It's been 27 years since Pinky and the Brain debuted on Animaniacs, and 25 years since the genetically modified lab mice received their own television show. The beloved aspiring world conquerors will make their return Nov. 20, when the Animaniacs revival premieres on Hulu. But what led to Pinky and the Brain's cancellation the first time around?
The answer is that The WB network had no idea what to do with the show. While Pinky and the Brain headlined the original Kids WB line-up alongside Animaniacs, its humor trended even more toward adult audiences than its boundary-pushing source show did. The network acknowledged this by also running Pinky and the Brain in primetime, but it did so in the worst possible time slot: 7 p.m. on Sundays, up against 60 Minutes and football games. That primetime run was a failure.
Maurice LaMarche, the voice of the Brain, told Uproxx it was thought the show would be "more or less The WB’s answer to The Simpsons." However, beyond its basic failures of scheduling, Pinky and the Brain decidedly did not fit a traditional sitcom mold. That became a major source of tension between the creative team and the network. WB executives recognized the characters were great, but couldn't get into the "world domination" formula, and kept pushing the crew to add more characters and make it more sitcom-y.
For most of the show's run, that led to constant pushback against forced retools. The episode "Pinky and the Brain... and Larry" made fun of the idea of throwing in new characters for no real reason by showing how a third mouse (modeled after Larry Fine from The Three Stooges) would mess up the chemistry. "Brain Drained" had Pinky and the Brain listening to terrible pitches for new plans, while "You'll Never Eat Food Pellets in This Town Again," the final episode by writer/producer Peter Hastings before he quit, mocked The WB's leadership directly.
In the end, the network's demands won out. In 1998, the same year Animaniacs was canceled, Pinky and the Brain was retooled into Pinky, Emyra and the Brain. Acme Labs was destroyed, and Pinky and the Brain were now the pets of the saccharine Elmyra Duff from Tiny Toon Adventures. World domination plots went to the wayside in favor of more generic suburban-sitcom antics. From the theme song alone, it was clear everyone making the show hated it: "So Pinky and the Brain / Share a new domain / It's what the network wants / Why bother to complain?"
Viewers didn't like it, either, with only five of 13 produced episodes receiving a normal broadcast (the rest were eventually aired as part of a compilation show called The Cat & Birdy Warneroonie Pinky Brainy Big Cartoonie Show). That was the final collaboration between Warner Bros. Animation and Steven Spielberg for two decades. With Kids' WB finding more success than ever with cheaper acquisitions like Pokemon, it also signaled the end of the network's significant investments into original comedy cartoons.
The original Pinky and the Brain series deserved better treatment than it received, but in the decades since its unfortunate retooling and cancellation has become something of a modern classic. Here's hoping the duo's return on Hulu is a welcome return to form.