Toons After Dark: Clone High (2002)

Traditionally, high schools have generations of students walking their halls, as graduates will send their kids to the same school where they graduated.

But......what if there was a school populated by clones of historical figures? Forget about history class, history would be remade, if you will, in those same halls.

That was the premise, so it seemed, behind Clone High, which lasted just one season at MTV (2002-3), despite a cast of familiar talents, including Will Forte (Saturday Night Live), Zach Braff & Donald Faison (Scrubs), Christa Miller (The Drew Carey Show), and Michael McDonald, Debra Wilson, & Nicole Sullivan (MadTV). Sullivan was also working on Disney's Kim Possible around the same time.

Touchstone Television and Nelvana originally had the series at Fox, but the network wasn't willing to commit to series after buying the pilot from creators Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, & Bill Lawrence (the latter being Christa Miller's husband), so MTV scooped it up. The character designs more closely resemble another Canadian-produced cartoon franchise, Total Drama, which landed in the US at Cartoon Network, and, because of various format changes, has lasted longer. Lord, Miller, & Lawrence were also in the voice cast, by the way.

Here's the series opener, with special guest stars Michael J. Fox (Spin City) and Andy Dick (ex-Newsradio).



I suspect the creators got the idea for bringing all the historical figures together from seeing some time traveling on Celebrity Deathmatch. The fact that the school and its home base were part of a secret government operation didn't help matters.

Apparently, Bill Lawrence was the casting director, recruiting talent from Scrubs and Spin City, two of his other creations. He, along with partners Lord & Miller, are bringing Clone High, despite it bombing on MTV, back to the air, nearly 20 years after its debut. If I were to venture a guess, I don't think Empty-V has room for it now, so it'll likely join the revivals of Ren & Stimpy and Beavis & Butt-Head at Comedy Central. If it didn't work the first time, why would they think it'll work now?

Rating: C.