The Jumping Ground is an animated series, created by Lee Eisenhower and Conrad Vernon that is broadcast on FX. The series is on its twentieth season with a total of over 300 episodes, as of April 19, 2024. It has also won five Emmy Awards and has been nominated for various other awards.
Produced in Wellington, New Zealand, The series revolves mainly around four school kids; PuffPuff Humbert, Lance Patrick, Zowie Hosker, and Rob Broflovski, but in later years it has introduced a number of other characters. The show has also caused a number of controversies from its contents, as well as how it tends to parody people and events.
Along with The Simpsons, Arthur, and South Park, it is is the fourth longest-running cartoon in America.
History[]
Characters[]
Main Characters[]
PuffPuff[]
Lance[]
Zowie[]
Zowie is the smartest and has generally high moral standards, and has romantic feelings for Lance. She is sweet, innocent and caring, and serves as the group's moderator, always there to resolve a conflict or to offer a shoulder on which to cry. Though appearing sweet and cute, Zowie is quite fierce and verbally ravenous, and is also quite sarcastic.
Rob[]
Rob is the short-tempered, self-centered, manipulative member of the group who is spoiled at home. He is mischevious, deceitful, scheming, reluctant, impatient, ineffective and intolerant of most races and types of people in which he is not a member of (Good examples would be Jewish people and hippies). He insults almost everybody in some way or another and at times can lack any sort of decency and emotion. Even though the he hates Lance, he always interact with him and constantly talks or thinks about him. He always calls others an "asshole" and tells them to "suck his balls" more than anybody. For some reason, no matter how many times the others say that they hate him or that he is not their friend, nothing ever gets through his thick skull. He's considered as the most revolved character on television.
Family members[]
Townsfolk[]
Many of the various townsfolk are considered prominent characters. Townsfolk such as Mayor Bradby, Officer Barbrady and Priest Maxi have been in the show since the start. There's also a number of minor townsfolk that appear as background characters or one-off characters.
School students[]
School faculty[]
Villains[]
Occasional characters[]
Minor characters[]
Main articles: List of Minor Characters from Season One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen.
Minor characters appear throughout nearly every episode. These are usually one-offs, but some appear again or are mentioned at a later point.
Episodes[]
- Main article: List of The Jumping Ground Episodes
Film[]
- Main article: The Jumping Ground Movie
Controversies[]
Christianity[]
Jesus Christ[]
Virgin Mary[]
"200" and "201"[]
In the episode "200", they built up the fact that the next episode would feature Muhammad, the prophet of the Muslim faith. A New York-Revolution Muslim site warned Eisenhower and Vernon that many Muslims might want to kill them. The second part, "201", was heavily censored by Cartoon Network, including the final speech by Lance about free speech, ironically.
"Tuition Fees"[]
Racism[]
There have been two times where the show has been criticized for racism. Among one of those controversies is where the main characters go across Burma and Thailand in lorries with the PuffPuff is quoted as saying "That's a proud moment, but there's a slope on it", and Lance added, "Yeah, right. It's definitely higher on that side". This led to complaints that "slope" is a derogatory term for an Asian person. In April, The show’s executive producer Mic Graves apologised for the racist remark. In July 2014 the FCC ruled that Cartoon Network had breached broadcasting rules by including this offensive racial term.
The second one is an unaired version of the Season 15 episode HUMANCENTiPAD, where Rob uses the eeny meeny miny moe rhyme to pick between the the two iPads, which has historically included the N-word. The clip later surfaced on the website of the Daily News tabloid at the beginning of May 2014. In the take, Rob attempts to mumble the sentence so as to obscure the word (whereas in the aired version, he says "tinker" instead of the racial epithet), but co-creator Lee Eisenhower admitted that upon a close listening, the word could still be heard. Despite denying the incident moments earlier, Eisenhower apologised, "begging forgivness" for the fact his efforts not being "quite good enough", to ensure the footage was not used. It was reported on May 3, that FX had given Eisenhower and his fellow creator Conrad Vernon a final warning, with the presenters accepting that the show would be cancelled if any creator makes another offensive remark.
Argentina[]
After the eighth episode of Season 18, Cock Magic, aired, the show became entangled in a controversy regarding the number plate displayed by a nearby Chevrolet Impala during one of the episode's scenes: H982 FKL. Local Argentinians in Ushuaia claimed that the plate was a reference to the Falklands War of 1982, a sensitive topic in Argentina. In response to the Argetinian's threats, later reruns showed an edited version of the number plate - H1 VAE - before entering Ushuaia in the hopes that this would keep the mob at bay. Although the production team has since proved that the H982 FKL number plate was the original one that the Chevrolet Impala had displayed since the day it was manufactured, debate has still continued as to whether or not the car was specifically chosen for its plate or if in fact the plate's hidden meaning was known to the production crew prior to the commencement of the episode's production.
Animation[]
Music[]
Theme Music[]
The show's theme music was originally composed by Primus, but throughout the series' run the music has been replaced. The original theme ran up until the start of Season Six when it was replaced with a much more country sounding theme. This was the longest running theme, but it was finally replaced in "Make Love, Not Warcraft" with the current theme. This theme features the first few notes of the original and replaces the rest of the music with the track "Whamola" by Colonel Les Claypool's Fearless Flying Frog Brigade.
The lyrics have remained almost the same since the start (with the exceptions of Rob's lines). Rob's lines are usually rather rude and vulgar. When he was "killed-off" during Season Six, Timmy Burch replaced him, singing only his name over and over with another of his catchphrases "Ooga Booga!" added in.
Opening Sequence[]
- Main article: The Jumping Ground opening sequence
International Broadcast[]
| Country | Network(s) |
 |
FX |
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BBC Two |
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Showcase (1998-2004) YTV (2004-present) |
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Nine Network |
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Three |
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RTÉ2 |
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Canal 5* (1999-2015) FX (2015-present) |
 |
RTL II |
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TF1 |
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La 2 |
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Rai 3 (1998-2012) Fox Animation (2012-present) |
 |
NPO 3 |
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RTP2 |
    |
Hallmark Channel (1998-2002) Cartoon Network (2002-present) |
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RÚV (2003-present) |
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ERT3 (2003-present) |
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Eén (Dutch, 1999-present) La Deux (French, 2000-present) BRF TV (German, 2002-present) |
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RTL Télé Lëtzebuerg (Luxemburgish, 1999-present) RTL Television (German, 1999-present) Club RTL (French, 2003-present) |
 |
Channel One |
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Fox (2008-present) |
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People's Television Network (2000-2010) Fox (Southeast Asia) (2010-present) |
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TTV Main Channel (1999-2004) Cartoon Network (2004-present) |
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TV Asahi (2000-present) |
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Discovery Kids |
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SABC 2 (2001-present) |
Awards[]
Trivia[]
| |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Television series |
The Jumping Ground (1998-2019) • The Hellucard Show (2009-2014) • Troll Patrol (2012-present) • Crocks M.C. (upcoming) | ||||
| Films |
The Jumping Ground Movie (2016) • Chronicles from Pencaster (2018): Crocks and Dragons • The Ballad of Mystic Joe | ||||
| Video Games |
The Jumping Ground (1998) • The Jumping Ground: Battle for the Ida Galaxy (2000) • The Jumping Ground: Road Rage (2002) • The Jumping Ground: Hit & Run (2004) • The Jumping Ground: Lights, Camera, Crud! (2005) • The Jumping Ground: The Ark of Truth (2006) The Jumping Ground: Road Rage Refuelled (2015) The Jumping Ground: Hit & Run 2 (2017) | ||||
| Mobile Games |
The Jumping Ground: Pocket Pencaster (2013) • Jumping Ground Rush! (2016) | ||||