The Midnight Gospel is the result of the union of two deep creative minds, Pendleton Ward – creator of the famous TV show Adventure Time (2010-18) and Duncan Trussell – actor and producer of the Duncan Trussell Family Hour (2020) podcast, in which he talks to his interviewees about philosophy, meditation, love, drugs and other human questions. The show is a 2020’s adult cartoon television series. Now, more than ever, animation is not only for kids!
The animated show follows the life of Clancy, a young podcaster who lives in a motorhome and with his multiverse simulator everyday choose a universe to visit. In his journey, the character interviews the beings that live in that universe and makes an interview with them, which becomes an episode of his podcast.
As the TV show is a partnership with Trussell’s podcast, most of the dialogues present in the episodes are real excerpts of interviews, so the history of drawing and the facts that happen in these trips to the various universes have no connection with the dialogue, but serves to illustrate and cause the ambiance, which have a psychedelic and, in a way, abstract aesthetic.
Multicolored Experimental Journey
In the first episode, Clancy arrives on a planet that is facing a zombie apocalypse and is very similar to Earth. Her interviewee is Glasses Man, a president and, through the elements present in the first scenes of the characters’ meeting, makes us understand that he is the President of the United States – who represents Dr. Drew Pinsky (doctor specialized in drug addictions) interviewed in Trussell’s podcast. The episode revolves around the topic of drugs and brings many interesting perspectives, such as the point about drug policy administration, in which, in Pinsky’s view, there are no bad drugs but the circumstances in which such a drug can be good or bad.
The most interesting is the junction of the drawing format with parts of the podcast, considering that many people have a certain laziness or simply do not like to listen to podcast, The Midnight Gospel brings the subjects in a visual way, making the discussions reach the audience more easily, since we, as human being, have an ease to entertain and identify with images and visual productions.