Drawn Together’s Long Lost Pilot Has Been Found After 20 Years

Drawn Together was one of the wildest animated series to ever premiere with Comedy Central, and now fans have gotten a wild new look at the show as its long lost pilot has been found after over 20 years. Comedy Central has released all sorts of notable animated shows over the decades with some being much more popular than the others. As South Park gets ready to return for another season (likely later this year), there are just as many animated shows that didn’t have as long of a run. But there are even fewer that are as memorable as Drawn Together.

Originally created Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein for Comedy Central back in 2004, and really was a product of its time. More so than many of the other animated series that might have been launched in the early 2000s, Drawn Together was both influenced by edgy jokes but also the peak of reality television at the time with shows like The Surreal Life really taking off. But decades after the series came to an end, its long lost pilot has been revealed by series co-creator Matt Silverstein on YouTube. Check it out in the video above.

Drawn Together Was Almost an Entirely Different Show

The pilot for Drawn Together was thought to be lost as only a few seconds of the original animated pitch had been available up to now. As Silverstein describes with the upload, this original pitch for the series was done back in 2003 with “no budget and in flash.” This is entirely different from how the full series would eventually look as fans can see by the comparisons. Although the voice cast for the series was seemingly fully in place, the character designs are pretty much different across the board as characters like Princess Clara or Xander look entirely different from how they would in the main series.

Drawn Together was then fully launched with Comedy Central in 2004, and ran for three seasons. The animated series then got to have a proper finale with The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie! released a few years after the end of the original TV show, but had some significant differences of its own. This show was such a “2000s era” type of series that fans really had to be there at the time to truly appreciate just how wild of a swing it really was for network television.

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Why Drawn Together Was So Special

Drawn Together was purposefully as obscene as it could possibly be. Riffing off of reality shows at the time that saw C-list celebrities forced to live in a house together, Drawn Together brought various cartoon characters from different worlds for their own kind of reality show. There was a spin on Disney Princesses, fantasy hero shows, superhero shows, a Betty Boop lookalike from the 1920s, a Pikachu knock off and more. But everything was cranked up to extreme and obscene levels for its jokes.

Some of these jokes were so obscene that it’s highly unlikely that Drawn Together can ever be brought back with a new revival, but that also might work better in our current animation climate. It’s just so within the pocket of the 2000s specifically that it’s hard to imagine what a new take on the show would look like. It really was something that could only exist at that particular time, and was special when it aired for that reason. It was the wild cartoon that kids shouldn’t be watching…but probably did.

If you wanted to check it out for yourself, Drawn Together is now streaming with Paramount+.