The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley


The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley is an American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions and featuring Martin Short's fictional character Ed Grimley. The show aired on NBC from September 10 to December 3, 1988 for a single season of 13 episodes. The show is the only Saturday morning animated adaptation of both an SCTV character and a Saturday Night Live character.
Guest stars on the show included Christopher Guest and SCTV alumni Eugene Levy and Dave Thomas. The show also featured the voices of René Auberjonois, Kenneth Mars, and Arte Johnson. Though the show was not renewed for a second season, The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley was later seen in reruns in 1996 on Cartoon Network's unnamed pre-Adult Swim-era late-night programming block, which consisted of such shows as Space Ghost Coast to Coast and reruns of classic Looney Tunes shorts and Hanna-Barbera programming, before it was rerun again on Boomerang. Hanna-Barbera sponsored an Ed Grimley look-alike contest midway through the first season, which was won by 10-year-old Matt Mitchell from Des Moines, Iowa.

Synopsis and characters

Episodes of the show often featured Ed Grimley in several adventures, which start out as mundane, but turn very surreal and cartoonish, interspersed with science lessons from The Amazing Gustav Brothers, Roger and Emil, and a live-action segment with a "scary story" titled The Count Floyd Show presented as a show-within-a-show by Grimley's favorite television host, SCTV's Count Floyd. Grimley's fellow cartoon characters included Grimley's landlord Leo Freebus, Leo's wife Deidre, his ditzy, amateur actress neighbor Ms. Malone, and her little brother Wendell. Ed owns a goldfish named Moby and a clever pet rat named Sheldon. At the end of each episode, Ed would write in his diary about what happened in his day.

Additional voices

Home media releases

On January 29, 2013, Warner Home Video released The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley: The Complete Series on DVD in region 1 as part of their Hanna-Barbera Classics Collection. This is a Manufacture-on-Demand release, available exclusively through Warner's online store, MoviesUnlimited.com, and Amazon.com. In addition, the episode "Tall, Dark & Hansom" is available on Warners' Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1980s Volume 1 DVD set, released on May 4, 2010.