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The Boondocks
Genre	Animation Comedy
Created by	Aaron McGruder
Voices of	Regina King John Witherspoon Cedric Yarbrough Gary Anthony Williams Jill Talley
Theme music composer	Asheru
Country of origin	United States
Language(s)	English
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	25 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Aaron McGruder Reginald Hudlin Rodney Barnes
Producer(s)	Brian J. Cowan
Running time	22 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	Adult Swim
Original run	November 6, 2005 – present
External links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Common rating
Australia	MA15+
Canada	18+
United States	TV-MA

The Boondocks is an American animated television series created by Aaron McGruder for the Adult Swim programming block of Turner Broadcasting's Cartoon Network, based upon McGruder's comic strip of the same name. The Boondocks is a social satire of American culture and race, revolving around the lives of the Freeman family – ten-year-old Huey, his younger brother Riley, and their grandfather, Robert. The series is produced by Rebel Base in association with Sony Pictures Television and is currently airing its second season on Adult Swim.

The Boondocks takes place in the same place and time frame as its comic counterpart. The Freeman family, having recently transplanted themselves from the South Side of Chicago to the peaceful, fictional suburb of Woodcrest, find different ways to cope with this acute change in setting as well as the drastically different suburban cultures and lifestyles to which they are exposed. The perspective offered by this mixture of cultures, lifestyles, and races provides for much of the comedy on which the series plays.

The TV-MA-rated satire premiered on November 6, 2005. The fifteen-episode first season ended on March 19, 2006. The second season premiered on October 8, 2007 and is expected to consist of twenty episodes.

Contents 1 Origins 2 Characters 3 Animation 4 Reception 5 Episodes 6 References 7 External links

The Boondocks began its life as a comic strip in The Diamondback, the student newspaper at McGruder's alma mater, University of Maryland, College Park. The strip later found its way into The Source magazine. Following these runs, McGruder began simultaneously pitching The Boondocks both as a syndicated comic strip and as an animated television series. ^[1] The former goal was met first, and The Boondocks debuted in newspapers in April 1999.

In the meantime, development on a Boondocks TV series continued. Aaron McGruder and film producer/director Reginald Hudlin created a Boondocks pilot for the Fox Network, but found great difficulty in making the series acceptable for network television. Hudlin left the project after the Fox deal fell through, although McGruder and Sony Television are contractually bound to continue to credit him as an executive producer.^[2]

Because of the long turnaround time required for each episode as well as a desire to appeal to a wider audience,^{[citation needed]} The Boondocks avoids controversial and topical subject matters for more sitcom-esque tropes, with occasional reference to the running theme black unity regardless of the character, regardless of their flaws.

The series has dramatically changed focus, with Granddad and Riley as the show's main characters and Huey (who was the main character during the comic strip's run) reduced to providing each episode's narration and generally playing the role of the put-upon straight man in contrast towards Granddad and Riley's characters. Also, the show has outright omitted the character of Caesar (Huey's best friend), in favor of introducing a new character Uncle Ruckus, a self-hating black man/jack-of-all-trades who constantly uses racist slurs towards black people while preaching of white superiority.

The series itself has very much loose connection with the continuity of the comic strip, though during the final year of the comic strip McGruder made a point to try and synchronize both via introducing Ruckus into the strip as well as phasing out Riley's comic strip design in favor for the character design from the cartoon, through a month-long storyline involving Riley receiving a make-over, which included cornrows.

Since the show premiered, McGruder has halted work on the Boondocks comic strip and declared the cartoon show to be the franchise's official canon.

Main article: List of the Boondocks characters

Huey Freeman is the series' narrator (with rare exceptions). He is a ten-year-old black radical and intellectual who is portrayed as the voice of reason and a spokesperson for contemporary Afrocentrism. However, he is constantly being verbally browbeaten and generally mocked by his grandfather and his younger brother Riley, neither of whom share his beliefs.

Riley Freeman, Huey's trouble-making eight-year-old brother, is heavily influenced by gangsta rap and is a general representation of misguided black youth. The bulk of the episodes of the series focus on Riley's misadventures (most of which are fueled by his love for gangsta rap and desire to emulate other street characters in the media) or his various wild schemes involving his grandfather.

Robert Freeman aka Grandad, is the grandfather and legal guardian of Huey and Riley. While he loves his two grandkids, he sometimes gets bent out of shape in response to the constant schemes, misadventures and commentary the two provide on life. Robert himself is no stranger to weirdness, as he has an affinity for women, but usually ends up biting off more than he can chew in that department.

Main article: List of The Boondocks episodes

Like the comic strip, the show is influenced by McGruder's love of Japanese animation.^[3] He cites Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo as sources of inspiration for fight scenes.^[4] The second season features segments animated by Japanese animation studio Madhouse.^[5] As a result, the second season of the series has more detailed animation as well as minor updates for most of the character designs, but the lip synch remains the same.

Aaron has defended the show's heavy and at times gratuitous use of the word "nigga", by arguing that the large-scale usage of the word provides the show with a level of realism, due to the fact that the word is commonly used in the everyday conversations of some African Americans.^[6]

In 2006, Reverend Al Sharpton protested Martin Luther King's use of the word in the episode "Return of the King". Sharpton felt it defaced the name of Martin Luther King, and sought an apology from the series producers. The controversy was later referenced in the cartoon strip five times and in the TV episode "The Block is Hot" in the form of a morning radio announcement. According to an article in The Washington Post, references to Rosa Parks were removed from one of the series' completed episodes within a week of her death.^[7] In the second episode, "The Trial of Robert Kelly", Parks was originally outside the courtroom protesting Kelly when she was hit with a large piece of fried chicken. The scene appears as a deleted scene in the season one DVD set.

In spite of this criticism, the show has garnered praise from critics. Critic Jeffrey M. Anderson of the San Francisco Examiner said "Each episode is beautifully crafted, with an eye on lush, shadowy visuals and a pulsing, jazz-like rhythm... the show is almost consistently funny, consistently brilliant, and, best of all, compulsively watchable." ^[8]

On January 2006, The Boondocks was nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series at the 37th NAACP Image Awards, alongside The Bernie Mac Show, winner Everybody Hates Chris, Girlfriends, and Half & Half.

As of 18 November 2007, it has a 72% rating on MetaCritic, based on 21 reviews.^[9]

List of The Boondocks episodes

• The Boondocks official website
• Adult Swim's Boondocks page

v • d • e The Boondocks
Creator	Aaron McGruder
Media	Comic strip · TV series (Episode list)
Series Directors	Seung Eun Kim · Anthony Bell · Kalvin Lee · Joe Horne · Sean Song
Characters	Huey Freeman · Riley Freeman · Robert Freeman · (List of Characters) Dubois Family · Michael Caesar · Uncle Ruckus · Ed Wuncler, Sr. · Ed Wuncler III and Gin Rummy  · A Pimp Named Slickback  · Colonel H. Stinkmeaner
Quotations	TV Series · Comic Strip