100 Episodes of "Big City Greens" - Looking Back and Ahead with Creators Chris and Shane Houghton
Fans have been watching the hit Disney Channel series, Big City Greens, with pure enjoyment for four seasons now (with a fifth on the way!) and we were able to sit creators Shane and Chris Houghton, on the precipice of the 100th episode of the series to discuss what makes it so special and what we can expect out of the milestone episode.
For four seasons now - making one of the longest running Disney Channel animated series second only to Phineas and Ferb, fans of all ages have tuned into Disney Channel’s Emmy Award-nominated animated comedy-adventure series whether it be on the network or on Disney+, to follow the offbeat adventures of 10-year-old Cricket Green, a mischievous and optimistic country boy who moves to the big city with his wildly out of place family, including older sister Tilly, father Bill, Gramma Alice, best friend Remy, and Gloria the cafe worker-turned adopted family member. Cricket’s natural curiosity and enthusiasm lead him and his family on epic journeys and into the hearts of his new neighbors in Big City, or since season three, back in their home town of Smalton. Along with all of these episodes, the Greens have even been to outer space in a full-length motion picture that debuted last summer on Disney Channel and Disney+, Big City Greens the Movie: Spacecation.
Ben Breitbart: So we are really honored to once again get a chance to speak with Chris and Shane Houghton from Big City Greens, which is about to celebrate 100 episodes. We are joined today with Tony [Betti], who has been a great advocate for the show amongst our team. He's got everyone engaged watching it. And we love the episode. We love the show, and we are so honored that they are celebrating their 100th anniversary with us with their specially themed attire [novelty 100 glasses] and their sibling shirts. Tony, why don't you talk a little bit about your love of Big City Greens?
Shane Houghton: Real quick, I have to take these off because I cannot see a thing.
Chris Houghton: I wore these on my drive to work this morning and crashed three times. So.
SH: Yeah, they are celebratory, but not functional.
Tony Betti: Is the car as strong as a Kludge and can handle those hits?
CH: Yes, always. Only I didn't stop. So I guess so, yeah.
SH: Ohh OK.
TB: Well, staying hiding in that office then? I'm Tony. As you all know, It’s so good to see you guys again. I haven't seen you guys in almost a year now. Since the premiere of Spacecation. Somehow you got a movie before a 100th episode.
CH: Yeah. I don't know if the math checks out on that or not, but we're very excited to have our 100th episode premiere.
TB: Now, as we’ve talked about before, I get really into the weeds with this show. I love it, the universe just keeps expanding and getting bigger and Big City feels so lived in and real. In your opinion though, how has Big City Greens outlasted so many other series? Series that have even run along yours, and at the same time you're coming into the middle of season 4, a hundredth episode, and you have Season 5 coming up ahead where others barely make it through their first season. Can you tell us about that?
SH: Yeah, yeah, it's taken a lot of bribes and covert operations. A couple of quick assassinations and just crushing the competition. I don't know. This is the TV business. It is so unpredictable. We are so grateful to be here. It's really due to the audience. The audience is the reason the show has continued to last as long as it has. We've found the audience, the audience continues to grow. The characters, people just love the characters, and I think that's a part of the keys to longevity. I think it's less about maybe the competition that's out there cause there's tons of great shows that are still being made and doing great..
TB: Some of your alumni have gone on to make their own shows. I'm thinking of Natasha Kline and Primos immediately.
CH: Exactly. Yeah, that's right. And Kiana Khansmith just came out with an amazing pilot. I'm gonna butcher the title, but Shane, help me out - “Pretty, Pretty Please, I Don't Want to be A Magical Girl."
SH: I think that's it.
CH: I think that's it. An independently produced pilot. Yes, we just have an incredible, incredible crew and cast. And like Shane said, it's always, it's the fans driving everything. If the fans didn't watch this all goes kablooey. Really. But pair a hungry audience with an amazing cast and crew and a couple of insane showrunners and then support from the studio. And I think that's the best you can do to line yourself up for any kind of success in this business. But Shane and I have been really proactive since day one in trying to expand Big City and Big City Greens. You know, it's a TV series first, but we were the first show to partner with Disney's multi platform team to produce short form content and we've always been doing that. We've been doing that for years, making Big City Greens shorts for YouTube and social media and stuff. I remember, I think this Is like, 2018, 2019 I met a kid at a convention and he was young. He was maybe like 7 or 8. And he told me, oh, I love Big City Greens, and we were like,"oh, that's so great to hear!" You know, “what's your favorite episode?" that kind of thing, And he was going on about the show, and he said, “I love Big City Greens,. I even like the long ones!" And I said “what do you mean?" And what he was talking about was the show. He meant the show! “The long ones" were the 11 minute cartoons. So that really solidified it for us that, OK, kids are being introduced to Big City Greens in a variety of ways, so we've always chased that. Whether it's our partnerships with ESPN doing the NHL specials, now we got Cricket on TikTok doing the puppet cricket and you know, we really want to expand Big City Greens and that was also that was also the impetus for the movie. So it's always kind of this, this challenge of, how can we grow? Show the show beyond the show.
SH: Do you think there's over 100 shorts on YouTube of Big City Greens?
CH: Yeah, definitely, yeah.
TB: You have Broken Karaoke, You have Theme Song Takeover, you have How Now to Draw, Road Trip I think was another one.
SH: The Road Trip ones, we’re part of the Chibiverse.
TB: Yeah, Chibi TIny Tales.
CH: We had the “Country Kids in the City" round of shorts. That was our first round of shorts. So yeah, there's been there's been a lot which has just been great and it's been great to watch Disney embrace that kind of like expansion cause that was always kind of our excitement about working at Disney was, ‘hey, if you have a hit here, it can really expand and and how big can it become?’
BB: Question I have is - I remember first hearing about Big City Greens at like the end of a fish hooks panel at Comic Con. They showed the trailer or teaser trailer. Do you ever, now that you're at 100 episodes, do you ever look back and try to put yourself in the shoes where you are pitching the show and developing the show and waiting for the show to roll out? And so now you're everywhere and you work. You’re at ESPN, as you mentioned and these shorts and yeah fans and there's merch. Can you still relate to the person who was working on the show before it came out? Does that just feel like a lifetime ago?
SH: We were at the end of a DuckTales Comic Con panel. So DuckTales was the big push for the series, the DuckTales reboot. Chris and I were in that room and it was electric. They did this whole bit where they were like, “oops, we're accidentally showing art that we're not supposed to be showing." And they were revealing which characters were gonna be in the series. It was very exciting. We were like sitting in this room, and it was just electric, just the vibe was incredible. And then at the end, they did - or maybe it was at the top, I don't know - Somewhere in there, they did a teaser and they showed our main title theme and it was OK. It was not the same feeling as like what DuckTales was getting, and at the time we were down at Comic Con, we were at San Diego and Chris and I wanted to go, but we weren't sent there by Disney or anything, so we just went and we stayed in a hostel because we didn't have a lot of money and it was like, it was very different times. I think nobody knew what the show was. It was very much like an underdog show, even at the time Disney was trying to figure out where all their shows were going to be produced, and we were off in this other building that was kind of far away. The executives weren't in the same building as us, so we were kind of flying under the radar for those first couple of years, which I think helped it, it just allowed us to really figure out what we wanted the show to be, train the crew up in the way that that we wanted to, teach them how we wanted the show to work and over the years now, we've obviously, we're much more experienced showrunners now. We know what we're doing and Chris and I just hit our nine year anniversary of being in production on the series like Last Friday, wow, April 25th. So it's been a long time. So we are very different people now. But I do think back to when we were developing and how we were - I think we've always been pretty ambitious for what we've wanted out of this show. We've always been very driven and the show has always come first in terms of - we want it to be good. We want it to be funny. We've tried to protect the characters over all these years to make sure they don't change too much, so they become unrecognizable or their character breaks. So there's been a lot of that over the years, but I don't know. I do think about those early days like that when we used to be doing comic books and going to comic conventions, I kind of romanticized those times because they were really good times with lots of great memories, but I'm also so so grateful for what we've achieved in that time and what the show has become. It's just been massive.
CH: Yeah, I remember a time - I've told you this before, Shane - I remember a time where this is early season one, so this must have been like fall of 2016. We were just starting to, to crew up and really get to work on a production of season one. Those days are really, really long and I remember leaving. We were in a little building in Glendale. We shared office space with Yellow Pages and it was like the strangest working environment. And we had our editors in a basement and it was all moldy. And it was like, really, really scrappy. But I remember leaving the office one night at like 10:00 PM and I just had this feeling in my chest, almost like Christmas morning. That type of excitement where I was like, “wow, I think we might be making something that's really, really exciting." And and I didn't mean it in the way of, like, patting me and Shane on the back, but it felt like, to make a successful TV series like we kind of touched on earlier, there's a lot of things that need to come together and align and and I remember that night in particular, like driving down Brand Ave. in Glendale and just like feeling so tired and giddy about like what the show could become and then fast forward to now. Like, yeah, Season 5 and everything. Just the other day I saw online, sometimes I'll check this Big CIty Greens subReddit or what's going on X or whatever, And I saw someone complain about the show. They said “This show’s everywhere, it's an industry plant!" and I thought ‘Oh my God, we've made it!’ like we've made it if someone thinks the show was created in a laboratory and kind of pushed on them, it's kind of a testament to how hard we work to get it in front of them. So yeah, we're just. I'm just. I'm so, so proud. And to answer your question, Ben, I don't know. I'm a ghost of my former self. I barely remember him.
TB: Now we've talked about ESPN, you guys mentioned DuckTales. You guys have outlasted the reboot of DuckTales, which was three seasons. You’re on four going to season five, but DuckTales has something that you guys don't have yet and I don't know if you could talk about this at all, but you guys have yet to break into the Disney Parks. I know I pitched an idea once about you guys taking over the fan favorite Living with the Land at EPCOT. The greenhouse boat ride. But what would you guys like to see if that were to ever come to fruition?
SH: Yeah, like The Country Bears has a whole section. That's like, hey, stick the Greens in there. They’d get along with those country bears just fine.
CH: Yeah, dude. If the country bears are in the parks, there's room for other IP's. You know? But seriously, we're coming up on our 100th episode, which in a way feels like, as much as it's a celebration, I'm hesitant that it could be interpreted as like a sunset of the show, which it is very much not. I mean, we have no plans of ending the show anytime soon. And I think the big reason for that I think is we’ve only just touched the tip of what Big City Greens could be in terms of growth at this company and in terms of fan engagement. I mean, for every die hard fan of the show that we have, there's like 10 other people who have never heard of the show. So there's a lot of room for growth and. Yeah. If anyone from the park sees this… [give us a call]
TB: You said there's 10 people for every person who has seen the show who hasn't seen the show. What episodes would you suggest for them to jump in and like, “OK, you need to watch this one, and you need to watch this one and you need to watch this" to get the basis of it.
SH: Which would you suggest? Man, this is a hard question.
CH: Oh. That's a tough - yeah.
SH: There's so much. I do think part of the reason the show is successful is because you can jump in on any episode. I think we always hear about people who are on vacation and they're staying in a hotel and they turn on Disney Channel and Big City Greens is on and the whole family stops and watches it.
TB: It's on for six hours at a time, too, by the way.
SH: Like it’s always on! So, I think that really helps that. If you're all interested, catch any episode, start anywhere, you don't have to start at the beginning, you can jump around, just whatever tickles your funny bone and and in those icons, you know in the thumbnails on Disney+, take a look and see what you think. Start with the 100th episode, like that is doable. We're not a heavily serialized show where it's like ‘If you missed that one, you're not gonna get this one.’ It's a family sitcom.
CH: Yeah, it's up to us to make episodes that could be an audience member's first episode. And if we can't grab them with a random episode, then we've failed to do our job. So yeah, I like your answer, Shane.
SH: I'm still harping on the writers and the boarders that it's like within the first 3 lines of an episode, one character has to say the other character's name. I'm always thinking if that's somebody's first episode, let's just say who the people on the screen are, you know? Obviously people know who are fans, but for new people, I'm always thinking about that. If this is somebody's first episode, Cricket should say Remy’s name and Remy should say Crickey’s name.
TB: You made that comment and now I'm thinking back, and I might need to rewatch a lot of them because yes, that's 100% true. At some point, everybody will say each other's name.
CH: For a while in the show there were concerns that, like the audience, they wouldn't understand what the premise of the show was. So if you go back to like some early season one episodes, a lot of episodes start with “well, now that we're in the city and we were previously in the country" or “now that we've moved to Gramma’s house and we weren't here before. We lived on a farm elsewhere."
TB: Which gets more convoluted come season three, when you guys do go back to Smalton in the country.
SH: Right? But it also doesn't matter - it's about these people. Who cares where they are, you know?
CH: And the audience is smart. If you really care as an audience member, you'll pay attention to those details and be able to follow along.
TB: Great for anybody new, even better for those who've watched the whole thing.
CH: Exactly.
TB: Before I saw you guys last year at the Spacecation premiere, I was with one of our colleagues, Mr. Mike Celestino, and he was like, what episodes do I need to watch to understand this movie? And I said “none of them, but here's a few to kind of ground you in the world." And I obviously said the first episode, which is when Cricket tries to launch the chicken into space. Basically any of them with Gwendolyn Zapp. But I also threw in “Animation Abomination," “Squashed" the season three Halloween episode, And then “Bill-liever," just to understand the humor, do you agree with those?
CH: I love that episode. Yeah, those are great. And what I love hearing about these lists, because there's a lot online too of people being like “here are my favorite episodes" or “here are my least favorite episodes" is there seems to be no consensus, which I love. It seems like everyone kind of has their own list, which I think is a testament to the show and just to people's tastes. I love “Bill-liever." I also love “Handshaken" was a recent favorite of mine, and I just thought that was so funny. .
TB: Oh my gosh, that was so good.
SH: What's funny about “Bill-liever" is Anna O'Brian, the director of the movie, was a writer and storyboard artist on that. I wonder if part of the reason you're picking up on that is Anna's got her fingerprints all over that, and “Squashed", she directed “Squashed." Yeah. OK, so I wonder if you're picking up on Anna O'Brian.
TB: Wow. And that was just a small sampling of the list. I can give you the whole list and you could tell me if Anna's on any of those.
CH: Yeah, run it. Run us through what you got. .
TB: Okay, it was “Welcome Home," “Photo Op.".
CH: Another good one.
TB: “Elevator Action", “I, Farmbot", “Super Gramma,"
SH: That's Anna.
TB: “Fast Foodie," “Animation Abomination," “Squashed," “Delivernator." and “Car Trouble."
SH: And she boarded on “Car Trouble."
CH: Yeah. Anna worked on a number of those. You know, we're singling out Anna, cause she's helping us run season five after she directed the movie. But also, there's Jon Wallach, our supervising director has been with us since day one. He helped write and storyboard a number of those episodes. Director Raj Brueggemann or Jen Begeman. Ariel Vracin-Harrell, who was the Co-director on the movie. A number of just really hilarious, funny, funny people who have been with us for so long. I love that list. That's a great list.
TB: Awesome. That was just for the movie too. I didn't even think about it as the series on the whole, just ahead of the movie.
SH: I wonder if we did something else that, like Jon, was to head up, I wonder if you would single out episodes that Jon had a heavy hand in. Because I think what stands out about Anna is - you're talking about the movie. She directed the movie - but like a lot of those episodes you mentioned just have her tone all over it. So I think after seeing the movie and you're thinking about the series you're like, “oh yeah that's spot on." So I bet if we singled in to one thing for one of those other artists we could pick up on that because there's a slightly different tone when somebody's running or working on an episode like Carson Montgomery is one of our writers and his episodes have this flavor to them that is so unique to him. And it's the combination of his flavor and Laura's flavor and Nate's flavor, all of our different writers, that together makes the series, but they kind of feel a little different, which I love because it gets that variety for the show.
CH: Yeah, I think recently we calculated that Carson had written the most episodes out of anyone on the crew. He's been here the longest, I think. I think his tally is up to like 60 episodes or something crazy like that.
SH: Yeah, 11 minute episodes. Yeah.
TB: Yeah. So let's get to that real quick because we're on the 100th episode, which is why we're talking today. We're here for the 100th episode, you just said there's 11 minute episodes. So it could be argued that they've had more than 100 adventures. But that's not why we're talking. We're talking 100 episodes of 30 minutes. Out of everything, what would cricket say about the 100 adventures?
CH: His look back on the whole thing?
Cricket Green: What a ride, baby. What a ride. And much more to come. Much more.
CH: Yeah. I mean, my goodness, who would have thought there's such an appetite for a scrappy little mischievous boy. Just don't look at Dennis the Menace, Bart Simpson, who else? Cartman.
TB: We're gonna pretend I haven't seen it yet, but what do you guys have planned for the Big 100? Anybody we could expect to hear, maybe or characters to see?
SH: Ohh yeah, so the 100th episode, It's a big half hour special. Normally our episodes are 22 minutes. This one's 25. Got three additional minutes of fun stuff in there. It's a massive episode and the crew really went all out in making it beautiful and funny. It goes above and beyond, and one of my personal favorites is we have a guest star, we have Mark Hamill coming in. He voices a new character that's back alley Mystic named Archemorus. He's this really weird, really funny character and getting Mark Hamill was really cool and special because we wanted to cast him back in season one in an episode that we did and we recorded and he came. But that was the only episode that was shelved. It never came out. And so to get him back for the 100th episode felt right that we could finally get him back in, in a big, momentous way. And then in doing so, we looked back at that episode that we shelved back in season one, and we were like “Can we rework this and bring it out? Can we release it?" And that episode is going to be a part of the season finale of season four.. So the last episode, it was an episode called “Hands on History" and we've retitled it to “Rehashed history" because we are rehashing our old history, it's a really fun episode. Mark Hamill will appear in that as well and he's just an absolute delight. Like what a legend, you know.
TB: Very nice. Now real quick, I asked Cricket what he would think, but let me check my notes… what would “additional voices" say about the 100th episode?
CH: Shane’s “Wholesome Greg!" What would Wholesome Greg say?!
TB: [Laughing] I had “Wholesome Greg" here, but I wanted to do my additional voices bit.
SH: He would say, “Chip, why am I not in this episode?" and Wholesome Greg is not in this episode. He's not in the 100th episode, but I did voice the chicken in the 100th episode.
CH: Among those additional voices that Shane performs, the chicken. Whenever there's a chicken. It's Shane.
SH: Hopefully this isn't too much of a spoiler, but there's a giant chicken in the 100th episode, and that was a lot of fun. I like Godzilla. I like big Kaiju monsters, so it was fun to do our version of that. With a giant chicken and and it was cool cause I got to fight Chris on screen. Cricket and the chicken and Remy they have it out.
TB: Alright, I'll admit that I have seen it and I very much enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to how the audience responds to it as I'm sure you guys are as well. You had me crying at one point and then cackling at another… But I look forward to it, I look forward to season 5. I look forward to whatever else comes. Guys, thank you so much again for all your time.
SH: It is a pleasure. Thank you for having us on. It's always great talking to you guys and and we so appreciate all the support you've shown the show and thanks for watching and continuing to watch. A lot more Big City Greens to come!
BB: And congratulations. I mean, that's 100 episodes of bringing that much joy into the world and bringing families together with a show they can watch and have fun with and enjoy it on all sorts of different levels is quite the accomplishment, so you should be proud of yourselves. You've come a long way from that hostel, but we appreciate you taking the time out and you appreciate you creating the show because we love it here. And thanks, Tony. You are advocating for it and making sure everyone at Laughing Place loves Big City Greens.
TB: Absolutely.
CH: Yeah, thank you. That's so nice to hear, Ben. It's such a joy to hear from our fans, whether it's kids writing in fan letters and sending drawings or hearing from parents or grandparents. Just anyone. Like Shane said earlier, we're just so immensely grateful for everyone who has either stuck with us for 100 episodes or who are just joining now. So thank you both for having us.
You can check out the full interview in our video below, and catch the fun of the 100th episode when it debuts on May 3rd at 8:00 PM on Disney Channel and May 7th on Disney+.