The constant about kids animated programming is that we almost always see children going to school. From “Hey Arnold!” and “Rocket Power,” we always see them going to school. Heck, eventually “Ed, Edd, and Eddy” began featuring its core cast going to school. What was so fun about “The Weekenders” is that every episode took place during the weekend and only the weekend. Hence, the title. In 1999, Disney helped create the antidote to the wildly popular animated series “Recess,” which centered on kids going to school, and instead focused on a show about a group of friends whose weekends were almost always wild or eventful.
Premiering fifteen years ago to the day, “The Weekenders” is set in fictional Bahia Bay, California, where we meet Tino Tonitini, an eccentric young man raised by a single vegan mom. He survives life by hanging with his three friends Carver, and girls Lor, and Tish. Of course their personalities differ wildly, but they’re incredibly close knit, and find themselves at odds in every episode. The formula of “The Weekenders” is we either meet the group of friends at the beginning or the tail end of a very important weekend. And we’d then spend an episode built around flashbacks, watching them endure havoc for two whole days. You wouldn’t think “The Weekenders” could do much with this idea, but surely enough the show created by Doug Langdale was not only very original, but very funny.
“The Weekenders” often had such sharp and witty writing, every episode ensured a laugh or two. The episodes really managed to creatively work within the frame of a weekend, allowing for a lot of raucous misadventures. In one episode Tino receives two passes to a local concert and has to endure his friends pleading for the ticket, and Carver volunteers as a “Pre-Teen Pal” but is shocked to learn he’s been fired because he simply doesn’t know how to listen to people. One of my favorite episodes involves Lor breaking her leg and having to endure surgery, which understandably frightens her to no end. Her friends come to the rescue, attempting to make the experience easier on her, ad hilarity.
“The Weekenders” garnered a very good cast of voice actors which included Kathy Soucie, Grey DeLisle, Jason Marsden, and Phil Lamarr in the key roles, Marsden playing the lead Tino. The writing is what really made “The Weekenders” stand out among a slew of typical tween oriented dramedies at the time. Creator Langdale helped realize a very unique and interesting world filled with hilarious running gags that made the show so much fun. For one thing the characters always changed clothes in most scenes for every episode, which is unorthodox since almost all animated series feature their characters wearing the same clothes during every single episode.
There was also Tino’s vegan mother who always made him some inedible meal that he’d have to suffer through, the gang’s frequenting the local pizza place that always had a new wacky gimmick to attract customers, and character Lor’s group of older brothers that’d wreak havoc on her whenever an episode revolved around an issue she was dealing with. You also couldn’t help but laugh at Tish’s immigrant parents whom were nice, but often mispronounced their English, resulting in hilarious gags. Disney really worked to make “The Weekenders” the polar opposite to Nickelodeon’s “Rocket Power.” While the latter was loud, fast paced, had stale gimmicks, and was basically pandering to the X-Games crowds, the former really was its own animal.
The animation style was fluid and often pleasing to look at, while the stories were easy to follow but never simple. The characters also were very entertaining and fleshed out but flawed. Which made their obstacles through life hilarious and their pain sympathetic. TV Guide prematurely branded “The Weekenders” the “Pokemon Killer” when it premiered on Disney’s One Saturday Morning to huge ratings. For a while its ratings were better than Pokemon’s. It premiered on “Disney’s One Saturday Morning,” then was shuffled to “Disney’s Sunday One Too,” and carried over to the cable channels “Toon Disney” and “The Disney Channel” to air in syndication.
“The Weekenders” ended in 2002 with a pretty good run of thirty seven episodes with two segments a piece, and lived on in syndication for a while. It’s a shame the DVD sets cost so damn much or I’d be watching them everyday. Thankfully the episodes can be found on Youtube if with enough determination. The series just hasn’t lost its comic edge and timing, with much of the unusual and original animation really working to the attempted comic tone. It’s a shame “The Weekenders” never became much beyond a TV show once aired on ABC in America. It’s a show deserving of a reboot and a definite revival, if only to see if Tino and Lor ever got together. Fifteen years later, it’s still a blast.