Royal Crackers takes a bite out of Season 2

Royal Crackers, about a snack food conglomerate and their flailing business and the senility of their family patriarch, returns to TV screens everywhere tonight on Adult Swim, and every other screen on-demand on STACKTV.

The dysfunctional Hornsby clan are the stewards of Royal Crackers Incorporated, and when their tyrannical father’s mind begins losing its grip, sons Stebe and Theo are left to pick up the pieces.

Seth Cohen, executive producer, feels like season 2 is going to tread new ground. “This season on Royal Crackers [is going] to new emotional places and discovers new faces of our characters. I’m personally most excited about expanding the universe…as a group of writers [our team] has staked a claim to expanding the genre and I’m excited for fans to see that.”

Animation has changed a lot – gone are the cartoons of Saturday mornings, replaced by the adult-oriented cartoons of Saturday night. The Simpsons, Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, Rick and Morty – they’re everywhere and have spawned massive multimedia empires. It might seem an important step to consciously differentiate a show like Royal Crackers from these monoliths.

Not so, according to Jason Ruiz, co-creator of the show and voice of Stebe. “We tell the story we want to tell; do the show we want to do,” he said thoughtfully. “We purposely don’t think…about what contemporaries are doing.”

Of course, they draw inspiration from TV shows and movies they watch, but they don’t think about how to be different. They only think about what would make a great show.

No vacations

Making television is hard work – and for Jason and co, there was no break between the end of season 1 and season 2, which, as it turns out is both a blessing and a curse.

“I started to break down midway through season 2. I’ve been living in this headspace for roughly five years, so that was the hard part: I need to live life; have things to take inspiration from, the tunnel vision for so long [was difficult.]”

Someone famous once said that art is suffering; and if this season is any indication, the suffering is good, ’cause it’s starting with a bang!

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You can catch new episodes of Royal Crackers on Adult Swim or on demand through stack TV.

Thanks to Jason, Seth and Evan for chatting with me.