The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is an American animated television series created by Maxwell Atoms for Cartoon Network, and is the 14th of the network's Cartoon Cartoons. It follows two children: Billy, a slow-witted happy-go-lucky boy, and Mandy, his dark and cynical best friend, who, after winning a limbo game to save Billy's pet hamster, gain the mighty Grim Reaper as their best friend in eternal servitude and slavery. In India, the show is known as Billy, Mandy aur life mein Haddi and Haddi mera Buddy.
Billy & Mandy began as a series of segments on Grim & Evil, from which it was spun-off, along with Evil Con Carne, on August 24, 2001. Although the 2003 episodes were produced for Grim & Evil, the show ran as a separate series from June 13, 2003, to November 9, 2007. , a made-for-TV movie intended to serve as a pilot for a new spin-off series, aired on October 12, 2008. In addition to the episodes, three movies, two special episodes, and nineteen shorts were made. During its run, the series won two Emmy Awards and one Annie Award, with nominations for one Daytime Emmy Award, three Golden Reel Awards, and two other Annie Awards. Billy & Mandy has also been made into a video game as well as various licensed merchandise.
Premise
The series is centered around the exploits of Grim, a Jamaican-accented Reaper and Billy, a completely idiotic and happy-go-lucky boy. They are constantly assisted by Mandy, a cynical, intelligent and merciless girl. After Billy and Mandy cheated at a limbo match against Grim, he is enslaved in a permanently unwanted friendship with the children. Grim is miserable in the first days of his servitude, and even fantasizes about killing them multiple times. However, as the time passes, he gradually adapts to the new life, and even grows to care for Billy and Mandy, if only somewhat. Despite this, he retains a love–hate relationship with the two and desires to eventually break free from his servitude.Billy and Mandy use Grim's supernatural abilities and powers to venture into supernatural locations or environments, such as the Underworld, or the Netherworld, inhabited by an assortment of grotesque monstrous beasts. The pair also use Grim's enormously strong supernatural abilities or ties with a number of beastly characters to achieve goals or desires for themselves, often with twisted results. Famed fictional monsters including Dracula, the Wolfman, and the bogeyman are also comically depicted in the series.
Supporting characters include Irwin, a nerdy awkward boy who has a crush on Mandy; Harold, Billy's father who is even dumber than his son; Gladys, Billy's loving yet mentally unstable mother; Mindy, the snobby, stuck-up, and spoiled queen bee of Billy and Mandy's school; Sperg, the local bully who has a sensitive side; Fred Fredburger, a simple-minded, irritating underworld creature who loves frozen yogurt and nachos; Dracula, a selfish elderly vampire who is revealed to be Irwin's paternal grandfather in the final season of the show.
The show lacks continuity for the most part, as many episodes end with characters killed, exiled, or stuck in a situation. Characters sometimes display an awareness of some events from previous episodes, but there are no clear character arcs or coherent plot lines tying the show together.
Episodes
Production history
The series had its genesis in 1995, when Maxwell Atoms, while he was a junior at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, made a two-minute short film for his thesis project. Titled Billy and Mandy in: The Trepanation of the Skull and You, it centers around Billy and Mandy discussing trepanning with each other. In the end, Mandy drills Billy's head, causing him to pass out after too much blood loss even though he says he feels great. The short had never been shown publicly until April 30, 2016, during the first annual TromAnimation Film Festival. After the screening, Atoms uploaded the film, albeit in a deteriorating state after years of storage, on his YouTube channel.Atoms originally pitched the Billy and Mandy concept to Nickelodeon, but it was only rejected once. The show's existence is the result of a viewer poll event by way of telephone and the Internet called Cartoon Network's Big Pick which was held from June 16 to August 25, 2000. The three final choices were Grim and Evil, Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones?, and Longhair and Doubledome. Out of the three, Grim and Evil attained the most votes with 57%; Robot Jones came in second place at 23% while Longhair and Doubledome received 20% of the vote.
Originally part of Grim & Evil, Billy & Mandy served as the main show. In each episode, an Evil Con Carne short was put between two Grim shorts. On occasion, it was the other way around, with two Evil shorts and one Grim short. The series premiered on August 24, 2001, during the Cartoon Cartoon Fridays Big Pick Weekend.
Another batch of 13 half-hour episodes were produced for Grim & Evil, but on June 13, 2003, the network separated the two segments and gave each their own full-length program. The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy ran for 6 seasons, while the short-lived Evil Con Carne show was cancelled once the already-produced season had aired. Some characters from Evil Con Carne occasionally appeared on The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. General Skarr became an official character on the show in the episode "Skarred for Life", where he becomes Billy's new next-door neighbor, and in "Company Halt", the ninth episode of the final season which functions as the true series finale for Evil Con Carne, Ghastly, Hector, Boskov, and Stomach restart their evil organization and convince Skarr to join them, but their plans are ultimately foiled by Billy and Mandy, and Skarr goes back to living his life as a normal person.
Reception
Critical response and ratings
gave the show a 3/5 star rating and stated that it has "goofy punchlines and obscure cultural references" and recommends the viewer age be at least 8 years old. New episodes were broadcast on Cartoon Network's Fridays at 7:30pm to over 1 million viewers an episode.Awards and nominations
The series has won one Annie Award, two Emmy Awards and has been nominated nine times for various awards.| Year | Award | Category | Nominee | Result | Refs |
| 2002 | Golden Reel Awards | Best Sound Editing in Television Animation | Glenn Oyabe, Jesse Aruda, and Rob Desales for "The Smell of Vengeance: Pt. 1 & 2/Fiend is Like Friend Without the "R"" | ||
| 2003 | Golden Reel Awards | Best Sound Editing in Television Animation – Music | Glenn Oyabe for "Little Rock of Horror/The Pie Who Loved Me/Dream a Little Dream/Billy and Mandy's Jacked-Up Halloween" | ||
| 2005 | Golden Reel Awards | Best Sound Editing in Television Animation | Glenn Oyabe, Jesse Aruda, Erik Sequeira, and Cecil Broughton for "" | ||
| 2005 | Annie Awards | Directing in an Animated Television Production | Brian Sheesley for "" | ||
| 2005 | Annie Awards | Directing in an Animated Television Production | Shaun Cashman and Phil Cummings for "" | ||
| 2006 | Annie Awards | Directing in an Animated Television Production | Shaun Cashman for "" | ||
| 2006 | Emmy Awards | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation | Michael Diederich | ||
| 2007 | Emmy Award | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation | Phil Rynda for Billy & Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure | ||
| 2007 | Broadband-Children's | The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy |
TV movies
Three TV movies were made for the series. The first one was called Billy & Mandy's Big Boogey Adventure and was released on DVD in April, 2007. Common Sense Media gave the movie 2/5 stars and is meant for kids over the age of 8 calling it "undeniably gross and just as undeniably funny". DVDverdict.com gave the movie a good review as well.A second movie, Wrath of the Spider Queen, was also released in 2007. It was based on a spider queen from Grim's distant past, who tries to take revenge on him because she was meant to be the reaper. Meanwhile, keeping up with the spider theme, Billy learns to love his spider son Jeff.
On October 12, 2008, a third and final spin-off movie, titled Underfist: Halloween Bash, premiered. The movie's primary focus is on Irwin, Jeff the Spider, Hoss Delgado, General Skarr, and Fred Fredburger accidentally coming together to defeat an invasion of chocolate bar monsters, led by an evil marshmallow bunny, on Halloween night.