If you watch Comedy Central as regularly as I do (I won't miss a minute of The Colbert Report), you must have seen ads for Lil' Bush. They've been hyping their latest animated comedy for a while now, but we finally get some details from the series creator, Donick Cary.
Donick Cary Talks Lil' Bush
Lil' Bush started as a cell phone cartoon (which all you kids probably knew, but not me) and is the first to make it to television. Each episode is still two mini-stories about the little versions of Jon Stewart's favorite targets. Hopefully, this will last longer than That's My Bush.
"There’s definitely some comedy DNA in all of this that’s similar," said Cary. "These guys being shrunken kids there’s some South Park crossover and everything. I actually had friends who worked on That’s My Bush too. I had high hopes that that was going to be a really fun who to watch and enjoy and then, the way I remember it, I may be off, is there was 9-11 and it just didn’t seem like the time for us to be judging the president exactly. And now we’ve had a few more years and we’re kind of like, 'Hey, wait a minute. This guy’s hilarious. We’ve got to do a show about him.'"
The shows will focus on the gang of little politicians' adventures, but it is produced quickly enough to throw a few timely digs into the cold open. "I’ve been trying to make the stories at least to some extent timeless, somewhat timeless takes on things that happened during this administration. So things like going to Iraq or Katrina, you’ll always remember and always be somewhat topical. We are doing one thing that will keep it a little topical. We’re going to do, very close to air date, a cold open where Lil’ Bush can address the camera and we can turn those around in three days to five days. So there’ll be something at the beginning of the show that’ll be very topical and then the rest of the show will be two stories that are taken from the headlines and I think they hold up."
With the Bushes, Cary has no worries about running out of material. "And by the way the nice thing is this administration keeps getting in scandals so it seems like there’s an endless source of material."
But Jon Stewart need not look over his shoulder. His gig is still secure. "One other thing, we grounded it to some extent in a family sitcom. It takes place in the White house but it’s George Senior and Barbara and Jeb and they’re trying to raise their family and he’s got his little gang of buddies who have a rock band and they go to school. And a lot of the issues play out in that backdrop which is timeless. So they might get involved in an issue that is political or bigger, that might be somewhat topical but the core of the show is about just a family trying to raise their kids. It just happens to be a crazy one."
Being animated also gives it more license. "I think it’s a lot easier. Cartoon characters feel a lot more harmless than live action. I mean it's always been the things that you see on The Simpsons you could never do on Everybody Loves Raymond or whatever. So I think that’s definitely true. I also think that the tide has turned a little bit and he’s got 32% approval ratings that a lot of people have kind of gone like, 'You know what? This guy may not be the smartest apple in the fruit basket.'"
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