Moral Orel

Moral Orel
Genre	Comedy-drama[1] Black comedy Satire Animated sitcom Psychological drama (season 3)
Created by	Dino Stamatopoulos
Written by	Dino Stamatopoulos Scott Adsit Jay Johnston Nick Weidenfeld Mark Rivers David Agosto Scott Aukerman Neil Campbell Mathew Harawitz Paul Rust Chris McKay David Tuber
Directed by	Dino Stamatopoulos Scott Adsit Jay Johnston Chris McKay Jeff Gardner Cameron Baity Ethan Marak Ross Shuman David Cromer Duke Johnson Shianouk Mariona Joshua J. Jennings David Tuber
Starring	Scott Adsit Jeff Davis K.K. Dodds David Herman Jay Johnston Carolyn Lawrence Britta Phillips William Salyers Dino Stamatopoulos Tigger Stamatopoulos
Composers	Mark Rivers Eban Schletter
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	43 (and 1 special) (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	Dino Stamatopoulos Co-Executive Producers: Scott Adsit Jay Johnston (season 1-2) Chris McKay For Williams Street: Keith Crofford Nick Weidenfeld
Producers	Alex Bulkley Corey Compondinco For Williams Street: Ollie Green
Cinematography	Jeff Gardner
Editors	Chris McKay Garret Elkins
Running time	11–12 minutes
Production companies	ShadowMachine Fragical Productions Williams Street
Distributor	Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution
Release
Original network	Adult Swim
Picture format	NTSC
Original release	December 13, 2005 (2005-12-13) – December 18, 2008 (2008-12-18) "Abstinence" screening: January 18, 2009 (2009-01-18)
External links
Website

Moral Orel is an American adult stop-motion animated comedy-drama television series which originally aired on Adult Swim from December 13, 2005 to December 18, 2008. The series has been described as "Davey and Goliath meets South Park".^[2] However, Dino Stamatopoulos, the show's creator, is wary of the comparison with Davey and Goliath, telling the New York Times that Moral Orel grew out of a concept for a send-up of a Leave It to Beaver-style 1950s sitcom that would star Iggy Pop.^[3] The series is a satire of the archetypes of Middle American suburban life, modern-day WASP culture, alcoholism, and religious fundamentalism with weighty emotional undertones that increase dramatically as the series progresses.

At the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con, Stamatopoulos announced that the show would not be renewed for a fourth season. The final season was aired interspersed with repeats from the first two seasons, as many of the episodes took place in parallel with events of past episodes. The event, which was called "44 Nights of Orel", was hosted by Stamatopoulos and others and started on October 6, 2008, running through December 18, when the series finale premiered. A special entitled "Beforel Orel" later aired on November 19, 2012.

Plot[]

Moral Orel takes place in the fictional capital city of Moralton in the fictional Bible Belt state of Statesota. According to the globe shown in the opening credits, Moralton is in the exact center of the United States, with the town's church at the exact center of the town. The protagonist is 12-year-old Orel Puppington, a student at Alfred G. Diorama Elementary School, who tries to live by the fundamentalist Protestant Christian moral code as articulated in church or by his father, Clay Puppington. Orel naïvely follows this code to disastrous extremes.

Episodes[]

International broadcast[]

In Canada, Moral Orel previously aired on Teletoon's Teletoon at Night block^[4] and currently airs on the Canadian version of Adult Swim.^[5]

Characters[]

• Orel Puppington (voiced by Carolyn Lawrence) is a devout 12-year-old Christian boy who cheerfully and naïvely deals with an abusive father, an emotionally-distant mother, and the hypocrisy of the religious adults he encounters. Over the course of the series, he learns the true nature of his parents and the town, but learns to expand his optimistic worldview.
• Clay Puppington (voiced by Scott Adsit) is Orel's repressed and hateful father. He is a deconstruction of the typical 50s nuclear fatherly role and holds strongly to a traditional style of parenting. He is a cynical alcoholic and a closet bisexual (although can be interpreted as being fully homosexual) who hates his dead-end job and his wife, Bloberta. He is widely regarded as the series main antagonist, and expresses abusive behaviour to his entire family. In his childhood, he had a borderline emotionally incestuous relationship with his mother up until her death. He was led to feel worthless by his emotionally frigid father out of guilt from his mothers death, which affects his emotions and relationship with Orel greatly.
• Bloberta Puppington (voiced by Britta Phillips) is Orel's obsessive-compulsive, soft spoken, yet emotionally distant mother. She tends to ignore all conflict or problems and shares contempt for her husband, Clay. She is shown to clean things and (in season 3) perform self mutilation obsessively to distract herself from underlying feelings of inferiority in her household. While she holds a cheerful persona, and always acts bubbly around her children, she is secretly depressive and wishes for a better life.
• Shapey Puppington (voiced by Tigger Stamatopoulos), Orel's half-brother, is a misbehaving, spoiled, emotionally-stunted toddler who does nothing but yell and scream, usually incoherently, and act out. Until the episode Sacrifices, his dialogue only consists of a few different words.
• Rev. Rod Putty (voiced by William Salyers), the town's resident pastor of the church, is a laid-back, lonely, and sexually frustrated man to whom Orel looks for advice. In the beginning of the series, he’s shown to be a bigot, self-absorbed, and depressed. However, beginning in season 2, he shares a healthy relationship with his estranged daughter Stephanie, a punk-rocker and a lesbian who runs a sex shop. This allows him to become more open minded, kind, and positive.
• Coach Daniel Stopframe (voiced initially by Jay Johnston, later by Scott Adsit) is Orel's nihilistic and sarcastic school gym teacher, and later revealed to be Shapey’s biological father. He engages in Satanic practices and is in love with Orel's father, Clay. While they begin a subtle affair at the end of season one, Clay admits he’s in love with him in front of his family in the series finale.
• Doughy Latchkey (voiced by Scott Adsit) is Orel's sensitive, unintelligent, occasionally neurotic, and easily frightened best friend, who often worries about Orel as he follows him on adventures. His last name comes from the term Latchkey Kid, which refers to a neglected child who is ignored by his parents at home. Because of this, he often appears insecure and gloomy when it comes to his home-life.
• Stephanie Putty (voiced by Britta Phillips) is a punk, atheist, and lesbian town outsider who is later revealed to be Reverend Putty's daughter. Despite her jaded persona, she’s often a voice of reason for Orel and is described as incredibly warm-hearted and empathetic. She serves as a parental figure for him as she develops her relationship with her father.

Seasons[]

The first season of the show follows a standard formula, in which Orel hears a sermon given by Rev. Rod Putty in church on Sunday, and then proceeds to have a misadventure based on his attempts to live by his (usually warped) interpretation of the sermon and its lesson. At the end of each episode, his father would sternly put a halt to the situation and "correct" Orel, by means of corporal punishment, only to offer an even more warped interpretation (in the first season, typically one of Clay's "Lost Commandments") of the church sermon. A running gag of the show was that before the ending credits ran, Clay's pants would fall down when he stood from his chair, as he had earlier removed his belt to punish Orel. Throughout the season, the series' primary characters are introduced and various subplots are established, such as Orel's father being a closeted bisexual in love with Orel's gym teacher, and Orel's mother being an unhappily married housewife feeling trapped in her marriage.

The format of the second season of the show breaks that of the first season and begins to build upon subplots introduced in the first season, making them the primary focus of the show. While still the protagonist and primary character, Orel becomes less a catalyst for each episode's events than an unwitting bystander often left confused and dejected at the end, finding himself unable to reconcile his optimistic nature and faith with the corruption and cynicism of the adults around him, particularly his father. The season culminates in a two-part episode dealing with a camping trip during which Orel lost all faith and trust in his father. The season finale—"Nature (Part 1)" and "Nature (Part 2)"—marks a far darker turn in the series' tone, de-emphasizing the cynical parody of the previous episodes in favor of exploring more disturbing themes.

The third and final season of the show is structured as a interconnecting 13-part story dealing with the events leading up to and during the camping trip, and their far-reaching implications. It is revealed that during the trip, Clay gets drunk and shoots Orel in the leg, afterward showing a complete lack of remorse or sense of responsibility. The series culminates in the ultimate dissolution of Clay's relationship with Orel's coach, and the revelation that Orel will one day be able to put his traumatic childhood behind him to raise a better family than the one in which he grew up.

Originally, before being cut down to a 13-episode third season and later cancelled, the show was intended to have two more seasons and evolve into a show titled Moralton that would revolve around the life of the residents of Moralton as a whole.^[1]

The series was troubled throughout its run. Against the wishes of creator Stamatopoulos, the Christmas-themed first-season finale, "The Best Christmas Ever", was aired as the series premiere. Adult Swim wanted to debut the show in December as part of a holiday-themed programming block. The episode, which featured the culmination of numerous story arcs developed throughout the first season, and ended with a cliffhanger, confusing viewers and prompting questions on Adult Swim's message boards as to whether or not the episode was a one-off practical joke. When the series eventually premiered, three episodes of the first season were held back from airing because the network's Standards & Practices Department found them to be too dark and sexually explicit.^[6] All were eventually approved; two aired in May 2006 and the third aired on July 31, 2006. The series was ultimately canceled with seven scripts left unproduced, cutting the third season down from the intended twenty episodes to thirteen.

2012 special[]

After the 2011 Halloween mini-marathon for Mary Shelley's Frankenhole, Orel himself announced the upcoming Moral Orel special and its release "sometime in the near future".^[7] "Beforel Orel" was officially announced on Dino's official Twitter page.^[8] The special was described in a press release by Adult Swim as "[a] Moral Orel special that sheds light on the origin of Orel's religious nature and the birth of his brother, Shapey".^[9] It premiered on Monday, November 19, 2012.

Home releases[]

On April 24, 2007, Volume One: The Unholy Edition was released, which included the first 15 episodes^[10] and which covered all of the first season and the first five episodes of the second season. This has been the only release in the US, which was later included as part of the Adult Swim in a Box set in 2009. In October 2007, Madman Entertainment released a similar volume one set in Australia. Starting in 2010, Madman continued releasing the series, starting with a second volume which included the rest of the second season, and then a third volume which included all of the third season. Then, they released the Complete Lessons Collection, which compiled the discs from the previously released volumes.

The entire show has been available to buy at various digital video on demand stores.

The series has also been made available to watch on HBO Max since September 1, 2020.^[11]

References[]

External links[]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Moral Orel

• Official website
• Moral Orel at IMDb 
• Moral Orel at the Voice Chasers Database
• Moral Orel at TVSquad.com