Dexter's Laboratory
Dexter's Laboratory is an American animated science fiction television series created by Genndy Tartakovsky for Cartoon Network. The series follows Dexter, an enthusiastic boy-genius with a science laboratory in his bedroom, which he keeps secret from his unsuspecting parents. Dexter is at constant odds with his older and more extraverted sister Dee Dee, who regularly accesses the laboratory and inadvertently foils his experiments. Mandark, a nefarious boy-genius classmate who lives next-door to Dexter, attempts to undermine him at every opportunity. Prominently featured in the first and second seasons are other segments focusing on superhero-based characters Monkey, Dexter's pet lab-monkey with a superhero alter ego, and the Justice Friends, a trio of superheroes who share an apartment.
Tartakovsky pitched the series to Fred Seibert's animated shorts showcase What a Cartoon! at Hanna-Barbera, basing it on student films he produced at the California Institute of the Arts. Four pilots aired on Cartoon Network and TNT from 1995 to 1996. Viewer approval ratings led to a half-hour series, which consisted of two seasons totaling 52 episodes, airing from April 27, 1996, to June 15, 1998. Dexter's Laboratory was the first original series for the channel under the Cartoon Cartoons moniker. On December 10, 1999, a television film titled Dexter's Laboratory: Ego Trip aired as the intended series finale, after which Tartakovsky focused his work on another series for Cartoon Network, Samurai Jack.
In February 2001, the series was renewed for two seasons, which began airing on November 18, 2001. Due to Tartakovsky's departure, Chris Savino served as showrunner, and a new team at Cartoon Network Studios produced the series. After 26 episodes, the fourth season concluded on November 20, 2003, ending the series.
Dexter's Laboratory became one of Cartoon Network's most successful original series. It won three Annie Awards, with nominations for four Primetime Emmy Awards, four Golden Reel Awards, and nine other Annie Awards. Animators Craig McCracken, Seth MacFarlane, Butch Hartman, Paul Rudish, and Rob Renzetti worked on the series and later achieved further success in their careers in animation. Spin-off media include children's books, comic books, DVD and VHS releases, music albums, toys, and video games.
Premise
Characters
Dexter is a bespectacled boy-genius who, behind a bookcase in his bedroom, conceals a vast secret laboratory, which can be accessed by spoken passwords or hidden switches on his bookshelf. Though highly intelligent, Dexter often fails to achieve his goals when he becomes overexcited and careless. Tartakovsky described Dexter as "a good kid. He's very ambitious. And he's very frustrated that everyone isn't as smart as him." Although he comes from a typical American family, Dexter speaks with an accent of indeterminate origin. Christine Cavanaugh described it as "an affectation, kind of accent, we're not quite sure. A small Peter Lorre, but not. Perhaps he's Latino, perhaps he's French. He's a scientist; he knows he needs kind of accent." Genndy Tartakovsky explained, "he's a scientist. All scientists are foreign and have accents...It's not really a German accent. It's just Eastern European." Tartakovsky later declared Cavanaugh's input for Dexter to be irreplaceable as he acknowledged her legacy.Dexter conceals his lab from his clueless parents, addressed only as Mom and Dad, who Tartakovsky described as simplified stereotypes of "ideal parents". His hyperactive, carefree, older sister Dee Dee delights in playing haphazardly in the laboratory, wreaking havoc with Dexter's inventions. Though seemingly dim-witted, Dee Dee, a talented ballet dancer, often outsmarts her brother and even provides him helpful advice. According to Tartakovsky, "Dee Dee is the life, she's the spirit, everything is fun. There's no hardship in life." When Tartakovsky was asked whether he and his brother Alex had a similar sibling relationship, he stated, "There's a little bit of Dee Dee and Dexter in that. He has science and he doesn't want Dee Dee in his lab. My brother is Dexter. I'm Dee Dee."
Dexter's nemesis is rival classmate Mandark Astronomonov. Like Dexter, Mandark is a boy genius with his own laboratory, but his schemes are generally evil and designed to gain power or downplay or destroy Dexter's accomplishments. In revival seasons, Mandark becomes significantly more evil, becoming Dexter's enemy rather than his rival, and Mandark's laboratory changes from brightly lit with rounded features to gothic-looking, industrial, and angular. Mandark's unrequited love for Dee Dee is shown as a pivotal weakness, notably near the end of the Ego Trip television film.
Recurring segments
Every Dexter's Laboratory episode, with the exception of "Last But Not Beast", is divided into different stories or segments, each being 7–12 minutes long. Occasionally, a segment centers on characters other than Dexter and his family. Two segments are shown primarily during season 1: Dial M for Monkey and The Justice Friends. Dial M for Monkey is the middle segment for six episodes of season 1, and The Justice Friends takes its place until season 1's end. With rare exception, extra segments do not appear after season 1. Other recurring characters include Puppet Pal Mitch and Puppet Pal Clem.''Dial M for Monkey''
Dial M for Monkey follows Monkey, Dexter's pet laboratory monkey who is secretly a crime-fighting superhero. Monkey's superpowers include super-strength, telekinesis, flight, and super speed. He is joined by his partner Agent Honeydew, Commander General, and a team of assembled superheroes. Dial M for Monkey was created by Genndy Tartakovsky, Craig McCracken, and Paul Rudish.''The Justice Friends''
The Justice Friends follows Major Glory, Valhallen, and the Infraggable Krunk, a trio of superhero roommates residing in an apartment called Muscular Arms. Their adventures deal less with superhero life and more with an inability to agree with each other; it is presented much like a sitcom, including a laugh track. Genndy Tartakovsky's inspiration for The Justice Friends came from reading Marvel Comics while learning how to speak English. In a 2001 IGN interview, Tartakovsky expressed disappointment with how The Justice Friends turned out, saying, "it could have been funnier and the characters could have been fleshed out more."Production
Background
Genndy Tartakovsky, the creator of Dexter's Laboratory, was born in Moscow, where his father, a dentist, served in the government of the Soviet Union. Although relatively wealthy and well-connected, his family feared racial persecution due to their Jewish heritage and moved from Russia to Chicago when Tartakovsky was seven. Along with his older brother, Alex, Tartakovsky learned English by watching cartoons and taught himself how to draw as a child by copying comic books.Tartakovsky initially went to Columbia College Chicago to study advertising and took an animation class as an elective. After he transferred to the California Institute of the Arts in 1990 to study animation full-time, Tartakovsky wrote, directed, animated, and produced two student short films, one of which was a precursor to Dexter's Laboratory
After Batman, Tartakovsky moved back to California to work for Hanna-Barbera on the production team of 2 Stupid Dogs. His co-workers on that series, Craig McCracken, Rob Renzetti, and Paul Rudish, had been classmates of his at Cal Arts and went on to collaborate with him on Dexter's Laboratory. Tartakovsky's last job before developing Dexter's Laboratory into a television series was to serve as a sheet timer on The Critic. During his time on that series, Tartakovsky received a phone call from Larry Huber, who had been a producer on 2 Stupid Dogs. Huber had shown Tartakovsky's unfinished student film to a then-nascent Cartoon Network and wanted Tartakovsky to develop the concept into a seven-minute storyboard.
Development
Unhappy with his position on The Critic, Tartakovsky accepted Huber's proposal, and the resulting project, "Changes", was produced as part of Cartoon Network's animation showcase series, World Premiere Toons, debuting on February 26, 1995. Viewers worldwide voted through phone lines, websites, focus groups, and consumer promotions for their favorite short cartoons; Dexter's Laboratory was the first of 16 to earn that vote of approval. Mike Lazzo, then-head of programming for Cartoon Network, said in 1996 that it was his favorite of the 48 shorts that had been produced by that point, commenting that he and colleagues "loved the humor in the brother-versus-sister relationship".Even after "Changes" premiered, Tartakovsky had no expectations that it would lead to an entire series. In 2018, he noted that his generation was the first in which people could become showrunners at a young age, saying, "Everybody before us were in their forties, at least, and so was a very different way to do something where we had no clue what we were doing and we were just trying to make each other laugh." When Dexter's Laboratory received a series greenlight, Tartakovsky became, at age twenty-seven, one of the youngest animation directors of that era. Speaking with the Los Angeles Times in 2002, Tartakovsky remarked about the network, "With Cartoon Network, they were looking for more undiscovered talent, people that may have had a hard time getting in.It became a great opportunity to do something. And as I got into it, I realized that they were also offering the creative freedom. They were letting the creators make the shows."
In August 1995, Turner ordered six half-hour episodes of Dexter's Laboratory, which included two cartoons of one spin-off segment titled Dial M for Monkey. In addition to Tartakovsky, McCracken, Renzetti, and Rudish, directors and writers on Dexter's Laboratory included Seth MacFarlane, Butch Hartman, John McIntyre, Robert Alvarez, and Chris Savino. McCracken served as an art director on the series. Perlmutter described McCracken's role on Dexter's Laboratory as that of Tartakovsky's "effective second-in-command".