History WesternAnimation / MissionHill

* WannabeLine: One episode subverts this. Frustrated at waiting in line for hours to get in the CoolestClubEver only to be turned away at the door, [[CoolLoser Andy]] has his revenge by setting up a fake club front in an abandoned building across the street and letting no one in at all, except for [[LimitedSocialCircle his friends]], who are all in on it. Pretty soon, the steep exclusivity factor draws a line that rivals the real club's, until he fakes a fire gutting the place and ruining him (just before anyone got '''too''' wise).

Despite its failure, ''Mission Hill'' has some noteworthy history attached to it: It was one of the last animated shows to use traditional, hand-painted cel animation, and while most traditionally animated shows eventually transitioned to digital ink-and-paint, this show's saturated, neon-bright color palette more or less necessitated that the animation ''had'' to be hand-painted, as recreating that look digitally is impossible (though the producers maintained that the colors lost a lot of their pop in transition to the screen anyway).

Despite its failure, ''Mission Hill'' has some noteworthy history attached to it:
* It was one of the last animated shows to use traditional, hand-painted cel animation, and while most traditionally animated shows eventually transitioned to digital ink-and-paint, this show's saturated, neon-bright color palette more or less necessitated that the animation ''had'' to be hand-painted, as recreating that look digitally is impossible (though the producers maintained that the colors lost a lot of their pop in transition to the screen anyway).
* In one of the greatest [[AvertedTrope trope aversions]] ever, elderly gay couple Gus and Wally had such rich personalities and unique storylines that the list of tropes below contains no StereotypeGay entries. The show won an award from [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLAAD GLAAD]] for showing homosexual characters in a positive and non-stereotypical light. It even featured an on-screen homosexual kiss between Gus and Wally in the pilot episode making it one of the first TV shows ''of any kind'' to do so.

* AsianStoreOwner: George's dad, Mr. Bang

* {{Nerd}}/{{Geek}}: Kevin and his friends.

* Voice actor Creator/TomKenny's take on one-off character Jimmy Briskin, a diminutive actor who played an Ewok in ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'', landed him another job: the titular character of ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants''. He even repurposed the Jimmy Briskin voice as [=SpongeBob=]'s.

* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: The entire French family.

* AcquiredErrorAtThePrinter: Posey's classified ad for massage therapy. A typo changed her ad from promising "soothing relief" to "soothing ''release''", which attracts men expecting a massage parlour experience.

* StraightGay: Wally and Gus are gay, but outside of acting like a couple would, you wouldn't know it, as they aren't stereotypically portrayed as such. Gus a bit more so than Wally.

* QuirkyTown: The Mission Hill neighborhood of Cosmopolis, to the point that Kevin's parents are convinced that the neighborhood is unsafe for him and has him move to Wyoming with them in the script for the last planned episode "I Was A Teenage Porn Star".

* SameContentDifferentRating: In universe in "Plan 9 From Mission Hill." Kevin, now 18, goes to a movie theatre playing an "X-Rated Movie Madness" marathon, expecting porn films. To his disappointment, they're playing films like ''Film/MidnightCowboy'' and ''Film/AClockWorkOrange'', then finds out Wally works there and the two bond over classic movies.

* SameContentDIfferentRating: In universe in "Plan 9 From Mission Hill." Kevin, now 18, goes to a movie theatre playing an "X-Rated Movie Madness" marathon, expecting porn films. To his disappointment, they're playing films like ''Film/MidnightCowboy'' and ''Film/AClockWorkOrange'', then finds out Wally works there and the two bond over classic movies.

* NoNameGiven: Baby Nameless, the child of Carlos and Natalie, who they haven't named yet to avoid imprinting traditional gender roles upon him/her.

* It featured an on-screen homosexual kiss (between Gus and Wally in the pilot episode) from a couple established to be male homosexuals, making it one of the first TV shows ''of any kind'' to do so (only a 1990 episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' ["Simpson and Delilah"] and the first season of ''Picket Fences'' in 1992 [which featured a male-on-male kiss in one episode and a female-on-female kiss in another] predate the episode in this regard), and in one of the greatest [[AvertedTrope trope aversions]] of all time, elderly gay couple Gus and Wally had such rich personalities and unique storylines that the list of tropes below contains no StereotypeGay entries. The show won an award from [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLAAD GLAAD]] for showing homosexual characters in a positive and non-stereotypical light.

* RoommateCom: It is set in Mission Hill, a neighborhood in the fictional city of Cosmopolis starring 24-year-old Andy Hill, his eccentric roommates, their even more eccentric neighbors, and CountryMouse brother. Website/IMDb's even describes it as the "misadventures of a group of disparate roommates who live in a hip neighborhood in a major city", which couldn't summarize this trope any better if it tried.
* QuirkyTown: The Mission Hill neighborhood, to the point that Kevin's parents are convinced that the neighborhood is unsafe for him and has him move to Wyoming with them in the script for the last planned episode "I Was A Teenage Porn Star".

* ShownTheirWork: Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein put ''enormous'' efforts to make bus schedules and traffic to make Mission Hill work as a city, something that's barely noticeable even if you ''are'' looking for it.

%%* FakeOutMakeOut

* WhereTheHellIsSpringfield: We never get an exact location for Cosmopolis, the city which contains Mission Hill; the official website stated that Mission Hill itself was a mix of several different locations, including Mission Hill in Boston ([[WriteWhatYouKnow only miles away from where creator Bill Oakley went to college]]), Mission District in San Francisco, Silver Lake in Los Angeles, Wicker Park in Chicago, and Williamsburg in Brooklyn. We never actually see much outside of Mission Hill, either; the closest we get is the skyscrapers of Cosmopolis as a constant background fixture (much like the skyscrapers in ''WesternAnimation/AquaTeenHungerForce'', which [[StockFootage were recycled from]] ''WesternAnimation/SwatKats'').

''Mission Hill'', a short-lived animated series that ran on the WB from 1999 to 2000 (then aired in reruns in 2002 on the fledgling Creator/AdultSwim block on Creator/CartoonNetwork), followed the lives of 24-year-old slacker Andy French and his FishOutOfWater brother Kevin, an OddCouple forced to share a loft apartment in a [[QuirkyTown quirky downtown neighborhood]]. 18 episodes were scheduled, but only 13 were created before the show's cancellation. Two of the last five unfinished episodes exist as animatic storyboards and three were released as scripts only.

''Mission Hill'' initially aired on Creator/TheWB (along with two other short-lived cartoons: ''WesternAnimation/TheOblongs'' and the animated adaptation of ''WesternAnimation/BabyBlues''), but the show didn't fit with a network that had branded itself as, in the words of the show's creators (former ''Simpsons'' showrunners Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein), "the teenage girl network." The show, incidentally alongside the other two, received a minor revival on Creator/AdultSwim thanks to that network rebroadcasting it, including the completed episodes that never aired on The WB.

%%* CloseupOnHead

%%* ITakeOffenseToThatLastOne

* BiTheWay: In an unaired, unfinished episode, Posey and Gwen dance sexually together at a nightclub. While Gwen has the excuse of being drunk, Posey doesn't.
-->'''Andy''': How much has Posey had to drink?\\
'''Jim''': She doesn't drink.\\
'''Andy''': Right. Damn!

* It has since become one of the last animated shows to use traditional, hand-painted cel animation. Though the producers maintained, in commentary, that it never looked right on screen anyway as the colors lost a lot of their pop. Later shows such as ''WesternAnimation/DrawnTogether'' used the technique for stylistic reasons.

* It featured an on-screen homosexual kiss (between Gus and Wally in the pilot episode) from a couple established to be male homosexuals, making it one of the first TV shows ''of any kind'' to do so (only a 1990 episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' ["Simpson and Delilah"] and the first season of ''Picket Fences'' in 1992 [which featured a male-on-male kiss in one episode and a female-on-female kiss in another] predate the episode in this regard), and in one of the greatest [[AvertedTrope trope aversions]] of all time, [[NobodyOverFiftyIsGay elderly gay couple]] Gus and Wally had such rich personalities and unique storylines that the list of tropes below contains no StereotypeGay entries. The show won an award from [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLAAD GLAAD]] for showing homosexual characters in a positive and non-stereotypical light.

* NobodyOver50IsGay: Averted. Gus and Wally are a gay couple who are well into their 60s.

* BeenThereShapedHistory: In Wally's flashback in "Plan 9 From Mission Hill", the casting director for Wally movie, ''The Man From Pluto'', informs him they've cast up-and-coming stars [[Creator/CharltonHeston Charlton "Hestopolis"]] and [[Creator/PaulNewman Paul "McNewman"]]; Wally notes those aren't "movie star names" so their agent has them adopt {{stage name}}s. After Gus replaces Paul [=McNewman=] as the titular man from Pluto, Heston complains, refusing to work with "that damned, dirty ape", then decides he "[[Film/PlanetOfTheApes likes the sound of that]]".