Moral Orel

Moral Orel is an American adult stop-motion animated television series which originally aired on Adult Swim from December 13, 2005 to December 18, 2008. The series has been described as ""Davey and Goliath" meets "South Park"". However, Dino Stamatopoulos, the show's creator, is wary of the comparison with "Davey and Goliath", telling the "New York Times" that "Moral Orel" grew out of a concept for a send-up of a "Leave It to Beaver"-style 1950s sitcom that would star Iggy Pop. The series is a satire of the archetypes of Middle American suburban life, modern-day WASP culture, alcoholism, and religious fundamentalism with weighty emotional undertones that increase dramatically as the series progresses.
At the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con, Stamatopoulos announced that the show would not be renewed for a fourth season. The final season was aired interspersed with repeats from the first two seasons, as many of the episodes took place in parallel with events of past episodes. The event, which was called "44 Nights of Orel", was hosted by Stamatopoulos and others and started on October 6, 2008, running through December 18, when the series finale premiered. A special entitled "Beforel Orel" later aired on November 19, 2012.
Plot.
"Moral Orel" takes place in the fictional capital city of Moralton in the fictional Bible Belt state of Statesota. According to the globe shown in the opening credits, Moralton is in the exact center of the United States, with the town's church at the exact center of the town. The globe also depicts the contiguous United States of America as being the only country and land mass on Earth. The protagonist is 12-year-old Orel Puppington, a student at Alfred G. Diorama Elementary School, who tries to live by the fundamentalist Protestant Christian moral code as articulated in church or by his father, Clay Puppington. Orel naïvely follows this code to disastrous extremes.
International broadcast.
In Canada, "Moral Orel" previously aired on Teletoon's Teletoon at Night block and currently airs on the Canadian version of Adult Swim.
Seasons.
The first season of the show follows a standard formula, in which Orel hears a sermon given by Rev. Rod Putty in church on Sunday, and then proceeds to have a misadventure based on his attempts to live by his (usually warped) interpretation of the sermon and its lesson. At the end of each episode, his father would sternly put a halt to the situation and "correct" Orel, by means of corporal punishment, only to offer an even more warped interpretation (in the first season, typically one of Clay's "Lost Commandments") of the church sermon. A running gag of the show was that before the ending credits ran, Clay's pants would fall down when he stood from his chair, as he had earlier removed his belt to punish Orel. Throughout the season, the series' primary characters are introduced and various subplots are established, such as Orel's father being a closeted bisexual in love with Orel's gym teacher, and Orel's mother being an unhappily married housewife feeling trapped in her marriage.
The format of the second season of the show breaks that of the first season and begins to build upon subplots introduced in the first season, making them the primary focus of the show. While still the protagonist and primary character, Orel becomes less a catalyst for each episode's events than an unwitting bystander often left confused and dejected at the end, finding himself unable to reconcile his optimistic nature and faith with the corruption and cynicism of the adults around him, particularly his father. The season culminates in a two-part episode dealing with a camping trip during which Orel lost all faith and trust in his father. The season finale—"Nature (Part 1)" and "Nature (Part 2)"—marks a far darker turn in the series' tone, de-emphasizing the cynical parody of the previous episodes in favor of exploring more disturbing themes.
The third and final season of the show is structured as a interconnecting 13-part story dealing with the events leading up to and during the camping trip, and their far-reaching implications. It is revealed that during the trip, Clay gets drunk and shoots Orel in the leg, afterward showing a complete lack of remorse or sense of responsibility. The series culminates in the ultimate dissolution of Clay's relationship with Orel's coach, and the revelation that Orel will one day be able to put his traumatic childhood behind him to raise a better family than the one in which he grew up.
Originally, before being cut down to a 13-episode third season and later cancelled, the show was intended to have two more seasons and evolve into a show titled "Moralton" that would revolve around the life of the residents of Moralton as a whole.
The series was troubled throughout its run. Against the wishes of creator Stamatopoulos, the Christmas-themed first-season finale, "The Best Christmas Ever", was aired as the series premiere. Adult Swim wanted to debut the show in December as part of a holiday-themed programming block. The episode, which featured the culmination of numerous story arcs developed throughout the first season, and ended with a cliffhanger, confusing viewers and prompting questions on Adult Swim's message boards as to whether or not the episode was a one-off practical joke. When the series eventually premiered, three episodes of the first season were held back from airing because the network's Standards & Practices Department found them to be too dark and sexually explicit. All were eventually approved; two aired in May 2006 and the third aired on July 31, 2006. The series was ultimately canceled with seven scripts left unproduced, cutting the third season down from the intended twenty episodes to thirteen.
2012 special.
After the 2011 Halloween mini-marathon for "Mary Shelley's Frankenhole", Orel himself announced the upcoming "Moral Orel" special and its release "sometime in the near future". "Beforel Orel" was officially announced on Dino's official Twitter page. The special was described in a press release by Adult Swim as "[a] "Moral Orel" special that sheds light on the origin of Orel's religious nature and the birth of his brother, Shapey". It premiered on Monday, November 19, 2012.
Home releases.
On April 24, 2007, "Volume One: The Unholy Edition" was released, which included the first 15 episodes and which covered all of the first season and the first five episodes of the second season. This has been the only release in the US, which was later included as part of the "Adult Swim in a Box" set in 2009. In October 2007, Madman Entertainment released a similar volume one set in Australia. Starting in 2010, Madman continued releasing the series, starting with a second volume which included the rest of the second season, and then a third volume which included all of the third season. Then, they released the "Complete Lessons Collection", which compiled the discs from the previously released volumes.
The entire show has been available to buy at various digital video on demand stores.
The series is also available on HBO Max since September 1, 2020.