I struggle to find the words to describe what Clarence is on the surface it looks like your
average Slice of Life show but upon watching you'll start seeing the weirdness the darkness the
unhinged nature of it it just starts pouring out it was Cartoon Network series about the everyday
life of a 10 year old boy named Clarence with his two friends Jeff and Sumo the series takes place
in the suburbs of Aberdale Arizona where Clarence and his friends live Clarence was voiced by Skylar
page in the first 35 episodes and Spencer Roth Bell in the remaining 95. he is a young chubby
boy with pink skin and buck teeth who has a sense of childlike enthusiasm that can't be
wavered and a sense of logic and reasoning that is very confusing but endearing nonetheless his
friends are germaphobe square-headed Jeff voiced by The Goldbergs actor Sean John broney and feral
wildcard Sumo or just Ryan voiced by SpongeBob SquarePants himself Tom Kenny each episode tackles
A new challenge idea or Adventure that one or more of the characters face such as going to the arcade
with little to no money helping your mom make a casserole making your own currency and money
laundering you know all the fun things that kids do when they're bored and sometimes the episodes
aren't really about any major plot point in particular it's just about situations you create
from nothing as a kid Clarence had always been a show that I had casually watched and you know seen
some episodes here and there but it wasn't until I saw something that happened in an episode that
made me go oh what so going through this series it was really fun for me and I can't wait to really
dig into the series here and see all the obstacles that had to overcome while trying to stay on the
air pumping out constant content that was both enjoyable and weird but in the best way possible
if you enjoy this video you better subscribe let's take a look at this absolutely unhinged
show now let's have the best summer ever welcome back to the 25 days of Fringe Miss where there's
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Clarence is a show that I've heard a lot of people dismiss more than give any praise for it it was
something I didn't pay too much mind to catching it on sometimes but I think when you start giving
this show a bit more attention you get more out of it I'll go into a lot of more of what I mean
by that later on throughout this video but I want to elaborate on why this show started to
hook me it had this one extra little element of just being so out of pocket you have three
clashing perspectives throughout the show with these kids Clarence has the more creative mind
viewing the world and what he sees differently than his friends Jeff is very cautious but he's
precise in knowing what he wants what he likes and presents himself as an old soul while Sumo
on the surface seems like he'd be the less than intelligent one as we go through him without the
show he's a pretty deep character with complex emotions he tends to still have these feral
moments or outbursts of doing something wild but he internalizes a lot of that getting lost inside
his own mind and taking himself out of the moment which plays a lot into his upbringing because
of how the show plays with perspectives for all the situa relations we see them in it can result
in some dialogue choices that I feel I'd hear when I was a kid stuff that I don't feel I've
heard portrayed this accurately in a kid's cartoon before especially one trying to be
more grounded in some sort of realism or even how there's moments of trying to learn things
like the circle of life where in one episode while there is a substitute teacher in Clarence
notices that the regulars teachers cicadas are about to shed their shells and Clarence helps
to go get the teacher to come back for this and all the kids go outside to see them hatch and
fly away and as they do a bird flies in brings the cicada to the ground and gruesomely rips
it apart not really shying away from showing it and you even get to see it all mashed up inside
of its mouth at one point we get to see all of the kids here have different reactions to it for
their understanding of the circle of life some kids being horrified some thinking it's cool the
show would out of nowhere add this type of extra little layer that would make me go wait there's no
way that that just happened on this cartoon but they do happen and it starts really speaking to
how how this show goes about The Slice of Life genre and growing up in these formative years
originally created by former Adventure Time storyboard artist Skyler Page the series was
quickly adopted by series writer Spencer rothbelle and the creative team the idea behind Clarence
had originated in college calarts to be exact where Paige and post creative director Nelson
Bowles studied together and the idea stuck with Paige after graduating and entering the animation
Workforce when Cartoon Network opened up about looking for more content Paige Revisited this
idea and further fleshed out these characters in the story to make it pitchable the pilot was
then created not too long after and premiered on Cartoon Network's short program alongside other
new series premise shorts like Steven Universe and Uncle Grandpa due to positive reception in
December of 2012 Cartoon Network greenlit the show when ordered 12 15-minute episodes after
being greenlit the short went on to be nominated for an Emmy in the category of outstanding short
format animated program which would pose as a good omen for the success of the series Once
it aired although the pilot was shown in 2012 the series didn't Premiere until April April 14
2014 and had about 2.3 million viewers making it Cartoon Network's most watched series premiered
that whole year only a few months after the series aired the world found out that Skyler was a pretty
awful disgusting person so Cartoon Network fired him from the series but didn't cancel the series
despite the Creator's downfall instead the series was inherited by Clarence writer Spencer rothbelle
who also took over the voice role of Clarence as well and the series transitioned the episodes from
there going on pretty flawlessly in response from ex-head of story Patrick harpin he went
into detail about how little Paige really had to do with the show past its initial Inception and
showing up to read the lines he claims that the series was truly formed by the writers himself
and rothbelle along with the storyboard artists he says they took the general ideas and made it a
tangible character he argued that the crew that actually had been heavily invested in creating
the show doesn't deserve to be punished for one person's bad actions and one who didn't contribute
to making to the show special in the first place in listening to interviews with Spencer Roth Bell
he truly does treat this show like his own and the crew of the series is incredibly close and
works together quite harmoniously I also want to take a minute to commend rothbelle for his
voice work for Clarence not only does his voice sound extremely similar it also captures that
same childlike energy that was important to his tone from the beginning of the series initially
they had wanted to find a child voice actor for Clarence but they couldn't find exactly
what they were looking for so Paige decided to voice it himself in the beginning which I think
was actually a smarter Choice considering what happened to Jeff's voice throughout the course
of the three seasons take out the burger I just want the fries to drink in the toy it's
fine fine Jeff just be logical but that also kind of reflects growing up and how your voice
does change each character is based off a real life person that Paige had known in his life
everyone except for the naive and overly positive Clarence Paige actually doesn't have inspiration
for Clarence because Clarence is way too good and too pure especially to be based on any real
person but chaotic Sumo on the other hand and is based off of a member of the creative crew named
Ryan whose nickname was actually Sumo and was one of those weird neighbors kid types Paige voiced
frustration in shows like Bob's Burgers And The Simpsons because each character has the same look
that indicates the universe they're in while the team here wanted each character to be treated like
they're the star of their own series inconsistency was consistency when going about designing each
new person even watching the first episode I was a bit confused as to who the show was really about I
mean obviously the title is called Clarence I'm sure it's about Clarence but the first
character we see is Sumo and the first conflict of the series is a conversation that Jeff has
with a rough Rider's chicken employee the focus in this episode is just on Jeff trying to get a
clean germ-free meal of fries that took him way too much effort to get and we don't even really
focus on Clarence and his role in the series until the end of the episode when he explains why he
steals Jeff's fries to begin with this speaks to the focused fleshed out and unique Side characters
in Clarence because each character is given their own focus when one on screen because they have
their own stories that are being told and because of this the more people you meet the larger the
world of Clarence becomes it was also important to the design that they weren't traditionally perfect
like a lot of Hollywood would depict characters traditionally Paige wanted his characters to be
ugly and messed up specifically like uh real people I'm ugly and I'm proud not only are
they designed differently but they each have pretty diverse family and class Dynamics the
way clarence's home life is shown versus Jeff's as well as sumos are very different from each other's
how we explore their family Dynamics and how as kids that shapes a lot of who we are and how we
understand things while at the same time viewing your friends and how their family life is whether
you see it as different to yours or ignorant to it but it really points to how dedicated to
realism the show was trying to be these families are also not the traditional upper middle class
families that are usually depicted in cartoons it understands that not everyone is the same as
depicted in a lot of media the series art also is a heavy emphasis in capturing them Nostalgia about
being a kid the environments feel very lived in clarence's home is frequently littered with used
fast food napkins cups toys strewn about his home looks lived in which is important when talking
about a place where a child lives especially in a single parent household their parents didn't
have a real good marriage yeah and ignoring Chad because while we love Chad he's great
he's just kind of like another child sometimes most times we also visit memory inducing spaces
like fast food play places arcades the zoo all of which bring up specific memories about being
a kid in these familiar places and because of the detailing the extra time spent trying
to occupy space within the environment whether they're dirty cluttered and sticky or slightly
more polished and cleanly they feel that much more real and true to what you may have experienced in
your upbringing hey guys look who I ran into at the store it's Chelsea hey guys foreign
Sports 130 episodes across three seasons along with a series of 14 shorts that also aired
alongside the episodes on April 4th 2017 Spencer rothfeld tweeted to confirm that Clarence will
not be making any further content but will continue to air new episodes through 2018.
while some may complain that its cancellation was premature they did make an impressive amount of
content over the course of four years when asked why the series didn't continue Roth Bell states
there was no specific reason he says that he has a few ideas that could have contributed to it but
to be perfectly honest it was probably just its time the network is always looking to create new
content once a generation of cartoon Watchers ages out of their target audience group with a
new wave of children to make content for they were looking to create something new for them
and Clarence had just run its course but in fully checking out the series I appreciated how much
charm it actually had the way that the characters are written is pretty real to childlike Wonder
real to the different types of personalities and how they all co-mingle they aren't written
to be understandable and sometimes the things that they say only make sense to the characters
themselves it also is super refreshing to have a series where things constantly don't follow a
mold Clarence subverts expectations so frequently that trying to guess what is coming next is one
exhausting and two not very fun what I ended up enjoying a large portion of the show for was how
you look at it from a glance and how it looks like you're one of the Mills Slice of Life comedy but
it starts going off the rails in the ways of the side comments made the circumstances of the day
they're having or the shock of not being ready for a joke or visual gag to go as far as it did
it's great to just sit down and let the story and bizarre child logic carry you in Clarence
there's no magic or sci-fi elements it focuses on normal kids like painfully normal kids who have
differences in their lives families and interests while the series initially prided itself on being
a breath of fresh reality in a world of fantasy and non-realism a real beautiful thing happens
when you embrace the realism of the series only to have these exact exaggerated moments of truism
that reflect your own childhood how you experience the rhythm of the world around you in itself it
starts to become bizarre and somewhat surreal even sumo's existence and the things that he creates
like the blood Burger which is just a regular burger drowned in ketchup is super bizarre because
of how they visually portrayed this scene it's not for you the audience to see it for what it is but
for Jeff to hyper focus on how gross everything in this scene can be for someone like him the series
managed to balance both at the same time because while reality is boring it can be fun if you think
about reality in a surrealist way which is in turn what children do thinking back on this series and
what it has gone through in the past it's a very solid show that managed to overcome hardships and
Achieve what it was trying to convey we grow and learn the way the world works at these formative
moments experiencing something for the first time and how we interpret it while you do sometimes
see and understand these things through forces like home life in school a lot can be learned
and discovered through your close friend each of these three characters see and experience most of
the time the same thing but it's the individual perspective aspect that changes but how do you
feel about Clarence do you personally enjoy the series or was it not for you let me know your
thoughts in the comments below thanks so much for watching like And subscribe later [Music]