Sealab 2021

Encyclopedia : S : SE : SEA : Sealab 2021

---

Sealab 2021 was an American comedy animated television series shown on Cartoon Network's adult-oriented programming block, Adult Swim. Each episode was 15 minutes long, including commercials. Like Cartoon Network's Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, the animation used stock footage from a 1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoon, in this case the short-lived, environmentally-themed Sealab 2020, along with original animation. Sealab 2021 was produced by 7030 Productions for Cartoon Network's Williams Street Studios. After five seasons, the final episode aired in April 2005. Despite rumors of Cartoon Network cancelling the series, the show was in fact ended by decision of 7030, who felt it was the right time to move on to new projects.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} Sealab is rated TV-14.

Characters and premise

The show is set one year after the time frame of Sealab 2020. During this year, the crew has slowly gone crazy, and as this has happened, the crew has spent more time goofing off in various ways rather than doing any serious work. Continuity is frequently ignored; often, the entire installation is destroyed at the end of the episode. While the show contains many references to the pop culture of the 1980s-2000s, and appears to be set in the year 2021, John F. Kennedy is President, and Robert Kennedy is his Attorney General, suggesting that it is in fact still the early 1960s. (Episode 29, "Red Dawn")

Main characters

• Captain Hazel "Hank" Murphy is the ostensible leader of the crew. Unfortunately, he's also the most deranged member, and quite unfit for service; instead of providing any real leadership, he's either running a pirate radio show, complaining about his missing Happy Cake oven, or playing golf near the station's reactor core (among other things). He's bitter about getting beat up as a child, so he likes to sucker punch people when he can. His most hated enemies are Bizarro Murphy and Evans (who he thinks is named "Eggers") from Pod 6 (Murphy also despises Pod 6). He seems to have a fixation on actress Adrienne Barbeau, making reference to her several times, including calling his robotic form the Barbeaubot. The only episode where Murphy consistently acts responsibly is "7211" from the first season, with the running gag being that the entire episode is a faithful re-enactment of an actual Sealab 2020 episode. Murphy was voiced by Harry Goz until his death on September 5, 2003 from cancer. After that, Murphy was described as having left Sealab to fight in the "Great Spice Wars". In Brazil, Murphy is voiced by Guilherme Briggs.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

• Captain Bellerophon "Tornado" Shanks earned his position as Sealab's new captain by answering a help-wanted ad. A retired football coach and lovable redneck, he has all of Murphy's shortsighted idiocy combined with a Southern charm. Tornado's leadership qualities have led him to coach the crew in a football game against killer robots, declare Sealab a sovereign nation, warp the minds of Sealab's orphan population, and assert that a huge tumor on his head would go away through prayer alone, forcing the crew to shrink themselves and get injected into his body in order to save him. Late in the series, Shanks dropped his southern accent because "everyone thought I (Shanks) was gay." Shanks is voiced by Michael Goz, son of the late Harry Goz

• Debbie DuPree (a.k.a. "White" Debbie) (voiced by Kate Miller) is the token female of the crew, a marine biologist, and blonde and beautiful to boot. Being the token female, she tends to get upset when the guys do chauvinistic things, but is also a stereotypical dumb blonde. She has a sexual relationship going on with Doctor Quinn, and she's slept with Murphy at least once.

• Derek "Stormy" Waters (voiced by Ellis Henican) is the station's resident pretty boy (his actual function on the crew has never been revealed). Very childish, he's all looks and no brains most of the time; he barely knows what's going on around him. He greatly enjoys coleslaw. His stupidity has gotten him into trouble several times, mainly with "Black" Debbie (who thinks he's a racist).

• Doctor Quentin Q. Quinn(voiced by Brett Butler) is the brains of the outfit. As the only member of the crew with any formal education and any sort of common sense left, he's the one that ends up running the station (and, in some cases, trying to keep it from exploding). He's also the token black guy. He and Debbie have an on-again, off-again relationship. Quinn is actually a cyborg; an illness in his youth forced him to transplant his human brain into a replica robot body. Although Quinn dramatically revealed this in the pilot episode "I, Robot" it doesn't really affect his character that much, and it is only rarely mentioned again throughout the series.

• Jodene Sparks (voiced by Bill Lobley) is the station's sarcastic, scheming radio operator, and co-conspirator with Captain Murphy in most of his escapades (though often as a front to further his own plans). In a dream of Murphy's, Sparks is portrayed as also being the head of a terror organization located inside of a mountain, where his minions refer to him as "The Overlord". Sparks is never seen without his headset or out of his rolling, swivel office-style chair. He claims that he's crippled but in fact he is just lazy, as Debbie proved in one episode by stabbing his legs with various sharp objects.

• Marco Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar Gabriel Garcia Marquez (voiced by Erik Estrada) is the station's engineer, macho man, and wannabe Latin lover. He's tried to seduce both females on the station at various times, with limited success. He also has a thing for CHiPs, which starred Estrada himself. One of his catchlines is "I'll give it a shot of Vitamin M!" He was given the nickname "Mailbox Head" by Captain Murphy in the "Happy Cake" episode. Note to the names: Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar is the main character of the Spaniard epic XI century poem "El Cantar del Mío Cid" while Gabriel García Márquez is clearly a reference to the 1982 Literary Nobel Prize winner journalist and novelist from Colombia.

Minor characters

• Amish Dave (sometimes referred to as "Beard Guy") is a character who works in Sealab. His job was to churn butter for Captain Murphy, who would then eat it while riding around in the Murphmobile. He does not own a VCR, and does not believe in underwater research stations. However, he does believe in motels. He has an Irish look-alike, Paddy O'Reilly, who buys organs illegally from Sparks.

• Debbie Love (a.k.a. "Black" Debbie) (voiced by Angela Gibbs) is both the only other adult female and the only other black person on the station. She teaches school to Dolphin Boy and the rest of Sealab's orphans, is very proud of her blackness (she's fought with Stormy over this at least once), and has been seduced by Marco several times. The former Heisman Trophy winner has also been known to get stoned off a hookah pipe, while loudly asserting that in full compliance with standards and practices (Cartoon Network's censoring department) that she's enjoying the pipe "in a drug-free way." (In one episode, her name is displayed on a monitor as Debbie Allison.)

• Sharko is Marco's interspecies son, from when Marco "put his human penis in Sharko's shark mother's vagina," (referred to as a "shark-gina") as is painfully stated in every episode he appears in. Sharko is scatterbrained and flighty, and longs to know as much as he can learn about his father. Created after a short run of episodes with no spoken lines from Marco, and with Sharko making reference to Marco being dead, Sharko's introduction fueled rumors that Erik Estrada had left the series. The two finally meet in Season Four, which Marco responds to by not recognizing Sharko and shooting him with a Mini-Uzi, though not fatally.

• Dolphin Boy is a little, chubby boy (who looks to be about 10) that talks in dolphin noises. He's a member of Black Debbie's class, and is the target of endless fat jokes. He is the persona non grata of Sealab.

• Doctor Ilad Virjay (voiced by Adam Reed) is the station's official doctor and in-house surgeon, noted for his thick Indian accent and relatively normal personality. He practices Hinduism, making him one of the few members of the crew to celebrate a non-fictional religion. He has been known to use the surgery's gas mask on himself. He also once headed his own rockabilly band.

• Chopper Dave is a helicopter pilot with the U.S. Navy. In the show, he has his own popular television show and made-for-TV movies. His trademark is that he flies a helicopter by day, and by night he fights crimes—as a werewolf.

• Hesh Hepplewhite is the station's reactor operator, and quite often the whipping boy as well. It was revealed that he is Jewish. Nasal-voiced, smart-mouthed, and whiny, Hesh isn't well liked by most of the crew, and thus works in the part of the station furthest away from them (the reactor core). Exposure to intense radiation will turn Hesh into "Monster Hesh," an Incredible Hulk-like alter ego with a huge face on his torso (instead of a head) and limbs which lack hands and feet. Hesh has a habit of continually referring to himself in the third person. The character is voiced by independent rapper and former Cartoon Network staffer mc chris (Chris Ward). He also wants "married sex." When Hesh cross-dresses, he prefers to be called "Heshina".

• Evans is Captain Murphy's most hated enemy. Murphy thinks his name is "Eggers," and Evans just goes along with it. In one episode, he stole the Murphmobile (Murphy's personal mode of transportation), and ran Murphy over with it.

• Carl is an overweight man who works in the reactor room with Hesh, barely tolerating him. He often ends up killed by whatever crisis the crew is currently facing. Carl is voiced by Sealab 2021 artist Christian Danley.

• Fatass McBlobbicus is an acne-infested, bespectacled member of Black Debbie's class. While Dolphin Boy is chubby, McBlobicus is morbidly obese. While substituting for Debbie one day, Quinn didn't believe that McBlobbicus' name was real, but a quick check of the class roster proved him wrong.

• The Bizarros are a group that resemble the main Sealab characters only with black uniforms, no eyebrows and other noticeable features. Bizarro Murphy has a scar and an eyepatch. Bizarro Debbie has a cyborg arm and pink hair. Bizarro Stormy is exactly the same, except for some reason has ice hair and can exhale ice cubes. He feels the need to constantly point out "I am Bizarro Stormy", to which Stormy replies "I'm Regular Stormy". Bizarro Marco has a metal jaw with sharp teeth and Bizarro Sparks is a head in a floating jar. The strangest is Bizarro Quinn, who hatches out of an egg. It is short, white, has orange hair, freckles, a beak, gangly hands without arms, and an allergy to peanuts. He's basically the genetic/racial opposite of Dr. Quinn. The Bizarros have a tendency to use the word "Bizarro" almost every time they say something, and sometimes encourage others to. The Bizarros are a reference to the DC Comics villain "Bizarro", an imperfect clone of Superman who is one of his more memorable villains. During Bizarro's appearances in Hanna-Barbera's productions of Super Friends, his speech was very disjointed, and the Bizarros of Sealab share a similar impediment.

• "Gay Guy" Lance is a stereotypical gay man. He is fit, has a mustache and doesn't wear a shirt. He thinks that Shanks is gay because of his southern accent, which he dropped for that reason. It should be noticed that once Shanks drops his accent, "Gay Guy" drops his stereotypical "gay" accent.

• "Squishface" A gloop that Murphy bought and gave some liquor to, resulting in an episode spoof of the Star Trek episodes dealing with tribbles, only using gloops. The gloops mulitplication abilities (which only occur if you give them alcohol) may also be a reference to the movie Gremlins, in which a mogwai will spawn offspring if gotten wet. Sadly, this loveable, stinky thing met its end when it and its progeny possessed Murphy's brain and tried to take over Sealab and got themselved torched.

Episode list and original air dates

DVD Boxsets

Season Releases

DVD Name	Cover Art	Release Date	Additional Information
Season One		July 20 2004	This two disc boxset contains the first 13 episodes (I, Robot through Swimming in Oblivion). Bonus Features include Alternate Endings For Episode "I, Robot" Deleted Scenes, Pitch Pilot, and Uncensored Scenes For "Radio Free Sealab".
Season Two		February 1 2005	This two disc boxset contains the second set of 13 episodes (Der Dieb through Return to Oblivion). Bonus Features include commentaries for all thirteen episodes, an animatic for the unseen episode "Ronnie," and other assorted bonus features- many of which involve women in bikinis.
Season Three		July 12 2005	This two disc boxset contains the third set of 13 episodes (Tourist Season through Neputati). Bonus features Include two unseen episodes and the animatic of a third unseen episode, commentary for four episodes, and other features.
Season Four		August 8 2006	This two disc boxset contains the final 13 episodes (Isla de Chupacabras through Legacy of Laughter). Bonus Features include alternate endings and deleted scenes.

Fignuts

Fignuts is a term originating from Sealab 2021. It was often used by Captain Murphy in the episode "Radio Free Sealab". It has later appeared on Sealab 2021 merchandise such as t-shirts and stickers. It is never fully explained what the definition of fignuts is. Fig trees produce fruit filled with tiny seeds, rather than nuts.

External links

• [Official Sealab 2021 Website]
• [Theme song] by Calamine
• [Clunky Robot] Blog and artwork by Christian Danley, who worked on the show
• [Sealab 2021 at TV.com]
• [Sealab 2021 at IMDB]
• [mackwilliams.com] Blog and artwork by Mack Williams, who worked on the show
• [mc chris] Official site of Chris Ward, who worked on the show
• [Ellis Henican] Official site of the voice of Stormy
• [Sealab Message Board] (Fan Forum)

• [Soylent Forums] Popular messageboard which also provides discussion for Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Futurama

 

---

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

?