Somewhere, lost in the clouded annals of history, lies a place called the unknown, where long-forgotten stories are revealed to those who travel through the wood. Here we come upon Beatrice, Wirt, and Gregory, wandering onwards, seeking to find a strange book containing all that has ever been forgotten. Ugh, searching for the Tome of the Unknown sure requires a lot of walking.
We'll be there soon enough. Maybe we could ride on a goose. Probably too small, Greg.
I think a horse would probably work better. Maybe all we need to do is, like... Hey, where'd Greg go?
Greg! Greg? Greg! Greg, are you... What's...
Why are you screaming? Because look what I found! A bunch of vegetables shaped like a car! We're one step closer to finding a goose! What?
You can crank it and you can eat it. How in the... Greg, this is amazing!
It works? Huh? Yeah. This is amazing.
If you like that, you should see the man. What man? The vegetable man!
Leaving. Oh, that's enough. That's enough now.
Now what are you folks doing out here in the middle of nowhere listening to poor old John Kropp singing his sad songs to himself? Actually, we were just about to take off in this nice vegetable car. You mean my vegetable car?
I... can we have it? Now hold on. I myself always had a mind to drive this clunker to the big city and leave this lonely old country life behind.
Maybe find a gal who liked my company? But that ain't in the cards for me, I suppose. Well, uh, we could bring you to the city, and if you decide to stay there, then we can keep the car?
Well, guess I could give it a go. Do they have geese in the big city? I never heard there ain't geese in the big city.
To the city! With everyone in agreement, they all climbed into the old vegetables, waved goodbye to the garden cat, and drove off down the road towards town. Don't crash words.
Don't crash it. John Kropf goes to town. So, John Kropf, uh, do you have, like, internal organs? Well, I don't rightly know, to be honest.
Yeah, okay. Hey! I do believe we should be coming up to town shortly. Already? All I see around here are farms and...
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Oh, my goodness! Whoa! Whoa!
Shit. Everybody out. I gotta fix it.
So, this is a big city. I wasn't expecting it to look so much like the opposite of a big city. No.
Over here. This is a big city. Hey! Wow! Look at them fine ladies and gents, putting on the put on.
Too bad you have to go fix the car. So Wild Rort and Beatrice set to work repairing the car. ...their vehicle. Cucumber? Taste it.
Gregory and John Cropps took in the sights of the big city. What do you think? I'm thinking it might upscale the likes of me.
Yeah. I don't see any geese. You know, maybe I'd better... I'll just go on back home where I belong. Oh, beg your pardon, ma'am.
Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. The management regrets to inform you that tonight's entertainment has come to an end due to unforeseen circumstances. That is, unless someone in the audience can play a high rhythm.
That's you, Crops! Go croon-a-toon under the moon with a raccoon, eating prunes with a spoon, in a balloon with baboons, watching cartoons! Me? Why, sir, you're a musician. Well, shucks.
I do play a little. Meanwhile... Meanwhile... I'm stumped.
It's all just vegetables to me. I'll say. You don't even know how to start the engine. I do know how to start the engine.
You just... Oh. Off they went to find Gregory, without realizing the havoc they were bringing with them. The crows are landing!
Punch it in the face! Oh, happy old man. Not a single goose in the whole city, Doctor.
Greg, get in, we're leaving Where's John Clops? He's at the stage, the cabin's waiting So shine on, shine on, harvest moon John! John, we're leaving I ain't had no lovin'since May He seems happy enough, let's just go No, we can't just... Ah!
Yep, okay Woo! One, two, three, four. Oh, no, Goose!
And that's just about where our story ends. The crows and animals were terrified. Leaving the city never to return, John Crofts and his gal moved back to the country where life was a little more peaceful. See you around, folks. And Wirt, Gregory, and Beatrice, and Goose, traveled onwards, deeper and deeper into the unknown.
STAY BACK, BOYS! This creaseless is all it is! Huh? Greg, why did you do that? That was your plan, remember?
Knock him out. No! Bad plan! I told you to forget that plan! An elephant never forgets.
What? AHHHHH! Oh, we're going to the pasture to meet Adelaide And ask her if she has a way to send us back where we came from I don't know who she is or how she is or when, what, why she is But as for where she is, she is where we will go To Adelaide, to Adelaide Come on and join the Adelaide parade Nope Adelaide, to Adelaide Let's go to Adelaide's house I need to fix that last part, but that's the idea. I found a duck. Do you know how to make eggs from a duck?
I'm hungry. What about the beast? The beast is upon me!
I didn't see any beast. That driver is nuts. Mmm, nuts.
Phew. Well, that's good. Good?
That crazy driver's taking us way off course. Really? Yeah, who knows where we are by now with that guy acting all bananas.
Ooh, banana nut duck bread. Beatrice, this was your idea. My idea was for you to commandeer this thing and to drive it to Adelaide's yourself. I'm not going to just hijack stuff.
I'm not a hijacker. Well, what are you, Wirt? What are you? Uh...
What was amazing! He sang a song, rode a horse, and saved you from the axe guy! He's the pilgrim!
That's all well and good, but you were supposed to get directions. I did! We just got directions from Fred before you woke up. Who? Oh, uh, Beatrice, me.
Fred the horse. Nice to horse your acquaintance. You can talk?
Why didn't you talk to me earlier? I was bloated with all the rich food this little boy was feeding me through the window. Thanks, little boy.
You're welcome. But I'm still hungry. I can't.
I wasn't invited to this party. I'll go in. You weren't invited either. Oh.
Yeah, man, there's lots of bat and ball games besides baseball. Stool ball, round ball, one old cat, two old cat. Two old cat? Yeah, man, there's lots of bat and ball games besides baseball.
Can I go to the party? What? Yeah, whatever. It's not my party. Wink, Woodsman.
When I first got lost, you told me to beware the unknown. But you were wrong. This place isn't scary.
What's really scary is going home and facing your problems. That's the real unknown. Here.
I don't want this. My brother and I are going home. She was never in the lantern, was she, Beast?
IT WAS YOU! My name's Pat McHale. Um, I'm the creator of...
Well, okay, so it doesn't have an official name yet. So we're not calling it Tome of the Unknown. Sorry, I realized I kept Tome in that one.
Now I forgot what it's called again. Over the Garden Wall. We've developed ten shorts that make up a miniseries that has a beginning and an end, and each episode... has its own little world that the main characters kind of enter. This show has been through so many different incarnations, so there's a lot of different places where it comes from.
I don't know if we're really being successful with it, but we're trying to look at the inspiration for the show mostly from illustration and fine art or something, as opposed to... to just looking at animation history. Nick Cross is the art director.
He's amazing. There's a lot of, like, old cartoon influence. There's a lot of modern cartoon influence, too, I think it feels like.
And so the world itself is kind of this sort of old-fashioned-y kind of thing, and then the characters that are entering into it have a more contemporary conversational feel. Young man, I will not stand for such nonsense in my classroom. I got enough nonsense from that no-good, two-timing, low-down handsome man of mine. Whew, that lady's got some baggage.
The characters are very well-crafted and well-defined, and there are real relationships, you know. There's a real relationship between Greg and Wirt. I play Gregory, and he is the funny part of the show. Hey, Wirt. What?
So what's the plan? Because you're not saying any details, so it's hard for me to... Greg, I do have a plan.
And if you don't trust me, then you don't have to follow me, okay? You can do anything you want. Anything?
That's a lot of power. And then the relationship between Beatrice and Ward I think is the most fascinating. The funny thing with Beatrice is the more sort of grumpy and at the end of my rope I am, the funnier and kind of sweeter she is.
Greg, don't you want to be more like your brother? Just always doing what you're told? Huh?
Just a pathetic pushover who relies on others to make all his decisions? Hey! And that's been the most fun for me to play. Because it evolves, there's a real art to that. It's so funny to be mad about being a bluebird, because it seems like it would be a pretty wonderful thing.
Okay, Wirt, I'll admit it. You seem like a pushover, but you're not. Oh? Deep down in your heart. You're a stubborn jerk.
When are you gonna give this up? Maybe never. Maybe I'll never give this up. Essentially these sort of, these kind of fairy tales that we're telling, there are genuine interesting dynamics and relationships at play, and it's fun for us as actors to play them. I was always told, hold something back.
so that it's a surprise for the audience, you know? Because if you give it to them all on the first page, you don't have anywhere to go, do you see? Right.
Let's do one more pass on it and then pull it back from 609. I want a child servant. My horrible sister. I want one too. I want a child servant. Servant?
I thought you just wanted some yard work done. Our arrangement was for you to bring me a child servant, and then I give you the scissors. There's something very charming about the world that they're in.
Oh, Heidi, forth, forth, rolling, knee, yawing. And kind of scary. There's episodes that are sort of really dark.
Hmm. Has anyone come here today? Nay, auntie, not a soul. Then no one shall be devoured alive tonight. The scenarios that these characters find themselves in are extraordinary.
I just don't see a lot of kids wandering around the dark forest in the dead of night, you know? Like, this is a weird project to do, ten episodes of a miniseries. About kids being lost and this old time music and it's like it's a super weird thing. If this show were a record, it would be played on a phonograph. It sort of came from a place of things that have been lost.
So old stories that never actually existed but we're kind of pretending that once existed or something and kind of bringing them back. Let's just go. See what happens. It might be a mess. Might be amazing.
Here we go. Oh, we're going to the pasture to meet Adelaide And ask her if she has a way to send us back where we came from I don't know who she is or how she is or when, what, why she is But as far as where she is, she is where we will go To Adelaide, Adelaide Come on and join the Adelaide Parade. Adelaide, to Adelaide.
We're going to Adelaide's house today. The overall feeling of it sort of feels like just something that time forgot, I guess. You know, the songs that we're writing for the series are sort of reminiscent of old songs, but they're not actual old songs. Right.
Often Pat will turn us on to an idea or to a song or to a musician that we may or may not know of. And then we'll be like, ah, this is great. And then kind of go down that rabbit hole a little bit.
Like, oh, oh, yeah. Right. But there's a, yeah. There's a little bit of a part.
Then it's like, oh, it starts new, but it's the same word. Right. It's like sort of a special thing. In the first episode, if we end there, lyrically, and then go to whistling over top of the narration... Oh, no, that wouldn't work, because it's supposed to be the frog that's whistling.
How the gentle wind beckons through the leaves as autumn colors... Closer? Yeah.
I just, I don't know. I feel like there's something that like is waiting behind the fog of my brain that's like, I should say this, but, and that'll explain everything. It's as if you take all these elements from the attic, like old ghost stories and pre-20th century music, superstitions, and if you threw all those things together into this world of the unknown, that's sort of what these stories are like. I told you to leave these words! So all the outlines are done.
Most of the boards are done. There's three left to do. We plan on airing it two every night. For the week and then as a special event and then maybe like all of them together on Saturday. Let's just have you stare out the window a little bit.
There's a whole bunch of crows out there swarming around.