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My Gym Partner's a Monkey

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My Gym Partner's a Monkey is an American animated television series created by Timothy and Julie McNally Cahill and produced by Cartoon Network Studios. It premiered on December 26, 2005 and ended in July 27, 2008 following a marathon of its final regular-run episodes. On November 27th, 2008, A Thanksgiving special aired during the season, technically making this the series finale.

History[]

Broadcast History[]

My Gym Partner's a Monkey first aired on Cartoon Network on December 26th, 2005. As a whole, the show was given 96 Episodes, a full-length film and an hour long special. The series ended on it's own terms after four seasons, on July 27th, 2008. Despite the episode airing that day being the series finale, Cartoon Network mixed with the order of episodes, and managed to hold on to the intended second to last episode, and not premiere it until November 27th, 2008, long after the series initially ended. Their reasons for doing so was most likely because this episode was a Thanksgiving themed holiday special and they wanted to air it, when it was around that time of year in real life.

During the third season of it's initial run, My Gym Partner's a Monkey became part of a crossover event, on May 18th, 2007, called Cartoon Network Invaded. The programming block featured episode premieres of five Cartoon Network shows. These being Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Ed, Edd, & Eddy, My Gym Partner's a Monkey, Camp Lazlo, and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (each show would air their new episode in that order). All five episodes would be "alien-themed" and would be loosely tied together, to many one, overarching story. The episode from My Gym Partner's a Monkey was "That Darn Platypus".

Four years after My Gym Partner's a Monkey ended, Cartoon Network put the show back on the air, by airing a few repeats as part of Cartoon Planet. Cartoon Planet was a weekly, hour-long programming block, that showcased a list of classic cartoons that have been either cancelled or finished, many years back. This lasted from March 30th, 2012, to February 8th, 2014.

Plot[]

The story revolves around Adam Lyon, a human. After a clerical error listed his surname as "Lion", Adam is forced to transfer from Chester Arthur Middle School to Charles Darwin Middle School, a school for local zoo animals. Shortly after his transfer, he is partnered with Jake Spidermonkey in gym (hence the title). While Jake enjoys having fun at the expense of others, he quickly becomes attached to Adam. The majority of the show's humor derives from Adam's attempts to reconcile his human limitations, as well as his outsider status, with the demands of an animal-centric school and social scene. Sometimes around the last two seasons, the show stopped solely focusing on Adam's all-animal school dilemma and more on the other characters and their lives outside of school.

Gym Partner Theme Song

Much of Charles Darwin Middle School is modeled after specific habitats. There are fish tubes created so that the fish can breathe and swim around. There are also vines and bodies of water. Some animals like Bull Sharkowski use devices to allow them to live outside of their natural habitat. In Bull's case he uses what looks like headphones full of water that go around his gills. The main characters have been able to breathe in water in the early episodes for some mysterious reason.

Charles Darwin Middle School appears to be the only animal school around, as it is later explained in the episode "Uniformity." In the episode, there are high end east coast schools for animals. Also, there is a school for plants called Creeping Broad Leaf Sedge Middle School (CBLSMS) where Jake is sent to due to Warthog thinking he's a spider plant. The school competes against human schools in athletics and other events. In one episode where Adam signs up to return to his old school for a day transfer, all the teachers and staff seem to replicate their animal counterparts.

Characters[]

Jake Tells a Lame Joke

Main Cast[]

  • Adam M. Lyon (voiced by Nika Futterman) is a 12-year-old human boy who was transferred from Chester Arthur Middle School to Charles Darwin Middle School (CDMS) by an accidental misspelling of his last name from "Lyon" to "Lion". As the series title suggests, in gym class, Adam was paired up with Jake Spidermonkey and the two become best friends. Jake's plans have them getting involved in situations which end up with him and Adam in trouble. Adam, being physically weak, is often preyed upon by the other animal students. His personality is downtrodden, due to being in an animal school and he also has a reputation of complaining about his daily experiences at the school. Adam can be arrogant and strong-willed at times. Outside of school, he is often seen with a human girl named Kerry Anderson, with whom he has a secret crush. His efforts to impress her end up with Adam's embarrassment. Towards the middle of the series, Adam seems to be on the borderline of sanity. Throughout the series, he is a big fan of his favorite superhero, Captain Clowny. He eagerly hopes to one day be a clown when he grows up, and attend a Clown College, as seen on his resume in the episode "My Feral Lyon".
  • Jacob "Jake" P. Spidermonkey (voiced by Tom Kenny), as his last name implies, is a spider monkey with poorly groomed, orange fur. He quickly became Adam's best friend. He is often very possessive of Adam and hates not having him around regularly. Jake is emotional and goofy, who takes to heart some of Adam's comments and actions, leading to some overly-dramatic and exaggerated reactions. He can be lazy and selfish, but at the same time, he is also fairly sensible. A running gag in the series is his obsession with the well-being of his butt, which he made grow so large that it blocked out the sun in one episode. Along with the majority of the other animal students, Jake lives close enough to the school that he can see it from where he lives.
  • Slips Python (voiced by Rick Gomez) is an easy-going, street-talking green tree python. He is an underachiever and excessive daydreamer whose gullibility allows him to believe anything he hears, which makes him a constant source of misinformation. As a snake, he has no limbs, yet wears a T-shirt (why is never explained). Slips is usually depicted as care free, delightfully apathetic, and unintelligent and is usually seen with his best friend Windsor.
  • Windsor T. Gorilla (voiced by Rick Gomez) is a dispassionate, but thoughtful and wise lowland gorilla, who's part of Adam's friend group, though his main companion is Slips Python. He always speaks in a deadpan, monotonous tone and almost never expresses any emotions or changes in mood. He is the voice of reason to the group and often dispenses wisdom for them.
  • Guadalupe "Lupe" Toucan (voiced by Grey DeLisle) is a selfish, attention-grabbing toucan with a passion for music. She is part of Adam's main friend group, though her best friend in Ingrid Giraffe. She speaks with a somewhat exaggerated Chicano dialect and is known to have some issues involving what she sees as her overly large beak.
  • Ingrid Giraffe (voiced by Grey DeLisle) is an artsy, poetic Masai giraffe, with in-depth emotions that she's often afraid to express. She is part of Adam's main friend group. She is so tall, that most of the time when she's on camera, she's only seen from the neck down, unless she hunches over and sticks her head into the frame. Her best friend is Lupe and has a secret crush on Adam.

Major Characters[]

  • Principal Poncherello Pegone Pixiefrog (voiced by Maurice LaMarche) is an African-Pixiefrog, and current head principal of Charles Darwin Middle School and often plays an anti-heroic party pooper in any of Adam and Jake's stories. His monetary driven morality, lets him derail from running the school properly, and establishing arbitrary new rules and/or applications, if it means saving him a few bucks.
  • Coach Tiffany Gills (voiced by Brian Doyle-Murray) is a hyper-masculine gym teacher, responsible for Adam and Jake's gym partnership. She's bound only to her fishbowl and must be wheeled around by her ferret assistant, Horace, who's level-headed silence contrasts with her loud, bossy, trigger-happy means of running her gym class.
  • Virgil "Bull" Sharkowski (voiced by Phil LaMarr) is a Bull Shark school bully, who enjoys beating up other students, stealing their lunches, making them cry, etc. He's earned the reputation of the most feared student in school, and has even managed to dominate the principal, separating him from any punishments.
  • Henry Armadillo (voiced by Tom Kenny) is a Greenlandian-American, Nine-Banded Armadillo. Socially insecure, stereotypically geeky, and friendless, Henry is the fauna punching bag of even the weakest students at Charles Darwin Middle School, and just barely tops Adam as the lowest student in the school.
  • Kerry Anderson (voiced by Cree Summer) is Adam's best human friend/love interest, and former classmate at Chester Arthur Middle School. Kerry is often fascinated by Adam's unique new school, though Adam assures that she'd hate it as much as he does if she were to experience the madness. Adam spends time with her outside of school, which has become more of a refreshing break than it has a one-sided romantic get together.

Recurring Characters[]

  • Mrs. Geraldine Shannon Warthog (voiced by Grey DeLisle) is the apathetic, and repulsively ugly common warthog and secreatary of Principal Pixiefrog. She's crutial to CDMS, being the only one with knowledge on filing papers. Geraldine has a love hate relationship with Poncherello, who's love seems to be tucked away, but still making her heart beat strong.
  • Mr. Maurice Bob Mandrill (voiced by Maurice LaMarche) is an aged, but youthful at heart, hippie and perfect display of everything from the psychedelic sixties. On the job, he's the school's spiritual guidance counselor, who gives students advice on their emotional struggles in life.
  • Richard "Dickie" Sugarjumper (voiced by Tom Kenny) is an English-American sugar glider, with stereotypical British mannerisms.
  • James Ant (voiced by Rick Gomez) is a fire ant, who's the smallest student in the school. His short stature, doesn't stop his cassanova wannabe attitude, but certainly continues his failure to get lucky to no end.
  • Chad (voiced by Tom Kenny) is the bully of Chester Arthur Middle School, who used to be the big bad of Adam's life, before the transfer. Chad may be pretty much powerless now, but nothing is stopping him from trying to regain contact with Adam, so that he may further harass him, just like old times.

Episodes[]

See List of Episodes

Production[]

My Gym Partner's a Monkey was the first Cartoon Network original series to be made by a married couple. Julie McNally and Timothy Cahill had both had their head start at Warner Bros. Animation on shows like Animaniacs, The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, Detention, Histeria!, ¡Mucha Lucha!, and Krypto the Superdog. The two came up with the idea when they had a friend of theirs who told Timothy Cahill that, when he was in first grade, he went to an experimental school that had a monkey in the science area; and that friend of theirs used to go hang out with the monkey. Tim Cahill found that story hilarious, thinking it would be a great idea for an animated series. Despite which, the characters weren't actually based on people in their life, but rather, types of people, such as the stoner with Slips, the strong silent type with Windsor, the girl who suddenly got tall over summer with Ingrid, and more.

The series had been a thing in Tim's back pocket for years beforehand into the 1990s, with the pitch actually being the second choice of what they wanted done. The series was pitched to Cartoon Network in 2001 under the title The Zoo, but the named was changed a year later in 2002 under the more comedic title My Gym Partner's a Monkey, and two pilot episodes were planned, one in 2003 that began the concept of the show, and one more in 2004 that featured the final designs for the show.

The art style of the show is reminiscent of older Hanna-Barbera cartoons, which heavily influenced the style of the show. The series regularly makes use of the same score used in Curb Your Enthusiasm. Saerom Animation, who would later do animation work for Adventure Time, Regular Show, and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, provided the animation.

The series was met with 4 seasons, 52 half hour episodes, and two TV movie specials. The series' penultimate episode "A Thanksgiving Carol" was delayed until November 2008, due to it being a Thanksgiving episode. "A Whole Zoo World" became the series finale due to the creators' intention on ending the series.

Criticism and controversy[]

Despite being fairly successful and not considered the worst Cartoon Network show ever, My Gym Partner's a Monkey received heavy criticism online for its cruelty towards Adam, the character of Jake, and most of all, the jokes about Jake's butt. Most of the complaints come from internet bloggers, who cited the show as immature and childish, making it one of Cartoon Network's most divisive shows in the 2000s. Nevertheless, there is still a fair number of people who do like the show and it has gained a cult following amongst nostalgic viewers who grew up with the show.

The final season used responses on the complaints within the show as a running gag, similar to Teen Titans Go!, sometimes as means to get back at the bloggers. Two of the biggest examples was in Animal School Musical; during the song "I Love My Butt", an angry internet blogger is seen repetitively typing "Monkey Butts Are Gross". At one point in the episode, Adam and Jake mention how musicals are more ridiculous than shows about anthropomorphic animals. This was an attempt to get back at people online who were complaining about the show being too "butt-heavy" with the jokes and thinking the show's premise was stupid.

In other season four episodes, it would be referenced as well, even citing angry internet bloggers to critique the amount of butt jokes. For example, in the episode "A Very Special Boy", Jake mentions that, as a result of the running gag where he loves his own butt, most predators, bullies, and even internet bloggers, were so sickened, that nobody can see him as a potential food source. It was also referenced in "Lonely Lyon", where Lupe tells Jake that his constant jokes about his butt drives internet bloggers crazy.

The series has also been met with heavy controversy, such as with the episode "Amazon Kevin", in which the title character is a brief parody of famed Australian nature export Steve Irwin, and his show The Crocodile Hunter. Cartoon Network only banned the episode from broadcast in Australia following Irwin's death on September 4, 2006, as he was one of their most beloved icons and they didn’t want his people to see him being parodied in a negative light.

Another episode that got banned, this time from around the world, was "The Butt of the Jake", which was banned from showing on Cartoon Network after its second time airing in early September 2007. Cartoon Network's new Executive General Manager (out of Atlanta) pulled the episode after he found it offensive and "too-butt-filled", deeming it to be too inappropriate and vulgar for the intended audience of children (even though the episode was meant to deconstruct and end the gag). Shortly after its removal it was nominated for an Annie Award in Writing. However, despite the episode being banned, it is still available through DVD boxsets, iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Netflix and other online streaming sites and services. It is unknown whether the episode's ban is permanent and whether or not reruns will air on any Turner-related network via broadcast television. The sister episode, "Shark Fin Soupy", was later re-paired with the later Season 4 episode "Hygiene Hijinks" on May 28, 2008.

Trivia[]

My Gym Partner's a Monkey The Zoo
  • My Gym Partner's a Monkey was originally titled "The Zoo". The rest of the show was pretty much the same, with the show still having the same basic concept as the current show, as well as the same cast of characters, just with a few noticeable changes to their physical appearances.

International Broadcast[]

DVDs[]

Two DVD volumes of the series have been released in Australia, the first on April 4, 2007 and the second on January 23, 2008. As of January 2010, there have been no further volumes released.

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