Adult Swim Got New Life 21 Years Ago When This Cult Cartoon Premiered With Two Iconic Characters

Cartoon Network had a funny way of keeping you glued to the television. You could start the evening with familiar cartoons and tell yourself you were only going to watch one more show. But somehow, you always ended up staring at something that looked like it had escaped from a really weird place. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. I have plenty of fond memories of that era. Adult Swim, in particular, always felt like the place where the network let its imagination run around without a leash.

October 2005 brought another oddball into that late-night mix. The premise sounded ridiculous, the setting was a long way from the usual animated suburbs, and the family at the center of it wasn’t exactly winning any parenting awards. Meet the… Squidbillies? Honestly, what else could you expect from a network that made talking food and bizarre space adventures part of its identity? This new show had its own peculiar style, though, and two characters who would make a strangely lasting impression on anyone willing to give them a chance.

Squidbillies Premiered on Adult Swim 21 Years Ago With Early and Granny Cuyler

Adult Swim really was something else. If you grew up watching Cartoon Network in the ’90s, you probably remember spending hours in front of the TV because of it. I certainly have fun memories of those days. But then Adult Swim came along, and suddenly we had cartoons that were a whole different kind of ridiculous. On October 16, 2005, the lineup got Squidbillies. And yes, it’s exactly what the name suggests. The show follows a family of mud squids living in the Georgia mountains.

The fact that such a cartoon series was made is beyond understanding. And it was a big letdown to all the fans of the show when the last season was announced just a couple of years ago. No, there wasn’t some grand parade or memorial put on by fans wearing squid costumes. And imagine if Squid Game came out around that time—it would have been a hilarious parody in-the-making. Here’s the final trailer that previewed the end of Adult Swim’s more crazed cartoon.

So what’s it about for those that don’t know? The family is led by Early Cuyler, who drinks too much, gets angry over just about anything, and probably shouldn’t be trusted with a set of house keys. His mother, Granny Cuyler, isn’t exactly the voice of reason, either. Put the two together, and you’ve got a family that makes the average sitcom household look downright normal. Jim Fortier and Dave Willis created the series, which arrived at a time when Adult Swim was already making a name for itself with shows that didn’t care much about playing by the rules. Squidbillies was another strange little addition to that lineup, and it had no interest in trying to be anything else.

How Squidbillies Became a Long-Running Adult Swim Cult Favorite

When 2005 rolled around, Adult Swim already built a lineup that looked nothing like the cartoons of yesteryears. Aqua Teen Hunger Force had a milkshake, a box of fries, and a meatball wandering around New Jersey—and they could talk. Space Ghost Coast to Coast turned a superhero into a talk-show host. And he seemed barely qualified to interview anyone. But it totally worked, considering the studio already gave audiences Dexter’s Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls. Squidbillies fit right in, even if its particular brand of humor wasn’t going to win over every viewer. The show focused on life in the mountains, with Early and Granny arguing, insulting each other, and generally making you wonder how the family had survived this long. There was no need to make these characters lovable. They were funny because they were such a disaster.

The really surprising part is how long the show lasted. It’s hard to say it was a cartoon failure. Squidbillies ran for 13 seasons and 132 episodes before ending in December 2021. That’s a lot of television for a cartoon about mud squids, and it says something about the audience Adult Swim had built over the years. The network gave unusual shows room to find their people, even when the premise sounded like a joke somebody would tell in a writers’ room and then immediately forget. For those of us who remember staying up to watch Cartoon Network’s stranger offerings, that was part of the appeal. You never needed every show to become a massive hit. Sometimes you just wanted something different from the usual animated fare, and Adult Swim was happy to oblige. Early and Granny certainly weren’t the sort of characters you’d want living next door, but they made for entertaining television. And, really, isn’t that enough?