THURSDAY THEME SONG: SEALAB 2021

This is the last week for our "Underwater Adventures" theme on Thursday Theme Song. Today's show is one of [adult swim]'s finest work:

Standard dress code on Sealab

Sealab 2021

Way back in 1972, Hanna-Barbera produced Sealab 2020, a show that teaches kids about being environmentally friendly, particularly to the sea. The show was dumb and boring and canceled after thirteen episodes.

Fast forward to 1995: Adam Reed and Matt Thompson stumble upon an old episode of Sealab 2020 and decide to add their own dialogue making it funny. Thus, Sealab 2021 was born. The series ran 52 ten to twelve minute episodes on Cartoon Network's [adult swim] from 2000-2005.

Taking place one year after the events of Sealab 2020 the crew has gone a bit crazy living underwater for so long and now they just spend their time goofing off and acting stupid. And boy is it funny.

Sealab group photo

Sealab 2021 uses recycled animation and backgrounds from the original show and adds in new animation when necessary. The animation quality is very limited and quite bad but the writing is funny and makes the animation tolerable.

The show has a huge cult following, many of which say the show 'jumped the shark' when Captain Murphy voice actor Harry Goz died in 2003. Captain Murphy's character was written out of the show saying he went to fight in the Great Spice Wars. The series went on for a while after but it was never the same and was eventually canceled.

The theme song for the show is by a group called Calamine.



If you want to see an episode of the original Sealab 2020 then check out the Sealab 2021 episode called '7211' on the second season DVD set. It is an actual episode of the original show (7211 refers to the production number of the original episode) with the new voice cast dubbing in the dialogue and edited for time constrains. You will see just how boring the original show was.