The Weekenders (original) (raw)

The Weekenders is a Disney-made animated series about the weekend life of 4 pre-adolescents:

• Tino Tonitini (Jason Marsden), who for the most part tells the shows' stories from his point of view (and almost always closes them with the show's catchphrase, "Later days"),
• Lor McQuarrie (Grey DeLisle), athletic girl with (in somewhat cliched fashion) some trouble education-wise, Scottish descent, and 14 brothers,
• Carver Descartes (Phil LaMarr), a footwear-obsessed Afro-American, and
• Petrotishkovna "Tish" Katsufrakis (Kath Soucie), the intelligient kid of the bunch, of European descent.

The series, created by Doug Langdale, made its debut in 2000 and is currently out of production (there are a handful of eps that have never been screened in the US). The show's title music was written and sung by Wayne Brady.

The series has its share of quirks:

• Tino is often talking to the viewer about what's going on
• the credits at the beginning of each story do not mention its title (unusual for a daytime cartoon)
• despite having 4 school-age children in the main roles, the show hardly (if ever) touches on aspects of school life (as Recess would), as stories (almost always) start on Friday afternoon and end on Sunday evening
• a recurring running gag in the series is that the pizza place the characters hang out in would have a different theme in every story, and another involves Tino's single mother serving foods of highly questionable origin

Also, despite its constant use of cliches (as well as moralization), it has also been known to blatantly go against them as well. Examples include Lor in a talent show (a surprise in itself) and Tino in a horseshoe-throwing competition.