Well, well, look who decided to show up...

Our new story editor Peter Hastings was well loved by WB Animation as he had worked some of their greatest hits (Animaniacs, for one I think) and directed the Country Bears feature for Disney. He was a great guy too, and a musician who lent his talents where permitted to the show's music. He warmed to Lili and myself immediately; maybe because we weren't typical 'industry' and he knew we didn't play by the rule book, because we didn't know there was one.

'Radishing' was a good episode from him, and we were happy to have an episode set in Mexico.

Someone else also decided to show up...the real Ricky Garduno!

'Lucha Rinse Repeat' was another one-line story outline with no plot or dialogue, that was put into production before Peter's appointment. Ricky had done a great job on his first two boards - M.A.SK. and Nightmare On Lucha Street', but here he decided to cut loose.

I really WISH I had his first draft board for this. There was a lot of surreal humor that was modified for the second draft. No one was quite expecting what he produced; hobos, boxcars, the Garbage King...were all Ricky's ideas. We used to have the boards pinned up in the corridors after they were pitched, and under one particular surreal panel with transforming hobos (which was changed) someone had scribbled "Am I high?"

Lucha, Rinse Repeat' also highlighted some issues I was grappling with about the series' tone...

Despite some 'fantasy' elements in some episodes (Masked Toilet, Fighting Fish, El Rey, etc), I felt we were in danger of grounding ourselves. Party Animal and 'Radishing' were very good episodes and work perfectly, but to me as things stood, we couldn't have Buena Girl's teddy bear REALLY come to life, or the little Radish doll REALLY wrestle the turnip king. But after seeing Lucha Rinse Repeat, I realized a board artist like Ricky could have actually made those things work. It was all in the world you presented within your storyboard, that defined what you could get the viewer to accept.

As I said, I think this was a pivotal moment in the series as it also showed our other artists what could be done. And a few took inspiration and ran with it, pushing each other with great storyboards.

So here we are, over halfway through season 2.

Halfway? 'What are you taking about, Eddie?', I know you are (probably not) saying to yourself...