Clone High saw Phil Lord and Chris Miller define their own coming-of-age story
Image: Graphic: Alison Corr TV Features For Our Consideration
After becoming a cultural force in the ’90s with shows like Beavis & Butthead, Daria, Æon Flux, and even the claymation gorefest Celebrity Deathmatch, MTV’s animation department was running on empty once the year 2000 hit. Reality shows were dominating programming blocks across networks, and given that MTV was early to embrace that format with The Real World and Road Rules, it was an easy pivot for the network.
But while this relatively cheap programming was becoming all the rage, MTV wasn’t content to give up on animated shows just yet. Instead of investing in their own originals, MTV effectively used Canada’s Teletoon as their farm system, co-producing Clone High and Undergrads, while also just re-airing episodes of Spy Groove in open time slots throughout the week. While each of these shows appeared on paper to be spiritual cousins of their predecessors—shows about the emotions of high school and college-age protagonists—there was something decidedly different here. Where Daria was a stand-in for the disaffected Gen Xer, the emerging millennial demographic was more openly ‘earnest. And that was reflected most overtly in Clone High. Despite its outsized premise, the series wasn’t shy about wearing its heart on its sleeve.
Its characters were rooted in the past, but at its core, Clone High was a modern coming-of-age tale. By taking a slate of historical figures—Abraham Lincoln, Joan of Arc, Mahatma Gandhi, Cleopatra, John F. Kennedy—and putting genetically modified versions of them into a high school setting, Clone High used shorthand knowledge of cultural archetypes to riff on the awkwardness inherent in being a teenager. More importantly, it was the debut project of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the creative duo who’ve made a career out of addressing the concerns of the millennial generation. As their body of work has expanded, it’s become apparent that Clone High embodied the emotional message of almost every Lord and Miller production: Growing up doesn’t mean changing who you are.
Whether as writers, directors, or producers, the common theme running throughout the collected works of Lord and Miller is present right there in Clone High’s first season. There’s an open appreciation of the emotional messiness and slow, painful growth of our teenage years. Even though they exhumed their characters from textbooks, Lord and Miller treated the teens populating Clone High like real people with real concerns, instead of endlessly malleable archetypes. The characters had distinct fashions and pop-culture interests—Abe was an of-the-moment emo kid, Joan Of Arc was appropriately goth, and Gandhi was probably a massive Michael Bay fan—and those things often informed the way that characters behaved inside their environments. But that doesn’t mean that Clone High was impervious to the issues that so many animated shows have had. In mining world history for its characters, the series whitewashed both Gandhi and Cleopatra by having them voiced by white actors (Michael McDonald and Christa Miller, respectively). It created a glaring flaw at the show’s center and in the wider animation industry, one that only recently has begun to be addressed by actors, showrunners, and producers.
Throughout the 13-episode season, the main characters in Clone High are often found butting up against the standard teen show dramas. But Lord and Miller put their own spin on them by drawing them out, focusing on subtle evolutions within the protagonists in order to make them relatable. Though Abe is fixated on winning the heart of Cleopatra, the undercurrent of him trying to live up to his historical forefather that leads him astray time and again. He’s literally a clone, but he has a personality all his own, and he’s grappling with what it means to design his life in a way that would honor his ancestor, but, ideally, build to a very different ending. This internalizes the classic struggle between parent and child, and cunningly deviates from the forms that emotional and humorous beats can slip into Abe’s story arcs. The same is true for Gandhi, as the episode “A.D.D.: The Last ‘D’ Is For Disorder” focuses on him trying to tamp down his manic tendencies by gulping down something resembling Ritalin to fit in with his classmates. Eventually, Gandhi kicks the pills and reverts back to himself, because who cares what those other clones think anyway?
Despite all the time that’s passed since it originally aired, Clone High’s emotional core remains solidly intact in the present day. That’s not to say that it falls outside of standard coming-of-age tales, but the show’s subtle subversion of them feels like a course correction for the give-the-ugly-kid-a-makeover trope that populated ’90s teen comedies—a cliché openly mocked in the episode “Makeover, Makeover, Makeover: The Makeover Episode.” As Lord and Miller grew their resumé, it became difficult to see them as anything other than the millennial generation’s John Hughes, only with a penchant for using the outsized premises of Weird Science to find the emotional resonance of The Breakfast Club.
And much like Hughes, Lord and Miller know a thing or two about collaborating with like-minded allies, both on and off screen. They co-created Clone High along with Bill Lawrence, the architect of Scrubs, Cougar Town, and Ted Lasso. Together, the three creative heads gave the show the genre-twisting energy of Lawrence’s sitcom projects, as he was able to take live-action fare and give it the elasticity of a cartoon; his eye for the absurd feels right at home in the halls of Clone High. Clone High was also the first of seven projects that Lord and Miller have worked on with Will Forte, who voiced Abe, effectively making him their John Candy.
Lord and Miller have worked to build honest representations of modern teenage life, giving their characters rich interior lives that authentically amplify the situations in which they find themselves, in everything from Clone High to Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. In their first feature film, 2009’s Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, this takes the form of a bonding moment between the film’s main characters, Flint Lockwood and Sam Sparks, when Sam reveals to Flint that when she was bullied for being her true self, she opted to hide behind a facsimile of herself for the sake of assimilating to the world around her. Moments like these aren’t particularly novel in the course of a children’s movie, but this exchange becomes central to the film’s plot, treating the idea of the self as something to be championed and embraced, not tamped down for the sake of others. Seeing Sam express her vulnerability and fear, only to have it be met with an empathetic embrace from Flint, makes good on the promise Clone High tried to make with its audience: No matter how absurd things get, you should care about these people because they care about each other.
Even in a big budget feature like 2014’s The Lego Movie, Lord and Miller were able to retain a semblance of heart (and meta-commentary), proving they rarely make a play for the obvious. They look at things that judgmental adults would call “kid shit” and try to drill into the root of those fascinations. It’s why The Lego Movie builds to a moment where the Lego characters realize there is both a “real world” and a “Lego World,” subtly suggesting to viewers that while you may always be in one, it’s not so bad to go down to the basement and spend some time in the other.
As Lord and Miller moved into the producer role, those same moments continued to come to the surface. In Brigsby Bear, a 2017 film produced by The Lonely Island and executive produced by Lord and Miller, we watch as James Mitchum (Kyle Mooney, who also co-wrote the script) is held captive by his parents in a bubble boy-style scenario. His only form of entertainment is the show Brigsby Bear, which his father produces and stars in. After James is rescued by police, he’s forced to adapt to a world that he’d long been taught to fear. The film treats James with genuine affection, and so do the characters around him, as they take a genuine interest in the show he loves and even help him attempt to make a movie based on his script. There’s no push for James to grow out of the homemade TV show that defined him as a kid. Instead, the film allows him to use that as his emotional North Star for navigating the world on his own.
And of course, there’s Into The Spider-Verse, one of the few truly authentic and moving superhero films in recent memory. The film sidestepped the rote Peter Parker origin story and instead focused on Miles Morales and his journey of self-discovery by helping displaced Spider-People from other universes find their paths home, all while finding his own in the process. Much like Lord and Miller initially discovered their character-building strengths through telling the stories of a bunch of teenage clones, they made their masterwork by taking a bunch of broken Spider-People and making each one of them whole.
Despite all its charms, it’s important to address why Clone High wasn’t renewed for a second season—well, until recently, that is. As Lord and Miller told it in a 2014 Grantland interview, they were in talks with Viacom for a second season, but in the middle of that, a hunger strike took place in India in protest of the unflattering depiction of Gandhi, the anti-colonial activist who was instrumental in bringing about India’s independence from the British. Miller said, “150 politicians and Gandhi’s grandson sat in a hunger strike at the MTV India offices, right when the head of Viacom, Tom Freston, was visiting, and he was trapped in the building. And they basically threatened that they’d revoke MTV’s broadcasting license in India if they didn’t take the show off the air.” Clone High had plenty of turn-of-the-millennium raunchiness that, in the present, feels more than a little antiquated. Pair this with the whitewashing of both Gandhi and Cleo, and it makes sense why, in 2020, these things can make the show either feel dated or indefensible. But, much like the teens in their stories, Lord and Miller have evolved, notably centering people of color on- and offscreen in Into The Spider-Verse.
With Clone High set to be rebooted, Lord and Miller, along with Lawrence, don’t just have a second chance to make a show they love; they also have the opportunity to correct the mistakes that have been frozen in amber since the show was cancelled. Though there are no firm announcements about what the new version of Clone High will look like, what’s all but a given is that the creative unit that first brought it to life won’t settle for simple fan service. Lord and Miller have proven that, no matter what story they’re telling, or what absurd situation they dream up, their characters will always remain believable and earnest. Together, they tell humanist stories in fun, vibrant ways, allowing them to dive across stylistic boundaries while retaining the same madcap, creative spirit that they’ve had since day one.
37 Comments
Gonna put on my pedant hat here and say that, as Daria premiered in 1997 and was about the titular character’s high school years, she just barely missed the cutoff of being “Gen X”, as the very tail end of actual Gen X was finishing up college at that point.
I think Daria very much fits in with bone-deep sarcasm and know-it-all cynicism more usually associated with Gen X. And I assume the creators were all college/post-college age at the time they were developing/writing it in the mid to late 90s.I say that as someone who was born in ‘85 and grew up thinking I was Gen X because I was raised on the Simpsons and was reading/watching all the teen and adult Gen X touchstones I could get a hold of as a child (often a few years after they were new/hip). I had a well-worn copy of Generation Ecch, a book I bought for its dozen or more pages of Evan Dorkin comics but ended up reading and re-reading for its detached cynical mockery of almost every “youth targeted” media for Gen X teens and twenty-somethings (in retrospect, it probably did as much as classic Simpsons to attune me to the perspective/humor of the Onion and AV Club when I started reading in the ‘00s). For bonus street cred, despite being a boy I was referred to as “the Misery Chick” by my friends for a while after the Daria episode of the same name.
I always thought of Clone High as parodying the teen pop culture peddled to Gen X from the late 80s to the late 90s, but this article reminded me it often let some genuine emotion or teen insight mix in with the vicious parody and surreal absurdity. The emotion managed to land occasionally even as it made fun of the overly emotive dramatics of Dawson’s Creek and the like. I always thought that was an accident or a happy surprise, but comparing it to Lord and Miller’s largely excellent body of later work it seems that sneaking in human emotion between surreal absurdity or action is their whole deal.
It really makes you think.
You sound like the kind of person who knows how to define irony.
Daria may have premiered in 1997, but the character existed as a high school-age girl since 1993.
Not only that, but the last of Gen X was finishing college in 2001-2003, not 1997, given that the approximate end birth year for Gen X is anywhere from 1980-1983.Signed – an Xennial.
Yeah, over the years, people’s definitions of Gen X have slid later, but really no true Gen Xer was born in the 80s as originally defined.
I dunno if ethnicity of the voice cast should be included in a list of criticisms re: Clone High, considering the article frames this as something they did when the talent pool for voice actors was considerably shallower 20 years ago, and it was a common practice.
The mindset for casting was a colorblind one of “can the person do a voice that fits the character who may look nothing like them,” as was standard going back to radio. There likely were institutional barriers that led to demographic biases in the available talent pool but I don’t think there would have been any malicious intent. Obviously with a much wider talent pool in 2020 and the advent of voice actors taking a more active role in marketing what they’re working on to fans, the game HAS changed, of course.
Also, as much as I think Christa Miller is funny and talented (and I have crushed on her since the Drew Carey Show years), her casting as Cleopatra has less to do with her being white and more to do with her being cast in every show her husband Bill Lawrence creates/produces.
The historical Cleopatra was white (i.e. European). She was part of a Greek dynasty ruling Egypt that preserved its racial purity through brother-sister marriage. Something the show understandably left out. Clearly, Gandhi was a more serious problem.
Right. On a similar level, are we supposed to retroactively condemn seasons 3-8 of “The Simpsons” because some of the characters were whitewashed during that period, or can we both recognize that as a great run in television comedy while also expecting more of the series going forward?
Also… there’s a lot of debate about what ethnicity Cleopatra ‘really’ was but anything besides Macedonian Greek is conjectural and a minority (and hair splitting one-drop ethnicities of long dead figures is kind of gross).
I’m not trying to say its a wrong or faux-woke take, but I have literally never seen anyone saying that Clone High is “dated or indefensible” for its white-washing of Gandhi and Chloe. The only people who remember the show generally just revere how funny it was and celebrate seeing the birth of a creative team that have found exponentially increasing success since it was cancelled. That may be something relevant in casting the reboot?remake? but it has not incurred the tweets or thinkpieces we have seen for other things.
Its also not 100% clear in this article, but the reason Indians protested Gandhi’s portrayal is because his character is a horny idiot party animal. He’s the dumb, loud, pathetic sidekick to the lead character in a teen comedy who seems willing to put his dick in anything. I’m not saying the article directly connects the two ideas, but it does go from mentioning how problematic a white man voicing Gandhi is to talking about Indians mass protesting his portrayal with little detail, so I just want to make it clear that you could have cast someone of Indian descent in the role and the people of India would have been just as pissed. Who knows, maybe you WOULDN’T have been able to cast an Indian as Gandhi because they would not want to be associated with that portrayal. And you can’t change that portrayal just for Gandhi, because the whole point of all the characters is that they are all shitty teenagers who don’t live up to and live in the shadow of the “great” people they were cloned from. People in America weirdly worship JFK, but I guess they are used to seeing him mocked enough that they did not protest him being portrayed as a gross idiot bro.
I think it’s also that JFK’s persona was basically just a teen-movie caricature of who, by the 1990s, pretty much everyone had realised he actually was. Let’s be honest, guy pretty much was a preppy rich kid horndog born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he just also happened to be capable of defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Yeah, what I find compelling about JFK isn’t that he was a perfect being, but that he was both flawed and capable of rising above those flaws in service of the things he believed in.
Cleo not Chloe obviously, damn edit window.
Cleo’s drunk mom got a daughter your age. Her name’s Cletus or something.
“Oh, Wesley.” ~ Mister Butlertron
whitewashing of both Gandhi and CleoIgnoring the debate on what ethnic Ancient Egyptians looked like, Cleopatra wasn’t an ethnic Egyptian — she was Greek as she was from the Ptolemy family that ruled Egypt after Alexander conquered it.
The show’s portrayal of her was ethnically Egyptian, so they whitewashed the character that they themselves made non-white.
It’s been so weird to watch Lord and Miller blow up like they have, and even more surreal to see Clone High start to get mainstream attention. This was one of those shows in the pre-internet are (well, technically not pre-internet, but before the internet was anything like it is now) that felt like it belonged to only you b/c so few people watched it or even knew it existed. I used to be a Clone High evangelist, annoying everyone I know with grainy uploads that were the only way I could even find episodes. Hell, it wasn’t until I started lurking on the AV Club 15 or so years ago that I even ran into anyone else that knew Clone High existed. Getting a major reboot know feels like some kind of musician who’s been toiling in tiny clubs for decades suddenly getting arena gigs, and I am here for it.
I thought the premise sounded so stupid when it was originally being promoted and refused to give it a shot…then I caught the last 5 minutes of “A.D.D.: The Last D is for Disorder” one night and realized I’d been missing out (Gandhi shoving the Best Dudes Forever locket up his nose…just magical.) As it turns out, I’m pretty sure that I just so happened to be watching the last airing of Clone High on MTV ever, as I spent the next couple of weeks obsessively scanning the schedule for another episode to no avail. I wound up having to download the whole series as shoddy Teletoon rips from KaZaA,.MTV giving the show a new season now is pretty rich, considering that they didn’t even air all the episodes of the first one.
Same episode: the line “It rhymed, so it must be true” was when I was hooked.
I have the series stored on my cloud drive after ripping it off DVDs I burned from torrents from Kazaa and Pirate Bay and I know I’m not alone. This show is as Internet 2.0 as it gets.
I lived in Canada when it was on and still have my DVD of the series that I bought at HMV. Time to dust it off and rewatch.
As an aside, one thing Miller and Lord deserve kuddos for is something nobody before or since has ever been willing to do: Have Peter Parker and MJ divorce.Seriously, Marvel hated having Peter and MJ married since the 90’s yet they were afraid to have them just get a divorce. So they tried a lot of stupid things.From having Peter retire as Spider-Man and be replaced by his clone. This plan spun out of control with Marvel’s marketing department stretched this out for two years with the Spider Books constantly flip flopping on who was the clone and who was the original. It was basically a waste of timeTo trying to kill off MJ in a plane crash. This was pretty much retconned almost immediately and MJ was revealed to have been abducted by a stalker and the plane crash a diversion. They would end up separating for a bit until JMS’ run.To having Peter just outright sell his marriage to a demon.But Miller and Lord just did the easiest solution and had a version of Peter get a divorce.
> It was basically a waste of timesee: the vast, vast majority of longer Big 2 comics plots, arcs, events, crossovers, etc
Clone High is one of those shows that I can trace back as one of the key pillars of my sense of humor. I was around 10/11 years old when I stumbled upon the “funny Abe Lincoln” cartoon. My TV had one of those parental control filters on it so I remember sneaking into my grandpa’s room and watch this show on there while he was at work. I didn’t really know what it was parodying, but I mostly got that it was parodying something. Something related to MTV shows. I loved it. It was funny, bright, and it had a lot of heart. I still love it. Some of the jokes don’t quite hold up now, but the vast majority of them do. I’m glad it’s coming back.
While it should be noted that trying to apply modern racial categories that are themselves reactions to 17th century philosophies of scientific racism to people 2000 years dead is a total fools errand, Kleopatra was, ethnically, a (rather inbred) Macedonian Greek woman, and had no Egyptian ancestry.
cue 20 white guys fixated on the minor, totally reasonable references to slight racial insensitivity in this overwhelmingly positive puff piece about 2 white guys**of whom i’m a fan, but as soon as i read that part i was like ‘oh that’s all anyone is going to take away from this article, myself included’
David, I can’t believe you wrote this whole article and didn’t even bother to ask if anyone had seen the poooooool? THEY FLIPPED THE BITCH!
They’re rioting at a college level!
Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?
What is that you say?
i STILL sing the “Makeover!” song whenever i hear the word makeover.
And there’s so many other silly little moments, like the Paul Revere “Tooooooooooo LAAAAAAAAATE!” above. 🙂
STAMOS!!!!!!
I love that Clone High reunited Abe Lincoln and Genghis Khan. It had been a while since they saw each other in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and even longer since they fought in Star Trek TOS episode Savage Curtain.