 What's the first thing you think of when you hear the opening of this song? For some of you, it might be a callback to your angst years or a terrible reminder of the 2000s But for some of you, especially Canadians, it should be an instant callback to a mature animated comedy TV show called Undergrads This show was the reason why I stayed up late watching Teletune as a teenager I started watching this show when I was in high school Which was about two years after its one and only season was released and I can say without a doubt I have rewatched this show more than any other show I have ever seen in my entire life This show was a huge source of humor and quotes between my friends all throughout high school and well into post-secondary While the show did give me a completely Misconstrued ideology of what post-secondary life would be like the characters the jokes and the concept of friendship and camaraderie Have never left me now like most fans of the show We only know the story that we got from the behind-the-scenes features on the DVD in short show creator Pete Williams won a contest with MTV's animation department to create a new IP for them But that barely scratches the surface of how this show came to be Pete Williams was a massive fan of animation Even from an early age so his parents got him a monthly subscription to animation magazine This magazine hosted many contests of which Williams always participated in even though he never won one But that never stopped him from trying over and over as it wasn't the prizes that he was after but the possibility of being noticed By industry veterans after finishing his first term at NYU film school in 1997 He came home during semester break to find his mother telling him about another nationwide contest being run by MTV called the character screen test Entry now some of you may not remember but MTV actually used to be home to more than just mindless reality shows Aside from music videos They had a collection of animated shows like the max liquid television the head and more Williams actually wasn't too interested in the contest at first Wanting instead to hang out with his three best friends However in the final three days before returning to school had the insistence of his mother He decided to give it a try and sketched out for crudely exaggerated Illustrations of his best friends and himself along with a two-minute script. He drafted up in an hour He created his short entry called the click now Williams even admits that perhaps he was a little too on the nose about his friends and their Lifestyles through these characters now if you're gonna base your characters on actual people Make sure you do a better job of disguising them than I did Because it can really land you in hot water When the real-life people you base them on are too happy especially if you paint them in a negative light Fortunately for me. I have very understanding and forgiving friends But in the beginning none of them were too pleased with my portrayals of them Williams gave in his submission and continued on with school It wasn't until three months later that he got a call from his mom who played a recorded message on her answering machine from the president of the MTV animation department informing Williams that he had won the contest By default his entry was one of 15 total and Williams was the only one who had correctly followed the rules But he didn't care he had won and being only 18 years old Williams was incredibly ambitious But he truly had no idea what he was getting into Right off the bat during the contract signing of the show. He took on a lawyer suggested by MTV This was his first mistake and the main reason as to why there has never been a second season of undergrads Williams signed the rights to the click characters over to MTV indefinitely as well as most if not all the Residuals that might be gained if the show were to become a success and in return He would be paid to develop a seven-minute pilot of the click a story Bible and a full episode script Of course Williams being a young teenager saw nothing but positives about this opportunity He also once again had no idea what he was doing the underlying basis of what undergrads would eventually be was in This short pilot but the element of college life wasn't a focus that like it would be in the final product The click instead was more focused on friends hanging out and didn't really have any real direction However, the look of the characters was almost exact to what they would eventually be Gimby thankfully lost that shaved head but things like Rocco shirt color and design our Nitsa's entire outfit basically stayed the same Unfortunately, the pilot did horribly with focus groups and the show idea was scrapped Williams returned to school And was admittedly upset having gone from full scale animation studios back to basic boring animation classes So he dropped out of school got an expensive studio computer and started making animation pilots of his own He eventually submitted another pilot concept to MTV called plush and fuzzies while this show wasn't picked up either It did bring about the Jess character another good thing to come of this was MTV taking Williams on as a freelance After Effects artist soon afterwards It became friends with producers of the sci-fi channel and pitched the click again Sci-fi was quite interested in the concept as the pilot was more focused on the pop culture fandom that Williams and his friends shared This along with the release of Star Wars episode one only months away sci-fi was very interested on catching in on this But then MTV called to remind Williams that he in fact did not own those characters But they decided to give him in the click another try but with some safeguards They brought in writer Josh Cagnan to help write the show Williams and Cagnan became good friends and retooled the pilot pitch This new and improved click was the least to say much better when they submitted this pitch It was now two years after Williams had originally won the contest after the pitch passed Williams spoke with MTV producers about producing the show with Canadian production company decode entertainment Everything had just started to get rolling But it wasn't until long before they hit a hurdle due to certain Canadian tax credit rules most likely associated with the CRTC The show had to be handled entirely in Canada except for the writing MTV and Nickelodeon writing veteran Andy Rangel was brought on to assist with the writing and developing of the show It was here where Williams Cagnan and Rangel decided to focus on the geekier side of college life However, the title of the click wasn't available as a television game show with the same name was about to be released So they eventually came up with a title of undergrads Everything was set 13 episodes had been produced and were ready to air on television Williams was once again on cloud nine, but this too wasn't to last MTV made the tremendously idiotic decision to premiere the show on Sunday night at the same time as the Simpsons season 13 premiere despite this the show held strong Until MTV began to change the time and date for when the next episode was to air by the sixth episode The damage was done and MTV pulled the plug This was in part due to a much larger machine at work MTV was quickly getting out of the animation business and moving on to more reality based in cheaper productions Undergrads and unfortunately come to the wrong studio at the wrong time But the show hadn't premiered on teletune in Canada yet when it did it had a much better reception aired all 13 episodes and Continued to replay those episodes for over 10 years Surprisingly enough Williams didn't find out about this until years later when decode contacted him to write a blog on teletune's website Talking about the cult success the show had in Canada He also found out that decode had been trying to get a second season created for some time But neither they nor teletune had the funds to do so They tried bringing it to other studios like Comedy Central But that pesky contract Williams had signed back in 1997 was a constant hindrance and never Allowed the show to revive itself the show itself consisted of four main characters Knitz, Gimpy, Cal and Rocco Pete Williams originally voiced all of them for the MTV version But due to those CRTC rules another actor whose name I cannot find for the life of me came into voice Rocco Throughout the show the four friends encountered all meaner of college life struggles like traditions meeting new Friends the party hard lifestyle financial aid getting jobs and more many of the issues at their core are still true for college students today Albeit they didn't have the assistance of technology like cell phones or Tinder like they do now like some people I really related to Knitz a very self-aware But at the same time completely oblivious individual with misconstrued to priorities and willfully in different hopes and dreams The other three characters were more embellished versions of friends or acquaintances We've all had while going through high school and while some of their traits go to the extreme like Cal's sexual activities with every single woman on campus Gimpy's extreme hermit-like status are Rocco Well just being Rocco the friendship these four had was something teenagers and college students could relate to the aspects of social status and group Acceptance which are more prevalent than ever before were obstacles and challenges that the characters face in every episode What's funny enough is that while it was making fun of the absurdities of certain college activities Like traditions or school rivalries it also celebrated the blissful whims of coming of age teens and adults don't get me wrong This show was dumb fun a large point of the time But some of the underlying points that this show had is a pretty spot-on vision of what the early 2000s were like cardboard box with no access to running water or fresh air $3,000 a month some aspects are moments that people of my generation sometimes look back on and reminisce But of course there are parts that we don't miss at all And I think that can be summarized entirely into the character of Rocco of all the elements of this show He is age the worst in fact He is aged terribly with the new concepts and rules of social acceptance and culture nowadays, but I haven't even copped a fuel yet What kind of crappy date rape is this? For instance in the second episode he has a dream about having a homosexual Relationship with Cal and he spends the entire episode fighting against his dream Abuses Cal throughout comes to the belief that he must submit then he sees Cal's member during the exposed expo event and realizes that he's not gay Oh, and this is while he's taking photos of naked women running past him for his own Personal viewing experiences. Yeah Rocco is literally a walking trigger bomb and I mean that literally he is a complete embodiment of how much movies and television shows got away with in the early 2000s one of the underlying points I've always found pretty fascinating about the show was that despite it being about college life No one ever attends a class in fact the idea of homework is never mentioned and finals only come up in passing conversation Can you believe we have an exam on Saturday on Shabbat? It's outrageous. No, I'm not going. It's a religious thing man, Brody You're not Jewish. That's not the point nothing about the actual reason people go to school for is ever displayed in the show Instead issues like fake IDs Sexual engagements finding an identity amongst the masses and dealing with crippling alcoholism. Yeah again, Rocco is just Not the best took center stage and to be honest It's much better for it Undergrads for college viewers was my means of stepping back from the stress and just enjoying what most enjoyed about college The social aspect of it all but of all the episodes my favorite one is new friends You know the one where a game of quake literally becomes re-enactment of the climax of a new hope It has some of the best jokes in the show. Is there something funny about your joystick private Rocco? your joystick Must be harnessed as an instrument of digital devastation. You must master your joystick as a fisherman masters bait As well it introduces Jess and her crew one of which being Rob Brody Who some people have referred to me as a less annoying version of him I still don't know how to take that and in this scene that guy has his watch on But look now he does it. You see continuity error continuity error The main theme of the episode allowing yourself to hang out with more than just your core group of friends was a Surprisingly decent episode about the value of friendship both with new friends and old also the fandom conflict between Star Wars and Star Trek Lovers was hilarious a conflict I myself had with my high school friends as well Of course many of the elements of the show are extremely dated which helps build the nostalgia for the show Honestly, for instance, Gimpy sends nits an all-in-one game emulator. That is it's only about six hundred thousand megabytes But is sent in a matter of seconds which results in several explosions at Gimpy's school But at the same time it predicted just how much the internet would be key to social interactions Ie the constant face timing between Gimpy and Nits, which is pretty cool considering using webcams Was only just starting to become a thing at the time The music is another example of extremely dated material that builds the novelty of the show Obviously the theme song was the click by Good Charlotte But the soundtrack consisted of several rock bands both American and Canadian Including Alcline Trio, Nacker, Riggie in the full effect, Sloan, Planet Smashers, and even Sam Roberts So perhaps it's not that dated. Another surprising quality about the music is how it was almost always Constantly playing in the background. From an editor's perspective trying to underlay music with lyrics under constant dialogue can be a tricky Process in terms of volume adjustment and avoiding the two dialogues mixing But undergrads did this quite easily Surprisingly enough and to be honest I actually never noticed this until I started doing the essay So that just shows you again just how well put together the show was While the show certainly had an over dramatized nature to itself And some of the characters were literally walking targets of insults like the Dougler when I take a shower I always wear flip flops The Dougler the humor still stands both in terms of good comedy as well as reminiscent towards memories of high school and post-secondary life Even though Rocco has some of the crudest humor in the show the jokes that aren't massive offenses are still pretty good You gotta pay for cigarettes here. What is this communism? Undergrads had a humor style that resonated both with younger and older audiences Even the Dougler is hilarious despite just how ridiculous this dude's demeanor is This is definitely in part due to Williams Cagnan and Reingold all drawing on their own personal experiences of college While Williams had barely spent any time there Cagnan and Reingold drew on their own experiences and interweave them with Williams It's experiences with his three best friends this bled through into a constantly hilarious narrative that stands the test of time even now Sure the show had its share of dumb humor at times But a lot of the jokes especially the ones related to Star Wars or other pop cultures Definitely struck a chord with its Canadian audiences to help make it the cult classic it is today as of right now However, there is no word of a second season or a supposed movie Pete Williams did talk about an eventual Kickstarter campaign that would begin if MTV ever gave the rights back to him There was even a bring-back undergrads Facebook account Williams ran until August 2017 where the posts have just stopped While I would love to see this show come back in some way or form. I unfortunately believe that that ship has sailed I give Pete all the credit in the world for trying to keep a show of near 13 episodes alive after all this time While it definitely wasn't the intent he made a show that has become a cult staple mark in Canadian animation television Undergrads was a show that showed that even if you were nerdy or dense or boring It didn't really matter what other people thought of you as long as you had a solid group of friends Things would always find a way of working out even if they didn't work out as well as you would like So while we may never get a continuation to this campy and hilarious tale of four strange college friends I'll always find the time year after year to pull the DVD case off the shelf and pop on some undergrads Thank you guys for watching if you guys want an even more in-depth view of Pete's life and just how Undergrads came to be I'm gonna leave a link to a video I found called animatic to the autopsy of an animated series with Pete Williams This is a little lecture Williams held at an event where he talks about how he came to be an animator the history of Undergrads what he intended to do with the future and then he answered some questions from fellow animators at the event I swear though if there ever is a chance this show does come back I know for a fact that I will be willing to throw money at it like there's no tomorrow But until then guys, thanks for watching and I'll see you guys on the next one