Don’t worry, animation fans. In Fox's recent onslaught of upcoming promos, the network hasn’t forgotten that a lot of its longest-lasting bread and butter has been with the most colorful type of series, and they're now starting to promote the culturally satirical series Bordertown, which will jump the fence into primetime next year.
Bordertown is the brainchild of Family Guy writer/producer Mark Hentemann, who is executive producing with familiar cohort Seth MacFarlane, whose name should give you a pristine idea of what brand of humor this series will wallow in. Family Guy takes the 80s and women-bashing jokes, American Dad takes on the Republicans, The Cleveland Show took on black culture, and now Bordertown will likely skewer Mexican heritage and America’s current resistance to immigrants. It’s like the four food groups, if food had a way of insulting you with TV-MA jokes.
In a world where Caucasians will soon become a minority – so, this world – there are the Buckwalds and the Gonzalezes, two neighboring families living in a small town on the U.S./Mexico border, each representing an odd end of the American Dream spectrum. White guy Bud Buckwald is married to the wise and oblivious Janice (Alex Borstein), with whom he parents the geeky Becky (also Borstein), the unassuming loser Sanford (Judah Friedlander) and the pageant-obsessed five-year-old Gert (Missi Pyle). Legal immigrant and businessman Ernesto Gonzalez (Nicholas Gonzalez) lives next door with his wife Maria, their son Ruiz (Efren Ramirez) and 21-year-old college graduate nephew J.C. (also Gonzalez).
In this changing cultural climate, the two families grow closer through romance, conflict and friendship. Which almost certainly means both families' offspring will be dating and mixed-race babies will be the subject matter for at least one entire episode. The guilty pleasure center of my brain is perfectly fine with that, assuming the show delivers sharp writing and clever instances of ironic non-racism. But then I think about the stereotypical atrocities of A Haunted House 2 and the glass of agua becomes half-empty again.
There’s no reason to try and find a Mexican bootleg copy of Bordertown, because it’ll be hitting Fox’s Animation Domination Sundays at some point in 2015. You can find the full Fox 2014-2015 schedule here.
