about the show

home movies is an animated sitcom created by loren bouchard and brendon small that ran for 4 seasons, starting in 1999 and ending in 2004. it's considered in a lot of circles to be a cult classic.

home movies was animated in "squigglevision" for the first season, like previous tom snyder/soup2nuts productions dr. katz, professional therapist and science court. from season 2 onward, home movies was produced in flash, on account of the "squigglevision" technique being pretty limiting when it came to dynamic animation.

the show is (almost) entirely improvised. this is especially true of the first season, in which the recurring characters, story, and everything else really wasn't even worked out yet. more in-depth plot and scene outlines were made as the show went on. i think it makes it super unique, the conversations between characters feel so much more real because of it. because... well... they are!

the series centers around brendon small, an 8-year-old boy who makes movies in his basement with his best friends jason and melissa. brendon's mother, paula small, is a recently divorced college english teacher, struggling to raise brendon and his baby sister josie. brendon's antics don't tend to help very much. john mcguirk, brendon and melissas alcoholic soccer coach, is a frequent on the show. he offers brendon a lot of questionable advice and gets himself into a whole host of strange situations. he has an odd kind of homoerotic relationship with brendon's teacher, mr. lynch. the rivalry between the two ends up being the b-plot in quite a few episodes. Yes im mentioning that purely because those two are my favorite characters

so why do i like it so much?

um... it's difficult to put simply.

i could say it's the novelty of it. there aren't a lot of shows like it out there. dr. katz is similar, in that it's entirely improvised and is another soup2nuts production, but i don't have the same attachment to it that i do for home movies. i'm super intrigued by the way it was made. i never listen to creator commentaries, but i do for home movies. i want to learn as much as i can about the creation of it. which thanks to its relative obscurity (and nigh unsearchable name) is a struggle!!! >_<

i could also say it's just...significant to me. what's (shockingly) over ten years ago now, it used to be on netflix, and i saw it on there on the family wii. i think my mom said something like "we can watch it when you're older." which was like. funny because i watched pretty much everything else on adult swim at that age, and not even without her knowledge?? idk. but i came back to it in middle school for whatever reason and finally watched it. and oh my god. i loved it. it's been a recurring hyperfixation ever since!!

this show got me through a lot as a teenager. i saw my younger self in brendon, and his relationship with his mother paula meant a lot to me. when i realized i was trans, i didn't know anyone in real life that was like me. and again this show was there for me. i took the one adult male character i really related to at the time, (mr. lynch) and projected the HELL onto him. yeah, i know it's kinda silly. but you won't believe how much making a character you really like similar to you can alleviate some of your frustrations with yourself.

my favorite characters are mr. lynch, (sorry) coach mcguirk, (sorry again) and paula. i especially like paula because she reminds me a lot of my mom :D

it is my favorite show in the world. i love you home movies <3

why make a shrine?

due to the aforementioned Near Obsession i have with this show i have a lot of inane trivia & thoughts & opinions & analyses. social media is pretty useless for me when it comes to sharing any of that. talking about a show not many others think about as frequently or as seriously on platforms like that leaves me feeling pretty lonely and uncomfortable. someone on, like, tumblr for example, who has nothing in common with me, is a lot more likely to come across my posts or my art and write me off as a freak with too much free time. thats not exactly a nice feeling to have? im sure most people who create or even just actively share their thoughts online can relate.

so... since i already had a website which served as my own little space to express myself, without the pressure to turn myself into a neatly packaged presentable product, i figured this was a good use of it. a bit aimless, but a genuine expression of my appreciation.

if it wasn't made obvious by the fact some of the links on the sidebar don't work, im still working on this. as always, check back at your leisure.