call them Chalkys, although they consider the Sheriff to be "one of the good ones". Early also speaks ill towards others who come to this country and take all the damn jobs and laments that he can't shoot any of them because then he would be at fault. But mainly they eschew anything to do with Chalkiness and burn skis to show their anger towards chalkys and being subjucated by the white mans money. Behind-the-Scenes Controversy The show was announced in late 2003 with the first episode promoted extensively to air November 7, 2004, but Adult Swim aired the pilot of Perfect Hair Forever in it's place. Perfect Hair Forever was followed by a panel discussion of the episode; this panel included Space Ghost, Meatwad from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Early Cuyler, and Sharko from Sealab 2021. This prompted many fans of AdultSwim to believe Squidbillies to be nothing more than an elaborate hoax, but a pilot for the show was in the works, and segments of it aired on April 1, 2005. The nearly year-long delay was the result of multiple problems that occured between the shows commission and it's scheduled debut. A very early pilot episode was scrapped in early 2004 and more writers (up to 6) were brought on board to help flesh out characters and comedy direction for the series. The writers were eventually whittled back down to two along with a few of the early characters for the show being cut (one being Rusty's older brother who was discharged from the Army). During this time the series original 20 episode order was reduced to 6 due to the aforementioned production problems and time constraints. Many began to wonder if there was ever going to be a series, including those residing in the offices of Williams Street. Finally without much fanfare or promotion the final pilot aired on October 16, 2005, after appearing on a very early version of the Adult Swim Fix two days earlier. In spring of 2006 the staff at Williams St. moved to a newly renovated section of office as part of a reward for building a successful Sunday night series of shows on Cartoon Network. Part of this transition involved some management at Turner to move in with them to help over see production. One management member was grossly offended by a large cardboard cut-out of Early Cuyler wearing his "Booty Hunter" hat being displayed in the new offices. She felt it was "sexually harrassing" and there was an uproar over having it removed from the offices of those who actually write/work on the show. This was reported on the "Employee Blog" available on the AdultSwim Website along with many other anonymous employee complaints over the new managment staff. Not long after all links to the Employee Blog was permanantly removed from the website. Trivia Episodes Main article: List of Squidbillies Episodes | ||||||||
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