Madcaps

Madcaps is an American television sitcom created by Kirby Lauren for RKOx. Starring an of George Grayson, Julie Morkel, Sabrina Samson, and Simon Webber, the series revolves around four immature friends collectively known as "the Madcaps"—Simon Quimby (Grayson), Laurie Deegan (Morkel), Serena Maroon (Samson), and Dominic Pearson (Webber)—who operate the unsuccessful Madcaps Bar & Grill while scamming their neighbors, committing petty crimes, and overall living recklessly in.

Lauren developed the show for the RKO Network, but its profanity and strong sexual content resulted in it being rejected by RKO and picked up by sister cable channel RKOx instead. Lauren and George Ventura were the first executive producers, and many others have joined since season 2. Filming has taken place on set and on location in, , , , and. Madcaps is produced by The Kirby Lauren Company, Ventura Entertainment, and RKOx Studios.

Madcaps premiered on June 11, 2010 and has since run for 13 seasons, making it RKOx's second longest-running original series behind It Ain't Easy. Receiving critical acclaim for its cast, characters, humor, and cinematography, the show has developed a cult following online, though some detractors have accused it of declining in quality. Several sources have called it one of the best shows on television. In 2023, Lauren confirmed that the series had been renewed for two new seasons and will end with season 15.

Cast and characters
Four protagonists known as "the Madcaps" serve as the main characters of the show. Laurie's childhood best friend, Serena's frenemy, and Dominic's next-door neighbor. He is the son of a musician mother corrupt police officer father, and being forced to excel in school and read novels as a child has turned him into an "intellectual madman". Though he is the owner of Madcaps Bar & Grill restaurant, he often makes the money for his house through "alternative means" such as robbery. When the series begins, he has an  with next-door neighbor Brenda MacBride, but they break up after he accidentally tells her husband about it. A rather awkward woman who co-owns and manages Madcaps Bar & Grill. Laurie is the daughter of vigilante serial killer Patrick Deegan—who is freed from prison in season 4—and Maureen Deegan, his ex-wife and a popular romance author. She is Simon's childhood best friend, having met him in middle school, though she often attempts to erase memories of her childhood due to her father's criminality. After her mother's passing in season 7, Laurie develops, which leads to her driving a stolen van into the competitor diner across the street, though she is not caught. She has actually committed various crimes throughout the show but mysteriously remains unconvicted. In spite of her shortcomings, Laurie often serves as the voice of reason among the Madcaps. A biracial woman who is Simon's frenemy and was Laurie's best friend in high school. Her Black father is a retired reggae musician, while her White mother was a cashier at a corner store. The co-owner and head chef of Madcaps Bar & Grill, Serena often considers herself underpaid and overworked, even though barely anyone actually comes to the struggling restaurant. Earlier seasons of the show hint at Serena having, and she is diagnosed with at the end of season 11. Serena is also an aspiring musician, oftentimes badly playing her father's old guitar and singing songs with bizarre and often vulgar lyrics. She hopes to achieve a music career because her current job is "Hell on earth". The youngest of the Madcaps and the "resident Black man". He is Simon's next-door neighbor and Madcaps Bar & Grill's assistant manager. He is the son of a supermodel mother and a closeted gay father who he does not discover is homosexual until he catches him making out with a young male bartender in the season 12 episode "Dominic's Dad Is Gay". Dominic is initially depicted as dimwitted, but over time he becomes outright cruel; the other Madcaps point this out, but he refuses to listen. Later seasons hint at Dennis having a past as an uncaught serial killer, as shown by his quickness to deny such accusations in conversations irrelevant to that subject and extreme interest in Laurie's father.
 * George Grayson as Simon Quimby:
 * Julie Morkel as Laurie Deegan:
 * Sabrina Samson as Serena Maroon:
 * Nathan Webber as Dominic Pearson:

Development and pilot
Kirby Lauren began developing two new television pilots to shop to the major commercial television networks after he left the RKO sitcom Michelle in 2007. He chose to pitch the series about "four losers with no morals running and unsuccessful restaurant while trying to 'make it big' in " to RKO; it was more original than the other pitch, which was a sitcom about a dysfunctional family. The former was partially inspired by Lauren's own young adult years.

Lauren said that while contemporary comedies like ' and ' were "generally entertaining", he felt as if there needed to be a comedy than "focused more on the characters themselves than the episode plot and the gags that come with it". He hoped that his series would run long enough to see the characters evolve, and wished to explore their hardships while also incorporating humor in a way that felt "natural". Lauren brought the show to RKO in 2008 under the working title Malibu Madcaps, naming it after the single "Madcap Song" by The Dramatics. Gregory Nickel, then the President of Entertainment at the RKO Network, rejected the pitch due to the strong language and sexual content Lauren wanted to put in the show, but he "greatly enjoyed" the idea and suggested pitching to cable sister channel RKOx instead.

The series' title was changed to Madcaps by the time it was pitched to RKOx. David Hervey Jr., the of RKOx LLC, also liked the pilot but turned down a decision to order a ten-episode first season, instead commissioning a pilot episode to "see how the story would look on TV". Simply titled "Pilot", the episode stars George Grayson, Julie Morkel, Sabrina Samson, and Nathan Webber. It was filmed in in the fall of 2009 on a budget of only $2,800 and using "long-shelved" prosumer  cameras. After the heads of the channel viewed the episode, RKOx decided to air the pilot as the series premiere and ordered nine more episodes. It was also decided that the budget should be $380,000 per episode, which was much less than that of a standard network television show but a budget Lauren was satisfied with, given the fact that he wanted the show to be shot "simplistically" in the first place.

Casting
Lauren has stated from the beginning that none of the main cast members were new to him at the time of their casting. Julie Morkel, Laurie's actress, was the first person cast for the series. Lauren met her and her brothers Phelan and Jason at the Golden Note Awards in 2003, and having seen her audition, he found her to be perfect for the role. Lauren knew Sabrina Samson, who originally auditioned for the role, from his 2005 film Absurdists. Samson "perfectly" played a "really uptight" character in the film and was coincidentally biracial, so he thought she was a much better fit for Serena. George Grayson was Lauren's girlfriend Donna Marco's cousin, and Nathan Webber was Grayson's best friend; Grayson and Webber respectively auditioned for the roles of Simon and Dominic.

Filming
Madcaps is largely filmed on location in (mainly ),, , , and. Lauren has said that the series is filmed in so many locations because "some places just look prettier than others". The series' production team uses an old bar in as the exterior of Madcaps Bar & Grill.

Until season 10, studio scenes were filmed on Stages 14 and 15 at RKO Studios West in Los Angeles. However, starting in season 11, filming moved from Stage 14 to Stage 16, and filming also began to take place at Malibu Studio Center. The stages are used for the interiors of the characters' homes, the inside of the restaurant, some scenes set inside vehicles, and various other in-universe locations.

Madcaps' cinematographic hallmarks include:
 * 360-degree in scenes where all four protagonists are present.
 * with horizontal panning which from shot to shot.
 * from scene to scene.
 * on characters faces during "awkward" or "cringe" scenes.

Music
One of Madcaps' hallmarks is its soundtrack, which plays a large role in the show. The series contains original transition music and incidental music made up of preexisting songs from artists. Kirby Lauren describes the series' original music as "fittingly passive aggressive", a comment on the fast tempo and generally ubpeat nature of its compositions. Madcaps uses transition music composed by "The Madcaps Band", a collective comprising various musicians, including Shane Barkley, Linda Lee Brown, Michael Esparza, Lorenzo Garcia, Percy Sherman, Christa Watson, and Maura Zane. Lauren has stated that the composers were heavily inspired by the jazz soundtrack from the sitcom Fukunaga.

The series' opening theme is "Madcap Song" by jazz group The Dramatics, which the show is named after. The song can be found on their self-titled 1994 studio album. Lauren listened to The Dramatics often during his teenage years and became a "huge Dramatics fanboy", and cited "Madcap Song" as his favorite single from the group. In a 2019 interview with The Worcester Beacon, Dramatics band leader Julian Freeman stated that he is "the world's biggest fan" of Madcaps and collects the series' releases. Other artists whose music is prominently featured in episodes include David Washburn, Mayson Mayson,, and.

Critical reception
The first season of Madcaps received mixed reviews from critics despite positive audience reception. After the season's finale aired, Christine Petersen with The Worcester Beacon called the series "brilliant in its casting but unenthusiastic in its writing and sloppily pieced together". In a review that many have mocked for aging poorly, Get-Go writer Rafael Alvaro said he "[can't] imagine this trash heap lasting longer than one season". J.C. Almeida with XYZ News wrote more positively, calling the show "a true original" with "a  or It Ain't Easy flair"; meanwhile, XYZ News critic Maureen Marsden called Madcaps "unexplainably brilliant" and "rich with challenging satire".

Later seasons, however, have been met with critical acclaim. Seasons 2, 6, 8, and 13 have scored in the 70–90/100 range on, while the last three of those seasons scored in the 90–99% range on. Michael Cochrane of XYZ News wrote that Madcaps has "broken ground" by "being unafraid of presenting an interracial ensemble cast of real, tight-knit friends, something many similar series have neglected to try or even think about", while in a 2015 article, the Beacon's Petersen described the series with a positive connotation as "It Ain't Easy on the ... and with a reduced main cast... and hopped up on club drugs". The show has garnered a online, with many fans referring to themselves as "Madcaps". XYZ News named Madcaps the Best New Show of the Year in 2010. In 2023, the series was ranked #2 on OEN's list of RKOx's Top 10 Greatest Hits, only behind Brushers.

Perceived decline in quality
Some critics have criticized recent seasons of Madcaps for a supposed decline in the series' overall quality, with many calling the series "tired" and "worn (out)". Though there is no actual consensus as to when it began.

Some critics have written that the series' decline began in the 11th season with its -focused storyline. Chandler Sanders of OEN wrote that "The Madcaps Go Home", the premiere, "lacks depth and substance and sets the show up for a huge downfall", and in a review published two years later called seasons 11, 12, and 13 "wholly disastrous" as a result. During its run, Jeremy Cracker of EMNN criticized what he saw as "too close a parallel to current events", and later called the season finale "The Madcaps Leave Home" "the worst episode of the entire series". Geneva Watson of The Pacific wrote that the show was "finally showing its wear-and-tear" and that "the show's main cast have grown up, but Madcaps as a show has yet to do the same".

Others cite it as happening more recently in season 13, much or the criticism being aimed at the relationship between protagonists Simon Quimby and Serena Maroon. Watson wrote that Madcaps had become "pretentiously quasi-sophisticated" and "all too reminiscent of a primetime soap opera". MoonJump contributor Samuel DiGiorgio called the characters' relationship, which was formerly a running gag, "Taken too far [...] A sort of 'soapoperaization' of what Madcaps once was."

Associations with It Ain't Easy
Since its premiere, many fans and critics of Madcaps about the series having connections to another RKOx series, It Ain't Easy, though Madcaps creator Kirby Lauren has not confirmed any connection, stating in an interview with Outstare News contributor Heather McGowan, "Madcaps isn't connected to It Ain't Easy... yet. [...] I don't know. Things could change." He later called the latter series' creators, Genevieve LaClotte and Joey Moody, "really nice people [who] I'd love to work with someday".

Interest died down around the time Madcaps' fourth season premiered, but it was quickly renewed when "Live Free or Get Mad" aired on August 20, 2016. In the episode, recurring character (played by Laura Staker) very briefly mentions her uncle Watson running away to  to "hide out at some shack called Alphonse's Inn or whatever the fuck". "Madcaps", "It Ain't Easy", and "Uncle Watson" began trending on the next day. Aside from telling one OEN writer "it was just a joke", Lauren continuously declined to answer new questions about the series taking place in the same universe, citing his previous responses as the reason.