Kevin Smith remains a busy man. Back in March, he announced that he was using his time in quarantine to finish the scripts of two View Askewniverse sequels, Clerks III and Twilight of the Mallrats. He's also active in the world of animation, with a recently announced Green Hornet animated series in addition to his work on Netflix's Masters of the Universe revival.
Smith isn't a newcomer to the animation field, and his debut in the medium actually came 20 years ago. Like his quarantine film projects, it was part of the View Askewniverse -- and it had an extremely short lived first run which led to a cult following.
The Clerks animated series debuted on ABC on May 31, 2000. The show's four main characters all came from the film. Leads Dante and Randal were played by the original actors, Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson. Jay and Silent Bob, the connective tissue of the Askewniverse, also returned in a supporting role. As always, they were played by Smith and Jason Mewes.
Beyond the core cast, the show featured some big name talent. Alec Baldwin played the show's villain, Leonardo Leonardo. The part of the Hans Gruber lookalike was actually written for Alan Rickman, who Smith worked with on Dogma, but the casting didn't work out. Guest stars as diverse as Bryan Cranston and Charles Barkley made multiple appearances. Gwenyth Paltrow even made a cameo as herself, via the show's producer, Miramax.
Instead of serving as a straight adaptation of Smith's seminal film, the show took the characters from Clerks and dropped them into an animated sitcom format. The show compensated for the loss of Smith's trademark vulgar dialogue by embracing the strengths of animation to do things Smith could have never dreamed of in the micro-budget original film.
The best example of that came in the series' fourth episode, which was its ABC premiere. The episode's plot, which sees Jay sue Dante and the Quick Stop for 10 million dollars after slipping on the floor, is a framework to hang Smith's trademark pop culture savvy gags on.
One sequence sees Randal, serving as Dante's defense attorney, calling a series of directors to the stand, starting with George Lucas. After grilling Lucas about Star Wars: Episode I, Randal demands a refund. Lucas is followed by Steven Spielberg, Joel Schumacher, Woody Allen, and Spike Lee, with Randal getting a refund from each.
The episode's ending, an over the top anime parody, became the most memorable sequence in the show's brief history. Portrayed as an ending the show's Korean animators had to come up with on their own, it featured a memorable sight gag of passengers being crushed inside of a Transfomer. It also featured the most quoted line among hardcore fans, "Bear is driving." Even for a show as absurd as Clerks was, it stands out.
Only one other episode of the series aired on ABC. Bizarrely, it was the flashback parody episode. The send up of clip shows, conceived by Batman: the Animated Series' Paul Dini, heavily referenced a pilot episode that ABC never aired. The show was cancelled after its second episode.
Poor ratings and an awkward network fit doomed the show. It was the only animated show for adults on ABC, and the only one Disney Television Animation has ever produced. Perhaps it would have fared better on the fledgling UPN, which made a bid for the show, committing to air 13 episodes. ABC ultimately won out due the influence of Harvey Weinstein, who talked Smith into going with the network owned by Miramax's parent company, Disney.
The show would find new life on DVD and in re-runs, a path that shows like Family Guy and Firefly would also follow. Unlike those cult favorites, the Clerks animated series has never been revived though. Smith has teased bringing the show back multiple times, including the animated movie Clerks: Sell Out, whose premise was repurposed for Clerks III. In an oral history of the show at Consequence of Sound, Smith floated the idea of bringing the show back on Hulu because Disney still owns the show's rights. Given how much has changed in 20 years, it wouldn't be a shock if that happens, and if fans of the cult favorite finally get the revival they've been waiting for.