Grimley Speaking.

My local NBC station in San Francisco did not carry this series...which is ironic since the animation was done by San Francisco's Colossal Pictures animation studio with Hanna-Barbera doing the post-production work (voiceovers, music, sound effects). I viewed a few episodes on videotape and the entire series in now in DVD release.

I have seen Martin Short's performances as Ed Grimley on "Saturday Night Live"...Grimley (who played the musical triangle as a hobby and watched "Wheel of Fortune" fanatically) was rather hyper-active in reacting to mundane things happening in his life and in his apartment. Lots of energy in the performances, I must say.

The cartoon episodes had Ed appearing with his pet rat Sheldon and fussing over some personal matter but were interrupted by other segments in the middle of the story...including some science bits with the Gustav Brothers (voices of Jonathan Winters and Arte Johnson) and a live action segment with Count Floyd (Joe Flaherty) hosting a kiddie monster movie show and telling "really scary stories" to a very uninterested kiddie audience in the studio. SCTV alumni Catherine O'Hara and Andrea Martin voiced shapely neighbor Miss Malone and dumpy Mrs. Freebus respectively and comedy legend Jonathan Winters voiced cranky landlord Mr. Freebus. Ed's dilemmas were usually resolved at the end of the half hour in his own manic way.

I did read somewhere that Hanna-Barbera had similar tv cartoon shows in development with other famous comedians such as Whoopi Goldberg and Jonathan Winters during the series run of "Ed Grimley" but those series never were created after "Ed Grimley" ended its one season run.

Trivia Question 9: What's the name of Ed Grimley's pet goldfish?

Moby. The DVD package said so.

Ed Grimley I only has passing memories of. The Count Floyd segments had a much firmer place in my mind all these years over the actual main show. As I did and still bust out laughing at those segments. This one was one of the shows Cartoon Network placed in the later early morning hours. But still I don't recall airing it that much. Most of the episodes seemed new to me on DVD.

That being said, originally i thought maybe this would I one I would skip. But I didnt and I'm glad. This one is a weird little show with a lot of randomness going for it. In truth I do feel sometimes the characters aren't as endearing as I would like, but then I feel when the show runs into some jokes I can't help but burst out laughing. Martin Short in general has been hit and miss to me, but I was pleasantly surprised with this cartoon on his resume.

I feel like this a show I need to sell some more people on to try, it's such a little oddity that has some clever stuff. Though I do feel the last episode with Irving Cohen character was felt like more of one of the miss ones over all. I feel like that probably wasn't the best one to end on.