Vox: The serialized story in season one played out in the background, then became very important. How much of that did you plan out?
AH: I think a lot of folks who don't work in kids TV don't realize this, but kids animation is its own strange subset of the entertainment industry, and animated kid shows, made in America, on the big three networks, Disney, Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon, they are always 11 minutes. They are short. They are like SpongeBob. SpongeBob is a show that's 11 minutes. Adventure Time is a show that's 11 minutes. They are over in 11 minutes. They have two 11s in a half hour, and they have their own short structure, and then usually shows like SpongeBob push a reset button. If something explodes in one episode of SpongeBob, in the next episode, it is rebuilt, it is beautiful, right where it used to be, with no indication that it ever exploded.
As a kid that would drive me utterly insane, because I think as a kid I was spoiled by shows for an older audience that wouldn't forget their own canon, and then I'd watch shows from my own age group and be like, "Why do they think I can't remember this?" I think things like Harry Potter have shown us that kids, if given a reason to pay attention, will memorize a thousand character names and their family lineages if you only let them.
