Writer-performer Scott Adsit appears in a pair of TV shows that seem disparate, but actually have a lot in common: They're both critical successes without big audiences. While NBC's madcap 30 Rock won the Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy two years in a row (the second season was released on DVD October 7; creator Tina Fey pleaded for a larger audience during her acceptance speech last month), the increasingly dark, parable-filled, Dino Stamatopoulos-created stop-motion-animated Moral Orel—for which Adsit provides a voice in addition to serving as a writer, co-executive producer and occasional director—is being axed from Cartoon Network's Adult Swim lineup. 30 Rock's third season is slated to première on October 30; Moral Orel's third season kicked off earlier this month. Before its season launched, Adsit talked to The A.V. Club about his role on both programs, Iggy Pop's urine, playing the straight man, and how his work is tearing apart at least one American family.
The A.V. Club: The back of the first-season Moral Orel DVD has an e-mail from Adult Swim Vice President Mike Lazzo three years ago about how much he loves the show. He calls it a "masterpiece of American humor" and one of the best series he's ever seen in his life. Now it's being canceled.
Scott Adsit: By Mike Lazzo.
AVC: What happened?
SA: He felt that it was getting a little too soulful, a little too serious. I think the word he might have used is "depressing." It was not just the silly little puppet show anymore. It was kind of naughty for the insomniac potheads who were the target demographic. It was evolving into something a little more heartfelt. It was developing a soul, essentially.
AVC: That's how Adult Swim sees their audience? As insomniac potheads?
SA: I can't speak for them, but yes.
AVC: Since the show's run was cut short, did you have to adapt its intended trajectory?
SA: Well, our grand scheme was, over five seasons, to evolve these little puppets into the most realistic people on television. We were gonna bring in Orel's [paternal] grandfather, and he would become a resident in the house, and kind of a different voice, because he was someone who you'll see in the episode called "Passing." He's terminal. And it's Orel dealing with the idea of death and afterlife and a different voice—a voice of reason, because his father kind of gave up on God when his mother died.
AVC: It's certainly a polarizing show. William Salyers from the show posted on the Adult Swim message board saying you had a blow-up with your sister and family over Moral Orel. Is that true? What happened?
SA: [Laughs.] I did, yeah. In the first season, we—I made the mistake of showing her and some of her friends the pastry-bag episode, where Orel impregnates a bunch of neighborhood women. And they're all very good Christians. Very not-hypocritical. They do religion right. 'Cause the show is not against religion: It's against mistreating religion or using it for your own ends and convenience and bending the lessons of religion to suit what you already believe. So my sister and her friends are Christians—not exclusively. But she's got a lot of Christian friends, and she's a devout person who goes to church every week. And she's also the coolest person I know. And she's raising her kids really, really well. So she's someone that makes it work and isn't hypocritical.
I showed her the thing, and they were all just kind of silent afterward, and they didn't know what to say. And I was kind of nodding with my eyebrows up, going, "Eh? Eh?" It was a happy party going on until then, and they all kind of shuffled out.
And later I went back to California and had a discussion with my sister on the phone about it, and she just did not like the idea that we were portraying Christians the way we were—as if all Christians were like that. And I was defending the show and saying "This is about hypocrites, it's not about not Christians." And she just did not feel that way at all. She was insulted, and I kept defending the show and that just led to a huge argument.
And usually my sister and I don't argue at all, and we get along just fantastically. So this was a very odd occurrence, and we hung up after the first argument without resolving it. And then we called again the next day to bury the hatchet, and it started up again. And we just were yelling at each other.
AVC: So what you're saying is that Moral Orel is tearing families apart.
SA: [Laughs.] Well one, anyway. No one else is watching it.
So we had three conversations [when] we were yelling at each other. And I think at the end of the third one, I said "My family is more important than the show." And so I told her I'd quit, and I went in the next day and I quit. And [writer and creator] Dino [Stamatopoulos] and [executive producer] Nick [Weidenfeld] tried to convince me not to. And I said "This is family over the show, obviously. I mean, otherwise what are we learning from the show? The show's about how important family should be, and how it's mistreated." So I had to go. [Laughs.]
A few days later, my sister and I just decided she was proud that I was doing something, and that I was on the air, and all that. So she said, "Let's just not talk about it." So that's what we did. We stopped talking about it.
AVC: When Moral Orel started, it was relatively innocent and silly, but the third season is considerably darker. Why did it turn in that direction?
SA: Well, Dino just—that's the way he writes. He eventually has to write what's in his heart. And quite often, the art is guiding him. He has, in his scripts, especially for season three, turned this little puppet show into what I consider to be a true work of art, because it's heartfelt.
He'll write an episode and not know what the hell it's about. It'll flow out of him, and by the time we shoot and edit it, it'll make sense. But he didn't know what it was until he could see it, step back from it, you know?
AVC: Even on commentaries on the first-season DVD, Dino talks about wanting to rename the show Moralton by season five, and focusing on the other townspeople. How much of that vision did you get to carry out?
SA: Yeah, and we do focus on some, what were minor characters in the first and second seasons, and expanding little moments. A sideways glance—we expand that into an entire episode, explain what's behind that sideways glance. So there are characters that show up very briefly in seasons one and two that get entire episodes. It's kind of like The Simpsons; they eventually were expanding it into the entire town beyond the family.
AVC: Where did you see the show going beyond there?
SA: Well, for me—I won't speak for Dino, but I'll say that for me, I wanted to evolve Orel from the innocent guy who wants to believe his authority figures are right about everything they say into a fully evolved human being. We would take him on a journey from what he is in season one, essentially: just kind of informed, self-aware, and skeptical, but happy. But then it would be his journey. And also, I guess that journey would then have an effect on his parents and his brother and his grandfather. And hopefully watch everybody change because that's dynamic and more interesting. For us, anyway.
AVC: Perhaps for the audience as well, if they aren't too sleepy or stoned?
SA: [Laughs.] Exactly. Well, most sitcoms and cartoons, especially, you can rely on, because they go back to square one at the beginning of every episode. We weren't writing that.
AVC: So was America not ready for Moral Orel, or was it just the network executives?
SA: [Laughs.] That would be great to say. I don't know if it's true. I think if America knew about Morel Orel, they might be ready for it. But I think Adult Swim was very good to us, and Lazzo's the one who put the axe down on it, but only because it was depressing him to read the scripts. He got back season three, and he tells us it's his favorite thing he's ever put on Cartoon Network. It just doesn't suit the audience that Adult Swim has. That's why we got cancelled.
AVC: So this is it for Moral Orel? Because they own the rights to it, you can't really continue with it afterward, right?
SA: That's right, yeah. And, well, he did say we might be able to have a couple of movies on the network, like hourlong Moral Orel movies. But I doubt we'll do it. We did put a little bow on it. I mean, there's plenty more stories to tell. But, you know, everything's in storage. We're lazy people. And we're also working on new stuff now, anyway. Dino and I and several other guys are writing a new show that Adult Swim hopes to put on. We'll see if they like it enough to put it on, but they really want to.
AVC: Can you go into it at all, or is it too early?
SA: Ah, I better not.
AVC: Moral Orel originally started as a project with Iggy Pop. Has he surfaced at all to comment on the show?
SA: Oh yeah, that's right. Dino had written a sitcom where Iggy is just Iggy Pop, but he says the lines of the 12-year-old boy in the family. I don't know if he can surface. I'm not sure he's aware of which way the surface is. Yeah, Dino had a meeting with him, and it didn't go well, I think. [Laughs.] He was in an altered state at the time.
AVC: It's tough to imagine Iggy Pop in a meeting.
SA: Yeah, exactly. Dino thought he could, and he was wrong. And so that fell apart. So he kept the script and that became the "Waste" episode. It was going to be Iggy Pop drinking his own urine, or selling it, anyway.
AVC: Which probably wouldn't be a stretch for him.
SA: [Laughs.] Yeah. That's what he said at the meeting. [As Iggy Pop.] "Been there."
AVC: The series premièred with the first-season finale. Why has the running order for the show not been followed for broadcast? The third season's running order is also unusual.
SA: Oh, it got all screwed up from day one. They wanted to première at Christmastime, and we had a Christmas episode already done. We'd established the tone [with earlier episodes], and then the Christmas episode started fucking with the tone. It became a drama with, you know, [John] Cassavetes, and just sad. It was a very sad episode. And that was the first thing that anybody saw, and I think they were intrigued and excited to see a show that was stop-motion and looked different than anything else on the network. And they tuned in in masses, and most of them decided "This is not a show that is funny," and they stopped watching from day one. [Laughs.] I'll say the less-discriminating people tuned in again and started laughing and watched it all the way through, and then watched the Christmas episode again and realized its context and how it could be not just funny, but kind of inspired. [Laughs.] I'm just really proud of Orel, and it is clunky and awkward at times, but in the center of it, it's a very spiritual show. It didn't have any worse ratings than anybody else. Lazzo just didn't think it fit in with everything else.
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