Bugging the White House : ‘Capitol Critters’ Is First Prime-Time Cartoon Since ‘Simpsons’

The first animated series to test the waters of prime-time network television since “The Simpsons” sparked a national sensation two years ago is finally here.

ABC’s “Capitol Critters” takes viewers behind the walls and underneath the floorboards of the White House, where a colorful world of rodents and roaches try to sort out their differences while taking cues from the political mayhem above.

Episodes of “Capitol Critters,” from Hanna-Barbera Studios and Steven Bochco, the co-creator of “Hill Street Blues” and “L.A. Law,” air tonight and Friday before the series moves to its regular time slot Saturday at 8 p.m.

“Everybody is saying that this is ABC’s rival to ‘The Simpsons,’ and that’s something that really disturbs me,” said executive producer Nat Mauldin, who co-created and wrote most of the 13 episodes of the lushly detailed “Capitol Critters,” roughly based on an idea from Bochco.

“I think ‘The Simpsons’ is the funniest show on television,” Mauldin said. “I watch it every week religiously. They paved the way for us, and we couldn’t have gotten this on the air without them. But you could basically take the animation away from ‘The Simpsons’ and replace it with live actors and the show would essentially remain the same.

“From the beginning, I really wanted to make a different show. I wanted to make the closest thing we could to a little Disney movie every week. I wanted to come up with something nobody had ever seen in prime time before visually.”

Ironically, nobody really expected “Capitol Critters” to become prime time’s second cartoon series--the first on a major network since the forgettable summer series “Jokebook” on NBC in 1982.

When the fledgling Fox network uncovered a gold mine in “The Simpsons,” the cartoon rush was on. Because the networks are generally quick to copy each other’s successes, animated series pilots began popping up all over. Ralph Bakshi produced “Hound Town” for NBC and “Tattertown” for Nick at Nite. NBC tried “The Jackie Bison Show.” Fox ran a combination live-action/animated version of “Hollywood Dog,” based on R. P. Overmyer’s comic strip in the Los Angeles Reader. CBS took a whack at reviving “The Pink Panther.”

“I think the fact that not one of these shows made it to series is good, because the powers that be are apparently deciding to go for the real quality,” said Jerry Beck, co-author of “Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies,” a history of Warner Bros. cartoons. “Some of these shows were churned out rather quickly to get them out there, and they were really not good.”

The series that seemed most likely to follow in the footsteps of “The Simpsons” was “Family Dog,” from movie powerhouses Steven Spielberg and Tim Burton. CBS ran promos for the series almost a year ago on the Grammy Awards, but ongoing production problems banished “Family Dog” to an animation house in Canada where fixes are under way.

That left two other major animated projects in the works, both given a green light without having had to produce a pilot first, based largely on their high-profile producers. “Capitol Critters” is part of a 10-series deal that Bochco has with ABC, and the adult-themed “Fish Police” on CBS is being developed by Hanna-Barbera for a March premiere.

The difficulty with prime-time animation, as the networks are discovering, lies in trying to mesh the arduous process of hand-drawn, cell-by-cell animation with snappy network development schedules. Even “Capitol Critters”--which never rushed its production schedule and, according to the producers, was always pegged for January--ran into problems and went through forced evolution.

Bochco’s initial concept was called “Aristocritters,” about mice and cats in the White House witnessing the behind-the-scene machinations of government.

“I think that Steven had an edgier show in mind in the beginning, a much harder edge, until we realized it was impossible to do topical humor because the product comes out 14, 15 months after the script is written,” said Mauldin, who was an errand boy for animation legend Chuck Jones when he was younger but never formally wrote animation before.

Mauldin, son of Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Bill Mauldin, also wrote the sequel to “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” tentatively titled “Who Discovered Roger Rabbit?”

“Animation is such a time-consuming, labor-intensive process,” he added, “that it’s impossible to come out cutting edge.”

In one early “Critters” episode, the rat Jammet, voiced by Charlie Adler, is in the Oval Office stealing presidential mints with the mouse Max, voiced by Neil Patrick Harris of “Doogie Howser, M.D.” When Jammet picks up the President’s red phone, his original line was:

“Yo, Gorby, I pushed the wrong button by mistake. So I’d stay inside if I was you, OK pal?” When Max urges him to go, Jammet says, “Wait, I wanna razz him about that red thing on his head.”

But the Soviet Union dissolved in the time it took to animate that episode, so new lines had to be re-recorded last month. Now after picking up the phone, Jammet says:

“Boris, hang tough. I’m sending over a couple pizzas. If they aren’t there in 30 minutes you got ‘em free.” Then he says to Max, “I’ll betcha he waits up for ‘em too.”

The cost to bring actors back in to re-record--or “loop”--new lines is not cheap, and “Capitol Critters” costs upward of $600,000 per episode already. “The Simpsons” occasionally loops lines, and has been known to substitute close-up head shots from old episodes to assure the actor’s new words are in sync with the character’s lips.

“You have no idea how hard it is to go back in and loop new lines,” said Mauldin, who has now learned to write jokes called “evergreens,” about such time-tested topics as the environment and the economy. “We have to avoid making last-minute changes at all costs, because it costs a lot of money to do.”

“Capitol Critters” also survived some early animation problems. When Mauldin first received the series pilot from overseas, where the bulk of Saturday morning animation is completed because labor is cheap, he was dismayed to see that his precious series was full of cut-rate animation techniques.

“For instance,” Mauldin said, “there was a scene with a tour bus, and the only thing that was animated on the tour bus was the tires, using two frames cycled back and forth. I said, ‘What the hell is this?’ I got a lot of those shots in the pilot. I wanted to make sure that these guys understood that this was not a show for Saturday morning; this was a prime-time show. I don’t think they understood the concept of prime time at first.”

There have been other revisions, too. The scene in tonight’s episode where Max’s family in the country meets up with pest control was toned down because it was considered too violent.

All in all, Mauldin and Bochco say they have a much more family-oriented show than they first envisioned.

Although “Capitol Critters” has bucked the odds and made it to air, the series is not in the clear yet. When “The Simpsons” became an overnight hit in January, 1990, new episodes couldn’t be produced fast enough to make the fall season. ABC has already ponied up “a big chunk of money” for new “Capitol Critters” scripts and storyboards just in case.

“The animated timetable is definitely an obstacle,” said Ted Harbert, executive vice president of prime time for ABC. “But rules are meant to be thrown out sometimes and you have to try new things.”