Ugly Americans

Production

Pre-production was handled at Brooklyn-based Augenblick Studios, and then the animation for the first season was produced in Flash and handled at Cuppa Coffee Studios in Toronto. The first half of the second season was handled by Big Jump Entertainment in Ottawa. The animation for the second half of season two was handled by Markle Productions and Solis Animation that are also located in Toronto.

The series premiered on March 17, 2010, on Comedy Central. The series is based on a webseries by Devin Clark entitled 5 On with Alan Whiter, which was later developed by former The Simpsons writer David M. Stern. It was picked for seven episodes in May 2009 and renewed for an additional seven episodes to air in October 2010. The show's second season premiered on June 30, 2011.

On May 29, 2013, the show's producers announced the series' cancellation via the show's Facebook page, saying: "the network did everything in their power to keep the show alive by trying to find outside financing. We came very close but unfortunately some legal technicalities kept any deals from going through." The possibility of the show continuing via other mediums, such as web shorts or graphic novels, was not ruled out.

On September 3, 2014, the series was revived as a mobile app game for iOS.

Plot

An upbeat, mild-mannered man named Mark Lilly moves to Manhattan, which is inhabited by humans and a wide variety of non-human and demonic species. He becomes a social worker with the Social Services Division of the Department of Integration, a sub-set of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which specializes in facilitating the integration of the non-humans into the city.

Mark lives with a lazy, over-sexed zombie roommate and has a wizard co-worker and a demon boss. His succubus girlfriend, who also works at the Department of Integration, is the daughter of Satan (who is trying to bring about the end of days) and a human who "looks like Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby".

Mark struggles to stay cheerful and politically correct while working with his bizarre and frequently dangerous companions.

Characters

Main characters

Mark Lilly (voiced by Matt Oberg) – A 21-year-old man who works at the Department of Integration's Social Services Division and a newcomer to Manhattan. While attending college, Mark was a brother of the Zeta Psi fraternity. In the pilot, he had recently moved into his first apartment, a two-bedroom he found on Craigslist. Despite the frustrations of his job where his boss Twayne Boneraper downsized Social Services to two people in the pilot in order to shift funding to Law Enforcement, Mark maintains a positive attitude. Mark very often tries to help the various immigrant monsters and aliens and be 100% accepting of their often strange and dangerous customs in the name of tolerance, only to end up angering both humans and monsters and get hurt or taken advantage of as a result. In the department, he seems to be the only one who actually cares about their job, at all.

Randall Skeffington (voiced by Kurt Metzger) – Mark's roommate, who became a zombie in an attempt to win over a cute girl with a zombie fixation, only to find out she had moved on to warlocks. Now, the unemployed and undead Randall spends his days doing odd jobs to pay the rent (including making amateur, hidden-camera pornographic movies of Mark and Callie having sex). He often uses a catch phrase of sorts by groaning the word "crap" in a way stereotypical of a zombie moan for brains. Randall hails from South Jersey, a fiercely anti-zombie community, so he has been forced to hide his condition from his parents (especially his father, who fought in the Human-Zombie Civil War). Due to his zombie nature, Randall is frequently losing body parts to decay, forcing him to find replacements at local flea markets. Like other zombies, Randall finds the smell and taste of human flesh appealing. In "Treegasm", Randall's penis was shown to be a living creature in its own right. He has admitted that he has been living his sexual life so long that he is indiscriminate in choosing sexual partners, in one instance a toaster. He sometimes gets cravings for flesh, causing him to go temporarily insane with desire, and is in a program similar to Alcoholics Anonymous to deal with his cravings (mentioned in "An American Werewolf in America"). He has rarely missed an opportunity to consume Mark's body parts when it appeared he had been killed or otherwise didn't need them. In "Blob Gets Job", he mentions to Mark that he only has two working taste buds. He also has a bad habit of using Mark's things without permission.

Callie Maggotbone (voiced by Natasha Leggero) – A succubus who is Mark's immediate superior, and his on-again/off-again girlfriend. In between romantic interludes with Mark, she berates him for being so caring and sensitive, although she loves it when he talks about how violent and malicious she is. She is the half human/half succubus daughter of the Devil and a human mother who was drugged by a cult and forced to bear his child, although this was retconned in the episode "Callie and her Sister" as a marriage of convenience: Her father got out of an arranged marriage to Twayne's mother and her mother got to have the child she always wanted. Callie is frequently marginalized with her demon side, and displays drastic mood swings and physio gnomic morphing between her demonic and more human appearances. Although she is drawn to Mark because he is nice, she feels in her heart that she will inevitably end up with someone like Twayne Boneraper, despite being repulsed by the idea, although she seems indifferent to the fact that such a union would bring about the end of humanity. She dislikes her father, seeming to be more turned on by Mark after believing her father hated him but has shown to deeply care about her mother, going to her to seek advice. Being a female demon, her body goes through a process called Painful Mortal Shedding, in which the toxins in her body cause her to shed her skin for a new one, during which she becomes increasingly deranged where the only thing that can numb the pain is sex. In earlier episodes she is shown to be overly possessive of Mark, and can shape shift. Unlike all pure demons, Callie has a soul, though she can remove it at will, although doing this seems to make her a full demon since when she does remove it, she changes into a large demonic beast. According to Mark's calendar, her period is three weeks long. Due to her demon side, she gets aroused by the sight of physical injury. At the end of the second season she asked Mark to be "engaged to be engaged" to her.

Recurring characters

Great Brain (voiced by Randy Pearlstein) – A living brain from Canada. He works as a counter-top sponge, and is usually the first to voice his opinion. He and his wife have a complicated relationship and enjoy playing mind games on others, which is aided by their telepathic powers.

Croatian Man (voiced by Devin Clark) – A man from Croatia. Works in a hospital as a candy striper, but dreams of becoming the President of the United States. Mark once described him as a sociopath. It is revealed in "Any Given Workday" that his real name is "Goran", though he only lets his friends call him that.

Doug – A very timid humanoid koala man usually mistreated by others, or in the wrong place at the wrong time. He almost always is seen weeping, whether frightened, overjoyed, or otherwise emotional. It is indicated in "The ManBirds" that Doug has a tendency to wander off. A still drawing in the end credits of the episode "Kong of Queen" portray him firing a rifle in a 1930s zoot suit and hat. The scene resembles Saddam Hussein firing his rifle into the air during a military parade in December 2001. Turns out that photo was actually foreshadowing that "Doug" is none other than a dangerous former assassin, who abandoned his work after he was responsible for a massacre in Bolivia, in which many women and children perished. Consumed by guilt, Doug moved to the U.S. under a new alias and tried starting his life anew. He still feels very guilty about the aforementioned incident and it is hinted his gentle and timid nature is a direct result of the past trauma. However, he still retains most of his assassin skills (especially when provoked). His dream is to fly.

Erik (voiced by Randy Pearlstein) – A robot with senses and emotions, though more often than not has a cynical viewpoint. He is able to read punch cards, but is annoyed that everyone assumes he can. His dream is to be a human boy. It is possible that he is a former human who was murdered and became a robot to survive as stated during the last episode but it is unknown if this is true as this was all part of an elaborate practical joke on Mark.

Martin – A two-headed worm who works in a coffee shop. Oddly for his species, the heads see themselves as equals, while usually the right dominates the left and treats the left as a slave. The heads are possibly in love with each other.

Minor characters

Krystal – The girl Randall turned zombie for. She is constantly changing attractions to different species and was already out of her zombie phase when Randall got back to her after going zombie. However, Randall continues to stalk her, having problems admitting the relationship is over, let alone that it never started.

Kid Wizard (voiced by Devin Clark) – A young wizard who is often giving people the finger.

Ratso Demon – A nod to Dustin Hoffman's character Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo from Midnight Cowboy, this demon wears a trench coat, has a five o'clock shadow and slicks his hair back. Ends every sentence with "ova heah".

Mark's Mom – Seen to have slept with Clark Dungaree. Mark has dreamed about her in crotchless panties.

Lillith Maggotbone (voiced by Julie Klausner) – Callie Maggotbone's sister in the episode "Callie and Her Sister" who was born very shortly after Aldremach and Callie's human mother got back together for a very short time. Lilith was born one day after she was conceived in Mark Lilly's apartment on a pool table. Due to a massive amount of hormone injections her mother was taking, so she also aged at an accelerated rate of one year per day. After Lilith was born, Aldremach decided to make Lilith marry Twayne Boneraper instead of Callie. Lilith appears to be more evil than Callie due to the constant use of her powers to harm people.

Angie - a facegina woman who appears in the Pilot.

Episodes

The first episode premiered on March 17, 2010, following the 14th season premiere of South Park, "Sexual Healing". It was watched by over 2 million viewers. On April 21, 2010, Comedy Central announced that they had ordered 7 additional episodes of Ugly Americans, to begin airing in October 2010. On December 15, Comedy Central announced that they picked up the show for a second 14-episode season, which was later expanded to 17 episodes. The first 10 episodes of the second season aired in the summer of 2011 following Futurama and the remaining 7 episodes aired from March 14, 2012, following South Park.

Critical reception

Ugly Americans holds a Metascore of 60, gaining positive reviews from the likes of Entertainment Weekly and The Washington Post. Variety's Brian Lowry called it "more a triumph of design and concept than execution" and added, "Not everything works, but with its bountiful supply of visual gags, Americans is just goofy enough to be good." Alex Zalben of UGO Networks, commending its mix of slapstick and intelligent humor, as well as actually building relatable characters, says the show "is easily the best animated show on Comedy Central since South Park." David Hinckley of the New York Daily News stated, "If Ugly Americans comes with a message, it is at least equally determined to just be funny, and at that task, it frequently succeeds. The variety of odd creatures keep the visual gags going, and the dialogue runs steadily toward droll."

Largely due to its visual gags and morbid, offbeat humor, the series has also gained negative reception from publications such as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Deseret News. Kris King of Slant Magazine gave Ugly Americans a 50/100 rating and claimed, "The show's dry humor, mixed with a rather troubling visual style where everything is stiff and vaguely deformed, mostly just makes you feel uneasy." IGN's Ramsey Isler also gave the pilot episode a 5/10, stating, "The show struggles to find some kind of funny [...] The whole thing feels more like a film student project that just didn't quite work out."