Story

Themes

Friendship; irresponsible behaviour

Violence

The cartoon series Regular Show contains slapstick cartoon violence and comical dangerous situations throughout. Children might copy some of the violent and dangerous behaviour. Characters also make comic threats to act violently. And occasionally characters are shown with injuries or are killed in a comical way. For example:

• Cartoon characters are kicked, punched in the stomach and face, slapped, elbowed, pushed and shoved.
• Characters make verbal threats of violence including, ‘I’ll kill you’. They repeatedly talk about ‘ham-boning’ other characters. Computers and machines threaten to ‘burn’ Mordecai and Rigby and ‘erase’ them from existence.
• Bullies on a school bus punch schoolchildren.
• Giant, cartoon-style video game characters come to life and fire laser beams at each other. They destroy houses and property, including the roof of a school bus. At one point some school children are surrounded by fire, but no-one is hurt. After watching a video game, a boy’s eyes burst into flames. Two cartoon characters disintegrate after being hit by laser fire. All that remains are two large piles of ash. Characters in a video game punch each other and slam each other into the ground.
• In a slapstick fight between some young adults, the cartoon characters and a sea monster, there are lots of punches to faces and bodies. The sea monster destroys a wooden dock.

Sexual references

Regular Show has occasional low-level sexual innuendo. For example:

• Mordecai says that he and a female jaybird named Margaret ‘had a really good time last night’.
• Margaret says to Mordecai, ‘I thought we made a pretty good team, you and me, and I’m pretty much up for anything’.
• A character talks about ‘how hot’ Margaret is.

Alcohol, drugs and other substances

This movie shows some use of substances. For example, in one scene a man dressed as a clown answers his hotel door. As the door opens, several cans roll out. The man seems to be very drunk. He says that it’s very bright, gags and goes off to one side to vomit. This isn’t shown.

Nudity and sexual activity

None of concern

Product placement

None of concern

Coarse language

Regular Show has low-level to medium-level coarse language, put-downs and some racial stereotyping. There is also some crude humour.

Ideas to discuss with your children

Regular Show is a quirky, fantasy cartoon series targeting older teenagers and young adults. It’s unsuitable for children under 12-13 years because of its slapstick violence, intoxicated characters, crude humour, coarse language, sexual innuendo, and racial and cultural stereotyping.

A few episodes have some worthwhile messages, such as the following:

• Being irresponsible will eventually catch up with you.
• Being with friends is more important than winning video games.

Although one of the underlying values is the importance of friendship, in general the series shows more negative values than positive ones.

The two main characters Mordecai and Rigby repeatedly show irresponsible attitudes and behaviour, but there are no negative consequences. You could talk with your children about how irresponsible behaviour in real life can have disastrous and far-reaching consequences.