TORONTO – When Seth Green launched “Robot Chicken” back in 2005, he thought the same thing most viewers likely did – that the scattershot animated gag machine was a fun diversion destined for a TV lifespan not much longer than one of its pithy sketches.
So with the 100th episode of the Emmy-winning troublemaking-with-toys comedy set to air on Teletoon this Sunday night, the 38-year-old is as surprised as anyone by the manic show’s longevity.
“It’s super surreal,” marvelled the upbeat Green in a recent telephone interview.
“Because this was just never meant to be something that actually was a show, let alone a series, let alone a long-running series. This was such a side project. This was such a silly thing that we wanted to make.
“It evolved into something that other people were watching, and so we realized we were making it for all of us.”
The stop-motion sketch series arrived in February 2005. Grown from a short-lived web series produced by Green and “Robot Chicken” co-creator Matthew Senreich, the show was aired on Adult Swim before that property became a cross-platform cartoon titan producing TV shows, video games and music.
Back then, it wasn’t even its own network, but just a programming block on the Cartoon Network.
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“We didn’t expect anything,” said Green, the ginger-haired actor best-known for roles on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and the “Austin Powers” series, who also provides the squeaky voice of dimwitted pubescent adolescent Chris Griffin on “Family Guy.”
“Adult Swim was really just taking shape. We weren’t even sure if the network was going to be around in a couple months.
“And we had no idea what we were doing,” he added, noting that the show’s producers initially took on an overly ambitious production schedule. “I actually had a physical breakdown toward the end of that year.”
With “Robot Chicken,” Green and Senreich let their childhood obsession with toys fuel a rapid-fire melange of imaginatively bawdy jokes steeped in geek culture – one sketch of thousands, for instance, depicts a “Star Wars” stormtrooper bringing his poor daughter onto the Death Star during “take your kids to work day.”
Over five seasons, the show has welcomed a stunning array of Hollywood A-listers into its cracked world, including Sarah Michelle Gellar, Mila Kunis, Snoop Dogg, Megan Fox, Scarlett Johansson, Conan O’Brien, Ryan Seacrest and Charlize Theron.
But perhaps the biggest boon to the show’s fortune was timing. Less than a week before “Robot Chicken” hit the airwaves, YouTube launched and suddenly seized upon and furthered the Internet’s collectively voracious desire for short-form content. And “Robot Chicken”‘s snickering snippets were the perfect fit.
It was a coincidence that looked like prescience, Green says.
“Isn’t that weird? It makes us look like we really knew what the hell what we were talking about,” he said with a laugh. “No, we just didn’t have money to shoot anything longer than four minutes, so we developed rapid-fire short-term content.
“When ‘Robot Chicken’ came around, we originally called it ‘ADD TV,’ because we thought that was what it was – it was jokes without a laborious setup, all punch lines. It’s straight to the point.”
Green and his collaborators are currently in the process of piecing together the sixth season of the show (which airs earlier in the U.S. than it does here in Canada), although he’s focusing his effort on directing a one-time “Robot Chicken” special set in the DC Comics universe.
Still, the show is in production 11 months a year and requires a major commitment from Green.
“It is literally all my time,” he said, chuckling.
“I can’t complain. I mean, I could be spending all day digging ditches or busting concrete. I’ve had a couple meetings where I’ve got a group of professional people that have all been hired to make this actual broadcast television show, and we’re having a heated debate about which iteration of a 3.75-inch G.I. Joe we need to find to play this part.
“And when I look back – that seems really rare and impossible.”
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