Mordecai And Rigby Give Us A Fully Realized Portrait Of Male Friendship
The first thing you need to know about Cartoon Network's Regular Show is that, if you haven't been watching, you should. Wait, come back, don't start watching right this minute, because the second thing you need to know is that Regular Show is extremely weird.
It's ostensibly for kids -- it airs on Cartoon Network in primetime, not in the Adult Swim block, though if it did come on at midnight, it would not be out of place sandwiched between Metalocalypse and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Some elements make it seem kid-ish: the characters are anthropomorphized animals/creatures/objects (ape/ghost/gumball machine); fantastical stuff happens all the time (characters acquire working time machines or babysit for Death). Some elements make it seem grown-up: characters work unremarkable jobs (park groundskeepers; coffee shop waitresses) they mostly hate; characters discuss pedestrian matters (how tough their college classes are; not having enough money to buy a new TV). And some elements are so far past merely grown-up that they would seem to make the show actually inappropriate for kids -- as, for example, when Santa Claus (voice of Ed Asner) got shot three times in the chest within the first, oh, minute of last night's Christmas special. (Spoiler: Santa survives.) But assuming that you did let your kids watch the show, you could be comfortable in the knowledge that Regular Show would teach them what adult friendships are actually like -- good and bad -- through the examples of Mordecai and Rigby.
Most of the time, Mordecai (voice of series creator J.G. Quintel) and Rigby (William Salyers) are united in their goals, be they to save Pops (voice of Sam Marin) after Pops spins too much and falls into some kind of alternate universe, or (more often) to blow off work and get away with it. Rigby also -- reluctantly -- serves as a wingman for Mordecai in what have so far been fruitless attempts to get together with Margaret (voice of Janie Haddad Tompkins), by agreeing to various double-date scenarios with Margaret and her best friend Eileen (voice of Minty Lewis). But they get into scraps, too -- believable squabbles over normal, day-to-day slights that real friends would get into, as opposed to the high-stakes blowouts over fashion-show seating charts one sees between alleged best friends Serena and Blair on virtually any episode of Gossip Girl.
So maybe I do get why Regular Show is okay for kids to watch, occasional gunplay and frequent death and all. Like real friends who spend almost all their time together, Mordecai and Rigby get on each other's nerves sometimes -- and Regular Show lets us know that's okay. Unlike saccharine, tension-free pablum like Backyardigans, Regular Show portrays the ups and downs of real friendship. It's probably important for kids to learn that not every skirmish has to mean the end of a friendship -- and that you can't spend too long being mad at each other because, at any point, one of you might get bitten by a were-skunk and need the other's help to break the spell.