The Paloni Show! Halloween Special! Was Influenced by Disastrous Local Talent Shows

The Paloni Show! Halloween Special! is a very unique brand of comedy, it only makes sense that it was influenced by the strangest slice of reality. Hulu's new Halloween special is actually a resurrection of a dark animated comedy series from Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland that was in the works as a series at Fox several years ago. Things didn't work out, but the concept of The Paloni Show never died, and Roiland eventually partnered with Hulu for this spooky season variety hour. 

The brand of comedy featured in Paloni is much different than that of Roiland's other creations, like Rick & Morty and The Solar Opposites. This is much more awkward, making viewers squirm in their seats as the characters fight with one another and fail to accomplish the easy things they set out to do. While speaking with ComicBook.com about The Paloni Show, Roiland revealed that old local talent shows provided the bones for the comedy of the new special.

"To me, what's so funny is you're watching these dumb Paloni characters who really care a lot and they're bickering amongst each other, which is kind of uncomfortable. I don't know, there's something funny to me about when you know something's really important to somebody," Roiland told us."

"Oh man, I have these old tapes. These old DVDs that were from tapes that I copied over to DVD, but they were from the San Antonio Texas Talent show they would do every year. They would do it in malls and on stages all around. Every district had their own talent show that eventually the winners would go up to the finals. Those are some of my favorite things ever because there's a few of the acts that are up there and they're lip syncing or they're singing a song or whatever. You can see fighting happening amongst it. There's three girls in particular, I'm remembering. You can see them fighting on stage during the performance. You can sense the stress. You can tell that there's going to be a blowout the second they get off the stage."

Roiland went on to say that the tapes have been passed around to several acclaimed comedy creators, including Dan Harmon, Tim Heidecker, and Eric Wareheim. 

"Those tapes, those f---ing things are incredible. I wish I could get my hands on more, because there's multiple years they did it," he said. "I would just love all of the mall stuff, everything that was done in the mall in front of JC Penney's sales and shit. That's the magic we wanted to infuse into this is. That feeling of like, 'Oh God, these ugh.' They're fighting. Then of course, the wheels fall off and chaos starts happening and then it's just like all these awful things are going on and they're trying to keep it together."

The Paloni Show! Halloween Special! is streaming exclusively on Hulu.