This Show Is Called Squidbillies

"This Show Is Called Squidbillies" is the first episode from the first season of Squidbillies. It first aired on October 16, 2005 on Adult Swim.

Synopsis[]

Introducing America's favorite animated family.

Plot[]

The episode begins with the Narrator telling the audience that this show is called Squidbillies and introduces its main setting, which takes place in a quiet little mountain town nestled in the North Georgia Mountains that has places such as a Gas Station, a dance studio, and a Sheriff's Office. The town’s Sheriff immediately comes out of the dance studio, in a ballet outfit, smoking a cigarette and coughing right after. The Narrator claims that in three years from now he’ll die of emphysema while the Sheriff continues to stretch. A large building known as Dan Halen Sheetrock International is then introduced, which specializes in various products ranging from sheetrocks to a dangerous baby care product known as the Baby Hammock, which is responsible for killing infants. The building’s current CEO Dan Halen got another report of a baby that died from the Baby Hammock, prompting him to sue the parents. During a lawsuit at the courthouse, the parents had violated Dan Halen’s copyright by calling the Baby Hammock as the term; Baby Death Trap, which Dan Halen was already using for another product with the same exact name.

The Narrator introduces more people who live in the town of Dougal County to the audience such as Space Baby, an alien baby, Snakeman, a snake resident who kills and eats a nearby bystander, and Billy Morton, a young boy with sticks for arms and wooden planks for legs who is the star of a local high school football team. When the Sheriff to talks him, he tries to throw his football but it falls onto the ground. Billy tells the Sheriff that he has to go back to practice but gets hit by a nearby truck, leaving nothing but his stick arms and wooden plank legs on the streets, as soon the Sheriff goes back to doing his ballet. The Narrator explains that this is the story of all the people that live in this mountain town but it was mostly the story of Early Cuyler, a green Appalachian Mud Squid, who we see licking a pumpkin on the porch of someone’s house. He is then interrupted by a man who tells him to get off his porch before Early throws Molotov cocktail at him, which ends up setting the man and his own house on fire.

The Narrator explains Early Cuyler’s backstory, which began fifteen years ago, where he was a young squid who fell in love with an obese woman from the junkyard named Krystal, who asks to give her a walkman before he can intimately touch her front butt. Early Cuyler, resorting in an armed robbery, steals a walkman from a store clerk named Boyd at the town's local convenience store. Early returns to her to offer the walkman to marry him but finds her having sex with Snakeman in a community toilet and forgot to get a tape cassette for the walkman. Early returns to Boyd’s to steal a tape cassette named Company’s 10 from 6 but gets the wrong tape (named "Camper Van Who Billy") instead and threatens Boyd with his 12 gauge shotgun. He was then caught by the Sheriff and was sentenced to prison for the next fifteen years. Meanwhile, while he was incarcerated, his dear fiancé Krystal waited for him for over 12.14 seconds and marries Snakeman. Unbeknownst to Early, she was pregnant with a child named Rusty, who we see in his mother’s womb, along with an unknown man who asks the Narrator and audience for help. Once he was born, Krystal abandons baby Rusty onto a doorstep and abandoned him onto a doorstep with Lil Cuyler, Early’s sister. She finds baby Rusty in an empty bucket of chicken but drops him out of it, making him cry, as Lil wanted some chicken to eat.

Rusty was raised by Lil after that, and during his childhood, he perms the Sheriff's hair with meth while Lil does nothing but watch television all day. The Sheriff discovers Lil’s Meth Lab and asks her if it was moonshine or not due to it being illegal in Dougal County, which the lab wasn’t. The Sheriff starts speaking gibberish and commits suicide as Rusty shampooed him with over half a million dollars of crystal meth before Lil starts to smoke his head with a chainsaw. The Narrator states that after this occurred, Rusty was made ward of the state, who stepped in and placed him in with his granny at the nursery home before he jumped out of the window and ran away. Granny also screams as she had a gigasm. Sometime later, Rusty becomes lonely in the woods for a while and attempted to commit suicide using a rifle, but was saved by a wolf, who mauled his face after that. Rusty was then raised by wolves for the next eleven years in the woods but they would often attack and maul his own face. The Narrator reveals that Rusty also stuffed himself with 130 pounds of nitroglycerin, which blew all of the wolves and much of the forest into a fine brown mist. This was all a dream that he had as he woke up and found himself to be a rockstar in the band Rush but wakes up from it and explains it to Lil, who watches some more television. After Rusty is told by Lil that he is actually naked, the Narrator cuts a dream where Rusty humps a nameless yellow creature and claimed that this actually happened, revealing that it wasn’t actually a dream at all.

While walking down a dirt path as a runaway, Rusty discovers and meets his father for the first time in a chain gang of Prisoners, but mistakes his father for one of the chained inmates. The Sheriff, in tears, unchains Early so he can raise his son, although he does kill one of the chained prisoners. The Sheriff also frees Snakeman as well but gets devoured by him. At the dinner table, Rusty settles into a normal family life with his father and aunt Lil. Early teaches him some fatherly advice as he is going on a date with two different girls on the same night who don’t even know he’s a squid. The episode ends with Early trying to beat Rusty with a table stick due to him forgetting that he has a family and still remembers being in prison before being stopped by Lil, who called him out.

Early's Trucker Hats[]

"Here's The Beef"
"Breathe If You're Horny"

Characters/Cast[]

Early Cuyler (Unknown Hinson)
Rusty Cuyler (Daniel McDevitt)
Lil Cuyler (Patricia French)
Granny Cuyler (Dana Snyder)
Krystal (Mary Kraft)
Sheriff (Charles Napier)
Dan Halen (Todd Hanson)
Boyd (Pete Smith)
Reverend (Scott Hilley)
Snakeman
Billy Morton (Nick Ingkatanuwat)
Prisoner / Tattoo Artist (Dave Willis)
Man In Krystal's Womb (Christian Danley)
Prisoners (Lane Grayson)
Space Baby
Wolves
Yellow Creature
Crow
Opossum (mentioned)
Commerical Mother
Commerical Baby
Judge
Parents
Jury
Bystander
Unnamed Man with a Southern accent (Dave Willis; arm only)
Rush
Narrator (Dave Willis)

Trivia[]

This episode is officially known as the first episode of Squidbillies, although the Rough Cut Pilot originally aired on April 1st, 2005 (April Fools Day).
This episode was originally going to air on November 7th, 2004 but the pilot episode of Perfect Hair Forever and the Anime Talk Show, later known as Adult Swim Brain Trust (which featured Early Cuyler, along with Space Ghost from Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Meatwad from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and Sharko from Sealab 2021), were aired instead as it fell behind and wasn't finished nor ready to air at the time.
This is one of few episodes in the series to not to have an Early Trucker Opening with it being the first one to do so.
Real life footage of a mother struggling with her infant can be seen in the respective Baby Hammock and Baby Death Trap commercials. A photoshopped baby is also present in them.
The production music "Countdown" by Killer Tracks/Universal Production Music plays in the respective Baby Hammock and Death Trap commercials. It is also heard again in "Take This Job & Love It".
When Early leaves the convenience store, he told Boyd that he’ll see him in church. This is the only mention of the town's church in the first season, which doesn’t physically appear until the Season 2 episode "Giant Foam Dickhat Trouble".
The chicken bucket that baby Rusty was in later appears again in "The Appalachian Mud Squid: Darwin's Dilemma" and "Reunited, And It Feels No Good" respectively.
The crying sound effect used for Baby Rusty was also heard in the Adult Swim shows 12 oz. Mouse, in at least two episodes, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force, in one episode, respectively as well as "Rusty and Tammi Sitting in a Tree, B-A-S-T-A-R-D".
This is one of the few episodes in the series where the Dougal County Hospital is actually a nursing home, with the other ones being "School Days, Fool Days" and "Asses to Ashes, Sluts to Dust" respectively. It also briefly appeared in the Season 3 episode "Wing Nut".
You can hear voices on the intercom when Rusty is in the nursery room with Granny.
When Rusty was raised by wolves, he was taught how to ride a bike, go to sleep so the tooth fairy would come and bring him money, and had to be educated about the birth of wolf pups.
Rusty told his father Early that he has a date with Tanya and Tara on the same night. They’re never mentioned again nor ever seen. They could also be Hispanics as implied by Early.
Near the end of the episode, Early shows Rusty that he has a tattoo of a red demon-like creature with two heads and eyes in the back of it. It is never seen again afterwards.
The name of the series’ final episode "This Show Was Called Squidbillies" is a direct reference and callback to this episode.

Cultural References[]

The shape of Sheriff's fleshy face heavily resembles Meatwad, one of the main characters from the Adult Swim series Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
Two members of the Canadian rock band Rush can be seen in one of Rusty’s dreams.