Big City Greens -- created by brothers Chris and Shane Houghton -- is one of Disney Channel's most successful modern animated series. The show focuses on the titular Greens, a family from a small farmtown who find themselves adjusting to a new life in the Big City. Siblings Cricket and Tilly, co-parents Bill and Nancy, and Gramma Alice have gone through plenty of unexpected, silly, and heartfelt adventures across the show's previous three seasons.
Heading into Season 4 with a new status quo that allows the cast to shift back and forth from the Big City to Smalton, Big City Greens is poised to tackle a major milestone as it approaches both its hundredth episode and a feature-length film. During an interview with CBR ahead of Big City Greens returning to Disney Channel on Sept. 22, Chris and Shane Houghton discussed the balancing act between the show's two settings, collaborating with Michael Bolton, and what fans young and old can look forward to.
CBR: Big City Greens is about to start Season 4 -- on top of that, it's also the #1 animated show for its audience on Disney, approaching 100 episodes, and is getting a feature-length movie. What's going through your heads when you really sit down and realize all of that?
Chris Houghton: It's so cool. And I try to never think of it [Laughter]. That's too much pressure! I think if we got in our heads about it and focused too much on how long we've been in production or how many people are watching -- God, I'm freaking myself out right now, just thinking about it. We really just try to focus on the fun. That's what we did back in Season 1 when no one had seen the show. As amazing as it is to have a successful show, that can kind of be a dangerous thing for the creative energies. We really try to create an environment where it's just us getting into a room and trying to make each other laugh. Somewhere along the line, we bring the audience into that process.
Shane Houghton: Yeah, I agree. If we're having fun, chances are the audience is going to be having fun. So we focus on that. We've stepped back whenever we hit a big milestone and go, "Wow. This is incredible." We're very honored to have been able to do the show for as long as we've done it. We're hitting our 100th episode during Season 4. That was a major milestone. We've written so many stories, it's almost like it's 200 really, because we do the 11-minute stories. But to have the 100 half-hour episodes [is] going to be exciting. It's going to be a celebration of the entire series. That was a good time to look back and be like, "Wow, we have come a long way." It's truly an honor to be here. It takes the whole crew, it takes the audience -- it takes a lot of things going right to be able to get this far, especially in today's TV environment.
This past season brought the Green family out of the Big City and back to the country. As the new status quo is set to have them going back and forth, what led to that direction for the show?
Shane: We had always wanted to bring the Greens back to the country ever since Season 1. But we knew we couldn't do it in Season 1. It would be way too early. The whole point of the show is you've got this fish-out-of-water family, right? You got to keep them out of the water. After about three seasons worth, we felt like we had paid our dues, and we could explore what it's like to bring the Greens back home. Part of it is that Chris and I, after we came out to Los Angeles, sometimes we'll go back to Michigan, where we're from. We'll go to visit our parents and go back to our childhood home. It just doesn't feel the same. There was something that had changed. The vibe was different. What's different is that we changed. We've gone out, we're older, we're wiser, we have more life experience, and then we're going back home -- but you can't ever really go back home. You can't go back to your childhood. Time is always pushing you forward. So we try to recapture those feelings.
It's a bittersweet feeling that we were talking about. With the writers, we realized, "Oh, this is a very relatable thing." A lot of people, maybe I'd even venture to say everyone goes through something similar. They try to recapture something from their past. They may not be able to exactly get it. There's a good life lesson in that. You will always be moving forward. You can appreciate your past, but you don't necessarily have to recapture it. The whole core of Big City Greens is about change and growth and where is home. We've always said, since Season 1 and in our show bible, that home is not necessarily a location. It's who you're with. The Greens are home no matter where they are as long as they're together. So we wanted to explore more of that, maybe more overtly than we had in the past. Taking them back to the country and giving ourselves a good long runway of 10 half hours to really explore that and figure out those feelings and emotions and witness all of that was exciting.
Chris: Plus, we got a bunch of new characters, which are a lot of fun to just shake things up. It felt like going back to Season 1 in some ways.
This show has had some wild guest stars, but Michael Bolton is a really fun addition to the universe. What was it like working with him for "Jingled?"
Shane: We're big fans of Scott Aukerman and Comedy Bang! Bang!. Scott has been on the show. We've had so many guests from Comedy Bang! Bang! do voices on Big City Greens. We probably owe Scott Aukerman a lot for introducing us to so many funny people. Scott also produced Michael Bolton's Big Sexy Valentine's Day Special, which is so funny. In it, Bolton sings in it, he acts, he tells jokes, and he's really funny. So when we had this character come up to the episode "Jingled," where Tilly starts writing jingles, and she needs this jingle writer mentor, we were like, "Okay, we need somebody musical, but somebody who's also funny." Those two things don't always go together. So we thought of Michael Bolton, and because of that connection with Scott, we reached out to him and said, "Hey, are you interested in this?"
Normally, in a situation like that, the guest star will come in and do the voice and be like, "Hey, thanks. That was fun." Then that's it. Michael Bolton had a bunch of notes. He had ideas. And that is exciting! That is cool. We were like, "What do you feel? What do you want? What's your take on this?" He had ideas on the character design, about the story, about specific jokes. Normally in the production pipeline, when we're recording actors, a lot of stuff is locked into place. But the crew kind of bent over backward to make this work because it's just so exciting to have Michael Bolton's input on an episode.
We kind of rushed it through as we did it. And I [have] to say, the episode is better. It's funnier. It's just a better episode because of Michael Bolton's additions. We were so grateful to him. We had a fun time. He played around. He totally got it, and he has a really funny performance. It was so great collaborating with Michael Bolton. Can we say we collaborated with Michael? Can we win a Grammy now? Are we eligible?
Chris, on top of being an Executive Producer and Co-Creator, you're also the voice of Cricket. Even though the characters are still recognizably the same, they have gone through so much. Cricket even pokes fun at all the lessons he's learned in "Truck Stopped." What would you say has surprised you the most about the way Cricket has evolved over the course of the show?
Chris: It's fun to see that growth. We try to keep the characters as same-y as possible after so many seasons [and] these kinds of natural changes that happen. You can't quite have a character go on the same adventure twice and learn the same thing twice. But you also don't want the character to change so drastically that you don't recognize who they are. It's been very fun to see these characters slightly change. I think a big part of that is the collaboration that comes with the production of the show. Over the years, we've had so many different board artists ]and] different writers come into the show.
Shane and I have been the constants. We're steering the ship. It's been so exciting and invigorating to have new creative minds come in. It's like we're the toy makers. We have all these different toys, and then different people come in, and they go like, "Have you ever done this with the toy?" It's really fun building this thing together. I mean, that joke you mentioned about Cricket commenting on how many adventures he's been on and how he can't keep them all straight? That was written by a very funny board artist, Raj Brueggemann, who has been with us for years. He just storyboarded his 40th Big City Greens episode. It's been an awesome collaboration.
Looking ahead to Season 4 and the upcoming film, what are you most excited for fans of Big City Greens to experience?
Shane: With the movie, we are so excited. It allowed us the opportunity to do something bigger and deeper and crazier than we would ever be able to do in an episode of the series. Creatively, it's such a thrill to be able to do something of such a higher magnitude. We're very excited for people to see the movie. I think it's going to be a really big event. Until then, there are new episodes coming out. It spaced out nicely for our schedule for the next couple of years, however long it takes for all this stuff to come out.
There'll be plenty of Big City Greens. We're just excited. For the people who enjoy the show already, I think they will be pleased with what's coming up. I think as the show continues, there's always new audience members discovering the show. So the movie, the series, there are lots of entry points for people to discover this series. Hopefully, it's just a lot of fun. We're having a lot of fun making it, and I think that I think it shows on screen.
The fourth season of Big City Greens premieres on September 23 on Disney Channel.