THE HOME STRETCH!

Yeah, we're finishing up season five of Codename: Kids Next Door on Cartoon Network this week (4:00-5:00pm, Tues through Fri!), and then dipping our toes into the water of season six! So what does that mean? It means we're gonna see:

MAFIA CLOWNS!
SOOPER VILLAIN BOWLING!
A HOUSE FULL OF LAVA!
THE SOOPER HUGEST GAME OF TAG EVER!
A RETIREMENT HOME FOR RAINBOW MONKEYS!
THE BILL OF NO RIGHTS FOR KIDS!

And these episodes had plenty of new characters showing their faces:


HENRIETTA VON MARZIPAN!
BLACK JOHN LICORICE!
SECTOR E (LONDON)
THE ROWDY HOOLIGANS FROM ACROSS THE SQUARE!
THE SINISTER FELINES FROM ATOP THE LITTERBOX!
PRINCIPAL SAUERBRATEN!
and...
OMG...
The first appearance of...
THOSE SHADOWY FIGURES WATCHING NUMBUH ONE!

Now let's see... what can I tells ya about this batch of shows...
How about this:


Operation: LICORICE -- This episode won the 'Best Television Show For Children' at the 2006 Ottawa Animation Festival (and Operation: ARCHIVE won the year before!). We actually tried to get Geoffrey Rush to play Black John Licorice but he wanted around eleventy hundred thousand dollars. Still, Marc Graue kicked crazy pirate butt instead! And check out those gorgeous journal pages that Guy Moore drew and Alison Wilgus colored!


Operation: HAMSTER -- This was our love note to the old Tom and Jerry cartoons. I made a point of trying not to have 'black out gags' in KND but this episode HAD to have them.


Operation: RECESS -- Did you know that a lot of schools are cutting back on recess? I didn't either. But that's what the folks at Cartoon Network told me. And since they were planning a big network initiative to save recess, they specifically asked us to come up with an episode that revolved around it. I don't think they planned on having someone yell, "THIS SALAD DRESSING TASTES LIKE BOOGIES!" in the show... but what did they expect from weirdos like us?


Operation: SPANKENSTINE -- This was originally a Thanksgiving special with Detective Hoagie being hooked on 'the sauce' (cranberry sauce) and Spankenstine's power being transferred to every oven in town to create an army of undead, spanking turkeys. IT WAS SO THANKSGIVINGLY AWESOME! It was also the first story CN killed AFTER it was already written. They thought it felt more like a Halloween episode than a Thanksgiving show. I was TOTALLY bummed because I reeeeeally loved the show and had been slaving away on it for weeks! So I left work early and went to see the movie SIDEWAYS. Which didn't help much since it was a movie about a writer being rejected. BUT BUT BUT... did you know that the KND are in that movie? Kind of. When the stars are sneaking out of mom's house, you can hear Numbuh Three on the TV and SEE a portion of her hand in the corner. I think it was Operation: NO POWUH.
Later, I went back into the story, shortened it up, changed the cranberry sauce to chocolate sauce and got it approved.


OPERATION: IT -- After 5 non-stop seasons of running the KND I was feeling burnt, fried, battered and grilled. So I wrote an episode about it with Numbuh 362 playing the part of my brain. Aside from the therapy it provided, we got a great episode out of my exhaustion. Definitely in my top ten!

Operation: HOT-STUFF -- My father brought me up thinking that if I ever touched the thermostat there'd be a nuclear holocaust. Hence this episode.

Operation: ENGLAND -- Any similarities between Tennis Boy and the skit below is purely coincidental.



So there ya go! Grab some snacks-n-soda and curl up with these awesome episodes! For the full schedule head right on over HERE!

And yeesh... it was tough finding good pics from these episodes on the interwebs!
Someone put some good screenshots up somewhere, wouldja?!