The Brak Show

History

Characters

• Brak is a sort of anthropomorphic teenage "space cat" with an eccentric personality and a speaking lisp. He attends as a student at Learnmore High School. He is quite silly and unintelligent but with a very sweet and gentle personality, and seems to be a teen adolescent. He still has attachments to stuffed animals but is starting to be attracted to girls. He frequently breaks into impromptu songs, lyrically about events in the episode. The writers use a wide variety of musical styles for the songs — covering jazz, country, show tunes, rap and rock & roll. His closest friend is Zorak, although in return Zorak treats him with open contempt and little respect. Brak's character is derived from his appearances on the Space Ghost Coast to Coast spin-off Cartoon Planet.
• Zorak is another character from Space Ghost Coast to Coast, a human-sized mantis. On this show, he plays the role similar to that of Eddie Haskell character, who is also a sociopathic,, morally bankrupt misanthrope. He often hangs out with Brak, but usually only as a way to force him into doing something for his own benefit. Zorak considers himself "above" Brak and his family, and is constantly criticizing and insulting them. Zorak also enjoys bullying Clarence, the neighbourhood nerd. Like Eddie Haskell, he also expresses more than a platonic interest in Brak's Mom.
• Dad is a small human illegal alien with a Cuban accent, who is extremely self-centred, lazy and nonsensical. Unemployed since 1984, most of his time is spent sitting at the kitchen table and reading the newspaper. An episode seldom goes by without him delivering a moral to the story that is often incoherent or has no relevance to the situation, and typically ends in a non sequitur. Occasionally, he displays prominent womanizing and male-chauvinistic behaviour, which is sometimes rebuked by Brak's mom. In an Adult Swim New Year's Eve bumper in 2003, he revealed his name to be "Javier". He is also extremely incompetent at working a job; during his brief stint working at the ice cream shop in “We Ski in Peace” he tries to take his break immediately after the store opens and shoots the ice cream because “it was about to rob ”. In the same episode, he was also shown to have a high ranking job in protecting the Earth in a base underneath the house but does so for free. He also cares little for Brak, doing things like telling Brak he is adopted or using his college funds to buy a ski boat.
• Mom : a creature of the same "species" as Brak, with the fashions of a housewife character on a 1950s sitcom. She is largely the only semi-sane character on the show. She displays little romantic or sexual interest in Brak's father and often does not tolerate him. When she gets drunk, however, she finds him suddenly irresistible. As voiced by Crenshaw, she is most often an homage to June Cleaver and similar motherly characters, with occasional hints of discontent with her husband's laziness and sexism. When Daniel took over the role, Brak's mother inexplicably acquired a British accent and became far more open in her discontent with domestic life and her annoyance with and disdain for Brak's father. Her change in accent has been commented upon several times on the show.
• Thundercleese : Brak's next-door-neighbour, a militant Killbot who is also passionate about his lawn and garden, particularly the gnomes that decorate it. A short-lived shtick on the show involved Thundercleese blasting Zorak often. He is very aggressive and warlike, always speaking in a loud, robotic monotone. When Brak is troubled, no matter what the problem is, Thundercleese invariably suggests swift and brutal retaliation. Thundercleese's social skills are rather lacking, and before social get-togethers, he will study very bad "party jokes" in preparation. Thundercleese's creator is claimed to be MoroccoBotix, in an episode of the series, which contradicts a special 2003 New Year's Eve event on Adult Swim in 2003, where it was revealed that Aqua Teen Hunger Forces Frylock created him, which is the in-universe reason for their similar voices.
• Clarence : a chubby purple alien and schoolmate of Brak's at Learnmore High School. He was a supporting character on the show who made more regular appearances towards the end of the series. Clarence is socially awkward and idolizes Brak. His constant talking often annoys those around him, and when faced with an extremely stressful situation he will wear his mother's sundress and bonnet for comfort. In a rap contest, he revealed that he dearly misses his father, who left them for unknown reasons. In this same contest, he also noted that his mom has since married a man named Gary, whom he does not like. Many of his appearances end with him being maimed, usually by Zorak.
• Sisto: Brak's brother, and Dad and Mom's other son. He is mostly red-coloured. In early episodes, he would make random appearances walking across the scene farting. He was killed by aliens in "Pepper". A scratch-sniff card of him was shown in the episode "Sexy New Brak Show Go".

  Episodes

Home releases