Two Officers (TV series)

Two Officers is an animated television series created by Oscar Thompson and Eleanor Andrews for MDC. The series follows the daily adventures of two friends, Jacob and Kane, as they travel across the country with their small-scale organization, led by the Chief of Police Jordan and partners, Scarlett and Jolie, to solve crimes and help people with personal issues. It stars Jenson Holland, Logan Woods, Declan Richards, Victoria Cook and Isabelle Duncan.

Thompson and Andrews began developing Two Officers in early 1995, after watching Good Cops (1983) and expressing interest in creating a buddy cop series, which was announced in May 1996. Contacting writer Gracie Harvey and crime expert Jonathan Parker, Two Officers was written over a nine-month period, with the majority of the characters created before being pitched to executives and approved.

The series premiered in the United States on MDC on July 10, 1998, and ran for fifteen seasons, with over 396 episodes, before ending in December 2010. It received mostly positive reviews, with praise for its animation, which was considered high-quality at the time of its release, writing, character development, and action, but criticism for its graphic violence, light-hearted tone, and pacing.

Premise

In the fictional country, based on Robloxia, two friends, Jacob and Kane, are hired by a local police department to help expand their force and solve daily crimes such as robbery, murder, hate crime, and shoplifting. However, the duo later embarked on a mission to assist people within the country, investigating and figure out their daily problems. With Jordan, the Chief of Police, realizing their intentions, proudly agrees to assist them, resulting in the establishment of a small-scale organization that helps people with personal issues, gradually introducing the two to the general public and the rest of the world. Throughout their journey, the two also serve as first responders, assisting various people in distress and facing intense challenges that both emotionally and mentally wreck them.

Cast and characters

• Jenson Holland as Jacob, a highly energetic officer. He is the founder of Helping in Need, a small-scale organization.
• Logan Woods as Kane, an amusing officer and the best friend of Jacob.
• Declan Richards as Jordan, the Chief of Police of the local police department where the two worked.
• Victoria Cook as Scarlett, a partner who works alongside Jacob and Kane to solve daily crimes.
• Isabelle Duncan as Jolie, a humorless, yet affectionate officer.

Production

Development

On May 9, 1996, MDC announced that Two Officers was in "active development," with Oscar Thompson and Eleanor Andrews serving as showrunners and co-directors, respectively, with an air date scheduled for 1998. Thompson was considering creating a buddy cop television series prior to the series' release, having watched Good Cops (1983) with Andrews at the latter's home, which served as a major inspiration for the plotline. He had noticed a lack of "engrossing shows that take risk" and as a fan of animation and a lifelong comic book reader, he believed that animation would fit well within the buddy cop genre. Thompson contacted writer Gracie Harvey and crime expert Jonathan Parker to develop the plot and character development, including playing as a police officer, following Andrews' recommendation. Parker invited Thompson and Andrews to interview approximately twenty officers after meeting with them. During the interviews, they took notes and discovered that police officers faced challenges such as anxiety, injury and trauma, with Andrews describing their experiences as a "physical and mental rollercoaster". Despite their difficulties, Andrews' vision for the series included heartwarming and pleasurable scenes, to which Parker enthusiastically agreed and asked Thompson to write a basic plotline that included a summary, character information, and an episode outline.

According to one of the officers interviewed, she wanted "someone to create a television series that portrayed being a police officer as fun" while remaining true to darker themes and topics. Upon finishing the meetings, Thompson and Andrews took direct inspiration from films within the buddy cop genre, which contains of Saving the Day (1962), Police Officer (1985), Two Best Friends (1988) and the television series To The Rescue (1990–94). When developing the characters, Andrews hired Benjamin Johnson, a characterization expert, to assist them. Working with him, Andrews pointed out that while working on developing Kane's traits, he wrote out fundamental personalities, which was inspired from his own individuality; at the time of writing Two Officers, Andrews frequently felt "highly nervous" and "holding back feelings," such as sadness and anger, which he was preparing to deal with, but decided to work on the series first. According to Andrews, when establishing Kane, he noticed that he was beginning to feel represented within the character and spoke with Thompson. According to Parker, who frequently collaborated with the two during development, Andrews asked Thompson to create his own character for the series with similar personalities to his.

While initially concerned, Thompson accepted the idea and began writing a new character, Jacob, who would replace a previous "more serious" person. To develop Jacob, he used examples of speaking quickly with others, being highly energetic at times, and remaining open-minded. Parker and his friend Jonathan Russell, who was invited to attend the event with Thompson because Andrews was working on other stories at home, believed that the series was "heading in the right direction" during a readthrough of the pilot. When asked about the characters' relationship, Thompson simply stated that he and Andrews took notes on a piece of paper to determine their bond. With the majority of the story completed, Thompson, Andrews, Parker, and Harvey collaborated on a story bible that included concept arts and story roles. To make the meeting more "special" and "unique," Andrews played dramatic music while discussing a police chase that was originally planned for one of the episodes but was never included. The series' title, Two Officers, was derived from the title of a film called Two Best Friends, as Thompson believed that because the series was about two officers who were friends, the title would make sense. The original title in an early casting call was Two Very Special Officers, before being changed to its current name.

Writing

Each episode is loosely inspired by an officer's experience. According to Andrews, he commented: "From the beginning, we always wanted to highlight police officers in a way that would make them feel represented and highly respected by the public, even it is not direct". Between 1997 and 2009, the production team interviewed approximately 2,000 officers throughout the United States, who "shared their journey and assisted everyone on the production team in developing new ideas that led to amazing stories." Writing began when a screenwriter pitched an idea to Thompson and Parker, who then began to outline the story over the course of two to four weeks, with longer episodes taking more than a month to complete. After discussing the concept with various screenwriters, the executives gave the episode their approval. The screenplay is then written over a ten-week period, the maximum amount of time allowed for writing an episode, as suggested by Parker early in the series' development.

The majority of the episodes' screenplay, particularly in the first to third seasons, documents the daily challenges of Jacob and Kane's lives while emphasizing beneficial themes to depict police officers in a positive light, a key concept that Andrews had hoped to develop. Early in the series' development, writer Donovan Boyer, who worked on various episodes, pitched the series' main idea of exploring other topics such as personal relationship problems, unemployment, immigration, and poverty. In a 2010 interview with The New Blockers Times following the series's finale, Thompson stated: "Before creating the series, we noticed that most buddy cop shows focused solely on crimes and murder, which we found boring, not in a negative way, but we felt compelled to do something unique. With that, after the first couple of episodes were completed, Boyer presented us with this concept, and I must admit that my face dropped in shock. His idea was exactly what we was looking for, to say the least. We tried to come up with different ideas but had difficulty doing so. So, thank Boyer for resolving the series' writing issues". Thompson, Andrews, and the majority of the production team discussed various topics with activist Gracie Nicholson, who wrote notes about immigration to potential episodes, and visited Oder Row in Downtown Bloxburg City, which served as inspiration for the series' primary city and financial district, York City.

By the end of the fourth season, Andrews had pitched Thompson on the idea of Jacob and Kane exploring the country, which he had had since the beginning of the second season; he had previously written on stories based on the concept, some of which were used in later episodes after extensive rewriting. Thompson discussed the idea with the majority of the co-writers, who agreed and began writing screenplay drafts shortly after the meeting. According to Thompson, Two Officers was purposefully written "in a way that both adults, old or young, teenagers, and even children could understand"; one of the series' key elements was the inclusion of life lessons, which heavily focused on mental health, grief, and self-care. When asked by RNN, the creators stated that they wanted to showcase "absolutely everyone" and portray them in a good perspective; Andrews stated that the idea had been "in their mind" since the series' early development, with Thompson displaying a note written in January 1997. During the fifth season's writing, Thompson and Andrews made plans to recognize several fan-created characters, contacting the artists and asking them to have their characters appear on the series. While the majority of them requested that their character be a reference, some were added as minor supporting characters, with the artist voicing them. Other major topics covered in the series were LGBTQ+ rights, discrimination, self-harm, and autism.

Casting

In June 1997, Jenson Holland and Logan Woods were announced to be voicing Jacob and Kane, respectively, in the series. Holland, who played John in the television series Gangsters (1986-97), had earlier been briefed by one of his crew about a new project that Andrews had asked him to work on, describing it as a "intense, heart-warming, and joyful adventure". After reading the storylines, Holland agreed to the audition, which included 100 people aged twenty to fifty. Since the creators wrote both Jacob and Kane as "in their mid-20s," Holland believed that they were looking for a "mature, confident, and over-the-moon type of guy" and put pressure on himself to match the voice that they were aiming for. Holland and a group of unclosed voice actors spent the majority of the time recording lines in a room inside Odd Vault Studio's recording booth after being hired for the role, which he described as "one of the greatest moments of my career".

Animation

The series was worked on by approximately 600 to 700 animators, with 32 people working over the course of each twenty episodes, allowing for more production time and a better "sophistication". MDC announced in July 1999, halfway through production of the third season, that Transcend Entertainment, Utopia Entertainment, and Starzone Productions would produce the series, beginning with the fourth season, as Odd Vault Studio planned to permanently pause production to focus on other projects. As a result, the animation quality improved significantly, with realistic lighting, including sun rays, detailed backgrounds, and smooth movement, as well as the addition of 200 new computers, divided into 65 across the third studios. Animators initially reported crashes while animating, as well as issues such as glitches and "intense" lag; all studios resolved the issue by the sixth season.

Episodes

Main article: List of Two Officers episodes