The Brothers Grunt
The Brothers Grunt is an adult animated comedy television series, and the earliest series made by Ed, Edd n Eddy creator Danny Antonucci. It originally aired from August 15, 1994, to April 9, 1995, on MTV. It centers on five humanoids, named Frank, Tony, Bing, Dean and Sammy, who are in search of their lost brother Perry.
The series had a short run and was met with a generally negative reception, with many considering it one of the worst animated TV shows ever made.
Overview
Premise
The series centered on a cast of pale, rubbery, twitchy, yellow-eyed, blue-haired, green-tongued and shirtless humanoids called "The Brothers Grunt" or simply "The Grunts" all of them ostensibly male with prominent bulging varicose veins, generally clumsy and dim-witted, able to bend, twist and contort their bodies into various forms and in their signature attire of boxer shorts and wingtip shoes. Their main food staple is cheese and martinis; nevertheless, they are able to eat other foods.The Grunts' single parent is a large, floating, mute and morbidly obese male humanoid called Gruntus Primus Maximus or simply "The Maximus", often leaking various noxious bodily fluids, to whom they are born as embryos inside skin warts, much in the way of the common Surinam toad. They live in a monastery in an unspecified location in the American wilderness, which the sewers lead to.
A group is formed, composed of five of a group of sextuplets born from the Maximus in a rare occurrence, in a quest to bring back their sixth brother, Perry, who has abandoned his involuntary position of "Chosen One" and is now living the "high life" among human beings.
Due to the Grunts being practically silent characters, whose speech mostly consists of grunts with occasional subtitles, most of the humor relies on physical comedy, particularly the Grunts enduring heaps of physical abuse. In music video segments that are intervened with some episodes, supervised by Kathy Karp, there are additional animated portions of the main characters grunting.
Lore
As shown in the episode "Grunt Moments in History", Grunts' earliest known ancestor was a pale, veiny hippo-like creature called the Gruntus Not Quite Us, which can be presumed to be a relative of the Gruntus Primus Maximus as it is shown birthing Grunts from its back. A prehistoric Grunt called the Neandergrunt had invented the cocktail glass using a cone-shaped bone. An influential Grunt named The 5th of Kevin was born centuries later. While the others fell off the Gruntus Primus Maximus at birth, Kevin remained and lived on the body of the Maximus his whole life. He built the monastery as a safehaven to protect his fellow Grunts, including the Maximus, from human persecution. The Brothers Grunt are therefore not only religious brothers, but biological brothers as well. Not much is known about the Grunt religion other than that it involves the almost monomaniacal reverence, production and eating of cheese, as well as a variety of bizarre rituals overseen by the Gruntus Poobah. As shown in the episode "The Filling of the Shorts", the Grunts' trademark boxer shorts, invented by Brother Wayne, contain massive amounts of cheese stored in some sort of hammerspace pocket.A sporting event is held on occasion called the Grunt Games, as shown in the episode of the same name, including such sports as necktie-folding, sumo, doing a clean and jerk using a giant cheese called the Great Dane before swallowing it whole, diving off the Maximus into a pool of melted cheese, throwing a giant olive into a sandwich, and a relay race involving assembling a martini.
Characters
The main characters were named after famous crooners of the 1950s: Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Perry Como, all voiced by Doug Parker. They are sextuplets, all born from the same wart on the Maximus' skin, a rare occurrence among Grunts.Main
- Frank - constantly bites his lips and cares the most about finding Perry.
- Tony - always faces upward due to his broken neck. In the episode "Cream Style Tony", he becomes popular for speaking his first English word, "corn".
- Bing - the largest of the brothers. Appears the least often and might have been killed off in the episode "To Hell with Bing".
- Dean - smiles constantly and is the most easily distracted of the brothers.
- Sammy - a Grunt who puckers his lips due to his lack of teeth and is in love with a lamp.
- Perry - a hunchbacked Grunt who became the chosen one in the pilot episode, but escaped due to the pressure of such a title.
Major
- The Detective - The series' main antagonist. A balding police detective who chases down the Grunts in a multi-episode story arc after Frank was arrested for swallowing a microphone. He believes the Grunts are insane and is often accused of being insane himself. After visiting places the Grunts had been to before in previous episodes, he finds the monastery and is invited inside. It is unknown what happened after this, but it is known he came out alive and is still investigating the Grunts. He is rarely seen without his coffee mug and occasionally wears a chicken suit.
- Gruntus Poobah - The soft-spoken elder of the Brotherhood of Grunt who serves as the show's narrator and explains the plot before each episode. He also appears often in flashbacks and hallucinations when the grunts are in a situation, giving them advice. He is the only Grunt shown speaking perfect English. He was once a famous poet in the human world who read poems to a beatnik audience, as shown in the episode "Poobah Blues".
- Ringo - the Poobah's mute Middle Eastern assistant who has to carry him around on his back due to his grotesque obesity. He is the only human present in the Grunt Monastery other than formerly Vince. He also gives the Poobah massages and, as shown in the unaired episode "Black Balled Grunt", acts as his muscle.
- The Dıflash Queen's İgnam lamp - A Turkish lamp who becomes Sammy's girlfriend and an honorary member of the Grunts' traveling party in search of Perry.
- The Gruntus Primus Maximus - Otherwise known simply as "The Maximus", he is a floating fat and mute giant and the male parent of the Grunts. All Grunts are born from sweat and warts on his back. The Poobah attends to him, feeding him cheese. Being the single parent of the Grunts, he is also the subject of a "Yo mama" joke in the episode "Black Balled Grunt", specifically "your Maximus wears tennis shoes".
- The Dıflash Queen - A Turkish Queen that appeared in the episode "Scrub Me Sammy".
- The Fifth of Kevin - The founder of the Grunt civilization who appeared in the episode "Grunt Moments in History".
- The Smein - A Nazi German skunk that appears in the lost episode "Hunt for Grunts".
- Krischmäßante - The Smein's best friend skunk.
- Santa Claus - A present-bringer that appears in the lost episode "The Grunts Who Came for Turkey".
- Vince - A human who was raised in the Grunt Monastery that appeared in the unaired episode "Hunt for Grunts". He showed repeated hostility towards the Grunts, even giving them tofu instead of cheese as a prank, and even attempted to lead the Grunts in a coup against the Poobah, until he was finally banished from the monastery.