Chowder (TV series)

Chowder is an American comedy animated television series created by C. H. Greenblatt for Cartoon Network. It premiered on November 2, 2007. The series follows an aspiring young boy named Chowder and his day-to-day adventures as an apprentice in Chef Mung Daal's catering company. Although he means well, Chowder often finds himself in predicaments due to his perpetual appetite and his nature as a scatterbrain. Chowder's guidance in his goal to become a master chef is influenced by Mung's wife, Truffles; Mung's assistant Shnitzel; Mung's rival Endive; her apprentice Panini, who has a perpetual crush on Chowder; as well as other side characters.

Chowder ran for three seasons with a total of 49 episodes. It received mostly positive reviews, as well as one Primetime Emmy Award win, six Annie Award nominations, and two additional Emmy Award nominations during its run. The series finale, "Chowder Grows Up", aired on August 7, 2010.

Plot
The series revolves around the titular Chowder, who works as an apprentice to chef Mung Daal at his catering company. Though he is lighthearted and carefree, Chowder's actions habitually land him in circumstances beyond his control, partly due to his large appetite and absent-mindedness. Mung and his wife Truffles, Mung's rock monster employee Schnitzel, and Chowder's gaseous pet Kimchi all try to aid Chowder in his ambitions to become a great chef, but frequently find themselves undermined by the calamitous antics that ensue. Chowder is also undermined by Panini, a girl who has an unrequited love for Chowder, going so far as to say that he is her boyfriend despite the pair not actually dating.

Characters
Each character is named after a type of food or dish.

Main

 * Chowder (voiced by Nicky Jones): A chubby purple cat-bear-rabbit hybrid who serves as an apprentice under the chef Mung Daal, Chowder lives with him and his wife, Truffles, in a room at the top of the catering business. Chowder wants to become a great chef, but he is very impulsive and scatterbrained and often gives in to his urges. He has a large appetite and eats anything, even a customer's order. Chowder can also regurgitate objects, and he is used as a storage container by the other characters. According to Greenblatt, he is a composite of a cat, a bear, and a rabbit, and his species was verified in at least one episode. C. H. Greenblatt voiced his adult self in the last episode.
 * Mung Daal (voiced by Dwight Schultz): The elderly chef who runs the catering company at which Chowder works. He serves as his cooking master. Although his exact age has not been stated, he has mentioned that he has cooked for at least 386 years, and he celebrated 450 years of marriage to Truffles. He likes to impress ladies to the point where as a child apprentice, he prepared a dish incorrectly due to becoming distracted. He is a light blue-colored humanoid with an oversized nose, ears, and a white mustache. He is named after the Indian dish mung daal. Greenblatt had originally planned to give Mung an Indian accent, but later decided against it.
 * Truffles (voiced by Tara Strong): A mushroom pixie/fairy and Mung Daal's wife who handles the business side of Mung's catering business. She is an extreme choleric. Greenblatt said that he based Truffles on his mother. Greenblatt said that he initially found difficulty in working on any story with Truffles since the character could be "so abrasive" that the Chowder staff had to be "a little more sensitive about finding her softer side." Greenblatt said that the staff eventually decided that "a little Truffles goes a long way." Therefore, she would appear occasionally in Chowder in a manner similar to how Oscar the Grouch appears on Sesame Street.
 * Shnitzel (voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson in "The Froggy Apple Crumple Thumpkin", and John DiMaggio afterward ): A taupe rock monster and professional chef who works at Mung Daal's Catering Company. His vocabulary consists almost entirely of "radda", although he sometimes says other simple words. Shnitzel is the "straight man" to the other more excitable characters and is frequently agitated. He gets stuck with menial labor or cleanup duty, as well as heavy lifting because he is incredibly strong.
 * Panini (voiced by Liliana Mumy): A pink cat-bear-rabbit hybrid who has a crush on Chowder and reminds him at every opportunity. Chowder does not return her feelings and responds with "I'm not your boyfriend!" whenever she greets him. Panini is an apprentice to Ms. Endive and is also possessive of Chowder. Panini gets jealous when she sees Chowder with another girl, which causes Chowder to try to avoid her. Her original character concept had her bully Chowder in a manner described by Greenblatt as similar to Angelica Pickles from Rugrats. Greenblatt removed the pointy ears since he felt this did not fit in with the rounded shapes in Chowder. Greenblatt did not like characters similar to Angelica and believed that he needed to make Panini "cuter and sweeter". Greenblatt said that the details of Panini formed when the creator decided that Panini had a crush on Chowder; since Chowder is not old enough to fall in love with females, according to Greenblatt this aspect would frustrate Chowder "in a more fun way".
 * Kimchi (voiced by C. H. Greenblatt): Chowder's pet stink cloud, who lives in a cage next to his bed. Kimchi is an anthropomorphic flatulence cloud (due to the odor of kimchi). He likes things with odors unpleasant for the other characters, and he "talks" by making fart sounds. Kimchi is usually shown with a blank personality but in "Stinky Love" it is shown that he has an opinion.
 * Gazpacho (voiced by Dana Snyder): A woolly mammoth storekeeper who sells strange produce at his fruit stand at a farmer's market. Gazpacho is Chowder's best friend. He does his best to offer advice to Chowder when needed. In "The Spookiest House in Marzipan" it is hinted that Gazpacho has no mother, and that he actually suffers from dissociative identity disorder, but creator Greenblatt says this was merely to "pay homage to Psycho". Gazpacho shows no interest in moving out and improving his own life. Gazpacho's worst enemies are ninjas. Greenblatt named him after the cold soup gazpacho; Greenblatt said that he did not know why, but the name suited the character immediately.
 * Ms. Endive (voiced by Mindy Sterling): An intelligent, and snobbish orange humanoid who teaches cooking to Panini with strict discipline. She is usually depicted as gargantuan in size. She regularly berates Mung, whom she considers a rival. The creator describes her as Martha Stewart with Oompa-Loompa colors. Greenblatt chose to name her after the endive since endive is bitter and Belgian endive is fancy; hence the character is bitter and fancy. Endive's character stayed constant throughout the initial development. The long nose, which changed from a rectangular shape to a triangle shape for the final version, represents how Endive looks down at other characters. It was revealed in later episodes that Ms. Endive is in love with Shnitzel. Greenblatt said that her evolution throughout the series was fun to observe, especially when William Reiss wrote plots involving Endive.
 * Gorgonzola (voiced by Will Shadley): A young green rat apprentice candle holder. He shows jealousy towards Chowder because Chowder has a better job than him. Because blue cheese was one of the few foods Greenblatt disliked, he decided to use the name "gorgonzola" for a character who did not get along with Chowder. Gorgonzola wears tattered brown clothes and no shoes and has a partially melted candle on his head (for traditional reasons). He is desperate to get cash and will do almost anything to get it. Despite his unpleasant and boastful attitude to Chowder, Chowder sees him as a close friend, which irritates him even more. Gorgonzola is an apprentice to Stilton, who is a candle holder, hence why both characters have burning candles on their heads.

Recurring

 * Kiwi (voiced by C. H. Greenblatt) is a photorealistic pink creature who always gives advice to Chowder and his friends and occasionally provides interstitial narrations, especially at times where particularly corny humor is displayed.
 * Ceviche (voiced by Elan Garfias): A young yellow (and somewhat androgynous) goat apprentice to Paté and Panini's best friend. He practices aerobic-style dancing and is very charitable and kind to others. Because of his admirable attitude, amazing talents, and good looks, he is well-liked. He is good friends with Panini and will make unwanted advances upon her, which are either refused or unnoticed. Ceviche is also a close friend to Chowder. He speaks in a monotonous voice and serves as deadpan humor for the show.
 * Paté (voiced by John DiMaggio): A tall, well-sculpted humanoid ballet dance master and operatic singer with a deep voice, grass-green hair, a small black hat, and exaggerated lips who is the mentor of Ceviche.
 * Chestnut (originally voiced by Tone Loc, then John DiMaggio): A tiny, blue horned imp with a beard. He has a deep, gravelly voice and, to many character's surprises, is physically very strong. Because of his size, he uses everyday objects as other things. He sings small songs to himself, usually consisting of his catchphrase of "Dinka-loo, Dinka-lee." He is the teacher of the BLTs, a parody of the SATs. He always refers to himself in the third person when speaking.
 * Reuben (voiced by Paul Reubens): A rather vulgar pig who is a conman and likes to steals from others. He has a large liking for sandwiches, most likely taken from the fact he is named after a type of sandwich.
 * Mr. Fugu (voiced by Bob Joles): A sentient floating balloon who is said to be Mung's most frequent customer. He is proven to be more greedy than Chowder and never shares any food with him. He is often seen with his valet, Foie Gras, a Maneki-neko (meows provided by George Takei) holding Mr. Fugu's string as he cannot control his flotation due to his kind being a balloon.
 * Sgt. Hoagie (voiced by Diedrich Bader): He is a dog who is a police officer in Marzipan City. In "The Hot Date", he was going out on a date after several years and asked the other cops for advice.

Development
During his time working on Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants, Greenblatt had been sketching various characters for his own animation series concept. Greenblatt originally based the premise on the idea of the sorcerer's apprentice style of story, such as The Sword in the Stone. The plot devices were modified so that the story revolves around a master chef who teaches his young apprentice how to cook. Chowder himself was developed with no specific species in mind, but rather with the intentions of invoking the image of a child's soft squeeze toy. Some of the inspiration comes from Dr. Seuss, with other inspiration from Saturday morning cartoons.

Greenblatt pitched the concept to Cartoon Network in the mid-2000s when he began working as a writer and storyboard artist for The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, and two years later the series was approved with another year for production before the pilot episode aired. Greenblatt estimates he spent about seven years working on Chowder before the show made it to air in 2007. Chowder was animated by Hong Ying Animation.

Format
Episodes are produced in seasons which consist of twenty 24-minute episodes. Each episode is produced with a 30-second puppet sequence that is meant to run over the ending credits. Episodes can be purchased from the iTunes Store in the United States which are delivered with the sequences as are episodes which are available on Cartoon Network's VOD website also within the United States.

One of the unusual design features of the show is the patterns used on the clothing or players. The patterns are developed as a full-screen image and then sent to the production house, where the characters are modified to fill the patterns in over the character clothing. Using this technique, when a character moves, their patterns do not follow, but display as a "static" background. A similar technique was used in the Monkey Island video game series (particularly for the character Stan), the Nickelodeon series The Off-Beats, and the Mr. Bean animated series.

The show is also known for the very wide variety of media used in various episodes. These include animation using watercolors and ink-and-paint in addition to the cartoon's classic pattern style. It also uses stop motion animation with real food, action figures, and clay; live-action scenes with the voice actors of the show and puppets; both marionette and hand-controlled. This was also sometimes used in Courage the Cowardly Dog. It boasts one of the most diverse varieties of mediums used in any single series.

Cancellation
Chowder was canceled by Cartoon Network in August 2009, as the network felt the show did not fit its new demographic of older boys, favoring shows such as the live-action Destroy Build Destroy instead. On his blog, C. H. Greenblatt expressed relief about having his schedule freed up by the cancellation, saying: "I didn't really think there'd be this many upsides to having a show officially canceled by a network, but I'm feeling happier than I've been in a long time. Since we've only got post-production, my schedule finally eases up. I haven't had a break like this in a long, long time... Chowder has opened up a lot of awesome possibilities for me, and creatively I'm feeling more inspired than ever."

Home media
The entire series has been released in ten Region 3 fullscreen DVD volumes in Thailand from MVD Company Limited. Every episode of Chowder is also available on the iTunes Store.

Critical response
Chowder received mostly positive reviews. Barry Garron of The Hollywood Reporter thought that the show would appeal to children and adults alike, using exotic artwork, unusual settings, and a zany cast of characters. On Toon Zone, Ed Liu expands on the animation and crazy antics of the characters, pointing that "the humor is kid-friendly without being juvenile" and praising it for getting laughs, "without resorting to an excess of toilet humor, even if Chowder's pet happens to be a sentient fart cloud." Aaron H. Bynum on Animation Insider wrote, "Featuring brightly colored environments, stylishly matted/fixed background artwork and humorously designed characters with unique personalities to boot, Chowder is one of the network's largest creative accomplishments in recent years."

Cultural impact
In 2019, American rapper Lil Nas X released a song entitled "Panini", which was named after the Chowder character of the same name, and later made a music video for the remix of his song featuring characters from Chowder. Although Greenblatt was not involved in the production of the music video, he did praise the video on his Tumblr blog.