Perfect Hair Forever

• 1. Introduction

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  Perfect Hair Forever arrived on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block on the 7th of November 2004 without any announcement that it was coming at all. Viewers that night had tuned in expecting the premiere of Squidbillies. What they got instead was a series about a bald boy searching the world for perfect hair, created by Mike Lazzo, Matt Harrigan, and Matt Maiellaro. The mystery begins right there, in that substitution. Why did a show about baldness replace a show about mutant redneck squids? Who is the evil Coiffio, and why does he oppose young Gerald Bald Z? And why does a giant hot dog keep chanting the same nonsense phrase? Those questions, it turns out, were never fully meant to be answered.

• 2. The Bait-and-Switch Debut

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  Williams Street, the production arm behind Adult Swim's original programming, had been advertising Squidbillies up to the final bump before airtime on the 7th of November 2004. That bump spoke cryptically about wanting to make the show "perfect" for you and your "hair" "forever," which was the first hint that something unusual was happening. Viewers saw not the Squidbillies title card but a card for a Space Ghost episode called "Perfect Hair Forever," and that title card became the pilot itself. After the credits, a bumper appeared apologizing for the apparent scheduling mix-up, only to fade out to a fake Technical Difficulties card populated by Perfect Hair Forever characters. A techno remix of Action Hotdog's chant, "Do da la la la la!", played while the card faded to static. The real season one premiere did not follow until the 27th of November 2005, at 12:30 AM Eastern Standard Time, when the second episode aired.

• 3. Shonen Parody and Serial Form

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  Gerald Bald Z's name is a direct play on the anime series Dragon Ball Z, and the whole show operates as a parody of shonen anime story conventions. Gerald suffers from premature hair loss and sets off on a quest to cure it, which is itself a joke on the grand adventure premises common to the genre. What made Perfect Hair Forever unusual among Williams Street projects was its commitment to an ongoing serial format. Previous shows from the same production group had avoided continuity almost entirely. Each episode also varied its opening sequence music and visuals, and the style and music of the end credits changed from episode to episode, giving the show an unstable, deliberately inconsistent texture that compounded the parody. The villain Coiffio, a self-centered old man with an enormous multi-colored coif atop his head, opposed Gerald for reasons the series never explains.

• 4. A Cast of Deliberate Absurdity

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  Action Hotdog, voiced by Will Armstrong, is a flying hot dog whose entire vocabulary consists of the phrase "Doo da la-la-la-la-la-la la la-la-laaaaa-la-la." Norman Douglas, voiced by Nick Ingkatanuwat, is a talking tree known as the Inappropriate Comedy Tree, originally sent by Coiffio to spy on Gerald. Terry/Twisty, voiced by Dave Hughes, is a sapient tornado whose eyes turn from blue to red depending on whether he is being nice or violent. Uncle Grandfather, voiced by creator Matt Maiellaro, is described by producer Matt Harrigan as a "bald, pot-bellied, dirty old man" who spends his time snacking, reading pornography, and watching a silent girl named Brenda. Young Man, voiced by C. Martin Croker, wears a bright purple suit and claims to be from the "Ministry of Planning," calling himself the "King of All Animals." His companion Sherman, a giraffe, was voiced by MF Doom. Space Ghost, voiced by George Lowe, appears in every episode, whether as a character with an actual role or simply lurking in the background.

• 5. Cancellation and April Fools Resurrection

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  After the first six episodes, members of the creative team posted on the official Adult Swim message board that they had no interest in continuing the show into a second season. Formal cancellation was announced at the Adult Swim panel at Comic-Con 2006. In October 2006, Adult Swim's website declared the show was back in production with sixteen episodes planned for its streaming network The Fix, but that announcement came to nothing. Episode seven aired on the 1st of April 2007 as part of Adult Swim's annual April Fools' joke, and the entire prank that night spanned the full block: all of season one aired in reverse order, presented in the style of old VHS fansubs with Engrish subtitles, occasionally replaced by transcripts from other Adult Swim shows. The stunt replaced scheduled premieres of Bleach, Blood+, and Eureka Seven. Seven years later, on the 1st of April 2014, two more episodes appeared unannounced: "Muscular Distraction - A" at 12:00 AM and "Muscular Distraction - B" at 12:15 AM, as part of Adult Swim's 2014 April Fools' Stunt.

• 6. Melt-Banana and Home Media

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  In 2007, the Japanese noise rock band Melt-Banana recorded the song "Hair-Cat (Cause the Wolf Is a Cat!)" for Perfect Hair Forever, an odd collaboration that suited the show's chaotic sensibility. On the 27th of October 2009, Adult Swim and distributor Warner Home Video released Adult Swim in a Box, a seven-disc DVD box set covering various Adult Swim shows; the pilot episode of Perfect Hair Forever was included. In June 2010, an individual DVD became briefly available at the Adult Swim website store. The first season was later released on iTunes, and the entire series was made available for free streaming on the Adult Swim website. In Canada, the series aired on Teletoon's Teletoon at Night block and on the Canadian version of Adult Swim. On the 22nd of May 2007, the episode "Return to Balding Victory" debuted on Adult Swim Video, officially marking the end of the series.