We Hit The Pool With Daniel Shepard From Above Average’s New Show “Swimming Lessons!”

April is upon us. Spring is in the air. The sound of baseballs hitting bats (Ed’s Note: Unless if you are a Mets fan) and middle-aged men talking about college basketball fills the air. Soon we’ll be digging into Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs and complaining about how the year is already flying by. But that won’t be me because I’m already focused on my favorite season of all time: Pool season. I may not have the type of body you’d like to see shirtless and poolside, but I absolutely love the water. As I age I’ve begun to realize that I never schedule enough time to hit the water, be it chlorinated or the saltwater waves of the Atlantic. I think that’s what drew me so closely to Above Average’s new series “Swimming Lessons.” Sure it’s got the sarcastic humor that’s right in my comfort zone, but it also triggered a little memory sensor in my brain that brought back thoughts of learning to swim, body board, and surf. It also reminded me that my apartment complex has a pool and I live less than a mile from the beach so I have no excuses but to get my butt in the water a lot this summer. Luckily, Daniel and Keith Shepard, who created “Swimming Lessons”, share this similar passion for water that I do. I recently had a chance to chat with Daniel about the pool, life-lessons, and Care Bears the animated show. Seriously. There really haven’t been many shows that focus solely on the swimming pool. Family Guy heads there now and again, South Park taught us about peeing in it, and I’m curious to find out if Otto from the Simpsons ever replaced the rear window in his mobile swimming pool. But those are just episodes, not full series. “My brother and I, our big summer job was life guarding and teaching swimming lessons. When we weren’t playing baseball that’s what we were doing. We’d never really seen a show, that we could remember, that was done around a pool. That was so much of our childhood that the show really spawned around that.” Being around a pool, or water in general, during the summertime really lends itself to discovering interesting characters. I’m sure if you’ve ever been to the beach in July you’ve seen any combination of the following:

• Weird, older man tanned to an almost leather state and even though he’s drastically over weight he’s wearing a European man-thong.
• Muscle bound bros who try way too hard to impress girls while playing volleyball or frolicking in the surf.
• The entire family who planned their summer vacation around the beach. This family is also usually wearing sneakers/jean shorts on said beach.
• Drunk college girls who smuggled vodka onto the beach in their water bottles.

That list could go on for days. The Shepard’s saw this as well and transformed some of the overinflated personalities they encountered while life guarding into 7-year-old character for the show. “Vincent, we saw him as kind of a country club reject. Like his parents didn’t think that he was getting along or he was kind of a lonely kid so we saw him getting tossed in the public pool, which is why he sticks out like a sore thumb. Dear Baby Jesus is an amalgam of three different young girls that we dealt with while we were in Kansas. Just a ball of energy and pretty insane. Bruce is very much my inner child. We just wanted a really happy and positive character. We sat Dear Baby Jesus and Vincent next to each other because they’ll end up being the main antithesis for Mr. James. Then there’s Bloody Mary (Voiced by Daniel’s fiancé, Danielle. Awww!). She’s just an anomaly. She comes from this Canadian girl I used to know who was just so weird. Like, not mean or angry, but she would just say weird stuff. You would always act like she didn’t bother you but she would always say these weird and bat shit crazy things.”  Four drastically different characters would be a challenge for just about anyone. That anyone is Robert James. “We wanted to make him this middle-aged guy who’s going through this mid life crisis. He’s an inch away from rock bottom but he’s the perfect person to be patient with these kids. We see them as these outcast kids who probably don’t have a lot of friends so we love that they would have this older man when they’d normally have this 15 or 16-year-old life guard who doesn’t care about them. He’s gonna be patient, talk them through things, and give them the honest approach they’re probably not used to. They’ll learn more life lessons than actually swimming. I don’t know if they ever learn how to swim. It’s called “Swimming Lessons” but there’s pretty much no swimming involved. He’s just there to keep the kids on track. He’s not gonna talk to them like children. He’s gonna talk to them like adults.” Above Average has a very eclectic animated lineup. Most of the shows are built to come and go in seasons, with the exception of Tiny Town, which is weekly. This lends itself well to the shows that run in seasons because you’ll always be discovering new shows on Above Average. More importantly, you never know what to expect. “It’s kind of like the Adult Swim lineup. You can’t really compare any of the shows to each other.” Between Monkey Love and their ability to use guest stars in awkward roles to Tiny Town’s ability to animate inanimate objects, Above Average seems to be a haven for creativity. “They take a very hands on/hands off approach. They were really open and really receptive to where we could go with this show. Our initial pitch was ‘What if Louis CK taught swimming lessons’ and they just jumped on board with that. They gave us as much free reign as we wanted, but also gave us very insightful notes. It always felt like a very collaborative process. The animated show may be based in the brother’s back-story, but so has the love for animation. Any person involved with the animation business can rattle off a laundry list of shows that piqued their interest in the animation industry. Though the love for animation as a business didn’t take off until the glorious time of puberty Daniel did admit that he was a huge fan of Ghostbusters, Bobby’s World and, surprisingly, Care Bears. But it wasn’t until he came across shows like Frisky Dingo, Metalocalypse and most importantly for Swimming Lessons, Home Movies. “That’s the one we always watched and that’s the one we continue to watch and we play it out way too much and quote it way too much. It’s one of those shows that if we were to gravitate our show towards anything that this would be our version of Home Movies. We worked with this amazing animation studio, LowBrow Animation, and we wanted to really style the show after two shows: The Critic and Bobby’s World. They’ve got bigger heads and bigger feet and we wanted the larger features for the kids. And Mr. James just kinda screams The Critic. That’s what we were going for as far as inspiration for the show. But I’d have to say Care Bears was the biggest inspiration of my entire life. ::laughter:: We’re all just chasing Care Bears at this point.” Check out Swimming Lessons on the Above Average YouTube Channel every Wednesday! http://youtu.be/atGfPMTNjmw