Co-creators Alyson Levy and Alissa Nutting discuss their quirky Adult Swim series about death, family, and unexpectedly coming back to life, including how Atomic Cartoons, the Canadian production company on the second season, was so unfamiliar with Florida and partying; new season debuts July 26.
The phrase “prepare to party to the state of Florida standards” perfectly summarizes both the new season for Adult Swim’s Teenage Euthanasia, as well as the warning Canadian animation studio Atomic Cartoons should have probably received before Season 2 production began.
“We had to teach the Canadians a lot about Florida partying,” says Alyson Levy, co-creator with Alissa Nutting of the quirky, adult animation series, Teenage Euthanasia. “We switched animation companies, and they did an amazing job, but we didn't realize that Canadians were so unfamiliar with both Florida and partying. In the first episode, which is a partying through time episode, they kept putting balloons and streamers at the party. And I was like, ‘I don't think you've ever been to a high school party.’ So, they had a fun time learning about how disgusting America is.”
The 2D animated show - which kicked off its first season with living corpse Trophy Fantasy returning home to her mother, brother and abandoned teenage daughter Euthanasia (Annie for short) - now revisits the family of Tender Endings Funeral Home with its Season 2 Adult Swim debut on Wednesday, July 26 at Midnight ET/PT, releasing the next day on HBO Max.
Following the latest undead inland Florida adventures of the Fantasy family, this season features Uncle Pete (Tim Robinson) discovering the existence of foreskin and making friends with a mobster’s limo; Trophy (Maria Bamford) is elected mayor of Fort Gator and finds her calling in sexual education; Annie (Jo Firestone) becomes a teen doctor and continues her quest to be more than a two-hour hang; and Trophy’s mother Baba (Bebe Neuwirth) fills in for a deceased morning shock jock and goes bear hunting. There’s also a very charismatic goat.
And it’s all wrapped up in Florida parting filled with forest fires, failed crowd surfing, tasering, and weird cultish light beam rituals, all of which were big surprises to the animators at Atomic Cartoons.
“Trophy has new ‘Death Powers’ this season and I think the most generous thing she does for Annie is take her back in time to party with high school Trophy, though that is more about Trophy just wanting to go to her parties again instead of going to Annie’s parties, which she thinks would be lame,” explains Nutting. “Anyway, the animators really wanted to implement safety measures for the parties, like guardrails, which is not a thing. At least, not in Florida.”
Levy adds, “There's like an episode where they are partying on a cliff and the animators kept putting up all these safety fences and I was like ‘No. This is Florida. They would not have safety rails. Or they would have ripped them out and used them for firewood or to fight each other.”
Not surprisingly, with the lack of safety measures, there are also a lot of head injuries this season amidst the awkward teen dancing and Trophy getting a little too excited about her butt-enhancement leggings, which is also classic Florida, according to Levy and Nutting.
“Annie gets amnesia, Trophy also gets amnesia, Pete gets hit in the head by a horse… there are a number of headshots, and I think our animation team didn't want anything too bad to happen to these characters because those were scenes too where we had to keep pushing them,” shares Levy. “We’d be like, ‘It really has to look like it hurts.’”
But helping to baptize Atomic Cartoons, known for Trollstopia and Pinecone and Pony, into the art of twisted and disturbing animation paid off in the season’s finale.
“It’s this road trip where there is all this car chasing and it's really action-heavy, which we don't do that much, but the animators really loved it,” says Levy. “They felt it was so ambitious, even though it probably made them feel a little insane in the beginning. We had a genuinely great time educating our Canadian animators. We kept joking with them that, when we get to do Season 3, we're going to actually just take the main animators to Florida and let them see stuff firsthand.”
Amidst all the insanity, Teenage Euthanasia maintains its reputation for surprising sincerity beneath the unfiltered comedy surface.
“I have a daughter who's in 10th grade and I was kind of relentlessly bothering her, when she got into high school, to go to parties,” shares Levy. “I sort of forced her to party. And it was a moment where I was absolutely feeling like Trophy. The party curriculum fused into this show definitely came out of this sort of resilience training with my two daughters. I draw a lot of stuff from my daughters for this show.”
Nutting adds, “It is fun, for both Alyson and I, who put so much thought into not emotionally damaging our children, to be able to have this creative project where we get to imagine the most irresponsible mother ever in Trophy. In the partying-through-time episode, Annie asks Trophy, ‘Can’t we use this to go back in time and have you not abandon me?’ And Trophy’s like, ‘No, we’re not going to do that.’ It’s a nice reversal sometimes when your real life is so full of caution for your children.”
But Annie and Trophy aren’t the only mother-daughter duo getting emotionally confusing bonding time this season.
“I did want to give Baba a bit more screen time this season,” notes Levy. “We had a line, when Baba and Trophy go to jail, where Baba tells Trophy, ‘You always pretty to me.’ That was a line that really touched Alissa.”
Nutting inserts, “I’m tearing up right now.”
Levy continues, “We also get to see the influence of this relationship on Annie when Trophy and Annie become trapped in a discount store and the episode unpacks the generational trauma of mother-daughter shopping trips.”
For most mothers, across the spectrum of experiences and backgrounds, moments of love for one’s child always somehow make their way to the surface, despite any estrangement in the relationship. And that's a beautiful thing about parenting Nutting and Levy say they wanted to infuse into the show. That parental love is something one can’t often escape from, and parents are the better for it.
“In the show, Baba does focus a lot on what Trophy doesn't have going for her, because it's a long list. But that moment of tenderness, where you realize Baba does care about Trophy deep down, and that she’s willing to be vulnerable with her, it lays me out emotionally,” says Nutting. “That’s at the core of this alternative family and all their misadventures. They’re sticking together, even though there's a lot about each other that makes them not want to. Trophy tried to start over by killing herself. But she still ended up right back at home.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
