"As long as we're in school, we're gonna get in trouble!"
— The theme song, Detention
Detention is a short-lived animated series that aired on Kids' WB! from 1999 to 2000. Lasting for just 13 episodes, it's one of the shortest-lived cartoons to ever come out of Warner Bros. Animation. Animation is provided by Wang Film Productions, with a similar animation style close to their work on Tiny Toon Adventures, Taz-Mania, Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain.
The show centers on a group of preteen students at Benedict Arnold Middle School who engage in all sorts of wacky hijinks during their everyday lives; but try as they may, they simply cannot avoid being put in detention by the end of the school day. There, they are kept under the strict supervision of Eugenia P. Kisskillya, a former Marine Corps sergeant who is also the school's gym teacher.
The show is now on iTunes since 2018, after several years of unavailability. A DVD Release by Warner Archive followed on May 21, 2019.
Not to be confused with the 2011 horror/comedy of the same name. Also not to be confused with the 2017 horror video game of the same name. Has no relationship with Detentionaire, either.
The kids the show focuses on include:
- Shareena Wickett, a freely-thinking Goth-dressed girl who prefers to avoid the in-crowd and finds pleasure in the sublime.
- Emmitt Roswell, a blonde boy with born leadership abilities which are questioned by the fact that he believes that aliens exist and tries fruitlessly to make contact with them. Could also be considered a Agent Mulder and or a Conspiracy Theorist.
- Jim Kim, a shy kid who is a big fan of comic books (particularly DC Comics, which Warner Bros. owns), to the point that he brings them up in regular conversation and tends to think he has their abilities.
- Ramone "Gug" Gugleamo, a short but feisty Hispanic kid who, constantly being left out of competitive sports because of his size, likes to pick fights with people bigger than him.
- Duncan Bubble, a boy who never speaks, instead preferring to spell out his messages with his yo-yo.
- Orangejella and Lemonjella LaBelle, identical African-American sisters with high intellect and a habit of trying to one-up each other.
- Shelley Kelley, a perky girl who constantly kisses up to Kisskillya and as a result is seen as
The Scrappy by the other kids.
This show contains examples of:
- A Dog Named "Dog": Shareena's pet pig, Pig.
- Biting-the-Hand Humor: Dawson's Creek, a fellow show on The WB, gets parodied along with the network itself in the episode "Breaking Out".
- Can't Get in Trouble for Nuthin': Shelley Kelley, despite the fact that she spends the entirety of "The Contest" trying.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Jim.
- Daddy Didn't Show: One of the focuses of "Boys 'N the Parenthood". Emmitt waits excitedly, all day, for his dad to show up and hang out with him. He never shows up. As a result, he's the only guy that doesn't drop his water balloon "baby" owing to being too disappointed to engage in antics.
- Dark Horse Victory: The twins get disqualified from the spelling bee in "The Man With the Golden Brain".
- Disappointed in You: In "The Contest": when Shareena deliberately throws the bet to stay out of detention by pranking Kisskillya, the teacher is both mad and disappointed. Kisskillya says that she knows that Shareena has the potential to avoid trouble. Shareena agrees; she just decided to have fun so that her friends wouldn't be alone.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Kisskillya. She even calls the students "soldiers" or "privates".
- Duck!: In "Too Good to be Truant", Shareena and Shelley, skipping school, go to the mall. Shareena yells "Duck!" when she sees her mother at a clothing store and Shelley takes it to mean the store sells ducks.
- Egg Sitting: The "babies" are water balloons that cry at random — permanently if the parent doesn't switch it off in time. Shelley's the only one keen on the project, while most of the guys goof off or play recklessly with their babies. The girls fight back by adding enough water to double their size before handing the babies back. Shareena in particular had to watch the baby all weekend so Emmitt could go camping with his dad, but Mr. Roswell never showed. As a result, Emmitt isn't up for getting into mayhem with the other guys, who all wind up dropping their balloons, forcing three of the four families to do the project over.
- For Want Of A Nail: In "Too Good to Be Truant", Miss Kisskillya would've never learned Shareena skipped school if Shareena hadn't dropped her wallet.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: Shareena dreads having to go on a solo tour of Washington D.C. with Miss Kisskillyanote . She's pleasantly surprised when Kisskillya turns out to be a fun and engaging guide.
- Miss Kisskillya: Well, you can't judge an officer by her stripes.
- Grand Finale: The final episode, "Rule the School", ends with Shareena throwing two simultaneous parties at her house: an anniversary party for her parents, and "the cool party" in her bedroom. Not too bad for a Short-Runner.
- Guilt by Association Gag: When giving Shareena detention for skipping school, Miss Kisskillya does the same to the other kids for not saying anything about it.
- I Was Quite a Looker: Kisskillya, believe it or not. When the kids find a cave used by previous detention classes, we see an Evolution Line of her going from svelte and attractive, to... Kisskillya.
- Housepet Pig: Shareena has one named Pig.
- Joins to Fit In: In "The Contest", Shelley plans to get landed in detention in a bid to get the rest of the class to accept her.
- Karma Houdini: In "Too Good to Be Truant", when Shareena and Shelley are caught playing truant, Kisskillya assumes that Shelley didn't do this voluntarily and lets her off the hook. Meanwhile, Shareena gets punished, and so do all the other kids besides Shelley because they were "holding back information". Contrary to what you would expect in a kids' show, Shelley never admits her guilt, because she doesn't want to ruin her perfect attendance record.
- Meaningful Name: Emmitt's surname is Roswell.
- Pet the Dog: When Kisskillya sees that Shareena was looking for her pig, who just had babies, she says the kids are off the hook, if they all agree to come back the next day and clean the storage room. Everyone is quick to take that deal.
- Poke the Poodle: In a decision to assert their free will, the gang sets a bet on who can stay out of detention the longest. Shelley gets in on the bet via the goal of doing something bad enough that she gets sent to detention. Unfortunately, her ideas of rule-breaking are skipping extra quickly in the halls and chewing gum. Kisskillya doesn't even notice.
- Sham Supernatural: In "The Blame Game", Emmitt gets ordered to to clean out the school's boiler room, which is rumored to be haunted by the ghost of Christopher Crandall, a kid who got assigned the same job long ago and disappeared. Gug decides to take advantage of Emmitt's paranoia by pretending to be that ghost and scare him as a prank.
- Shout-Out:
- Shelley quotes Sally Brown's outburst from It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown after waiting for an alien on the school roof with Emmitt during the school dance. (Ironically, Warner Bros. now owns the video rights to the Peanuts cartoons.)
- Actor Allusion: While her VA wasn't Sally, she was Lucy.
- Duncan Bubble is named after the Duncan yo-yo company.
- Orangejella and Lemonjella are named after an old urban legend
of the Knows a Guy Who Knows a Guy variety. - While making fun of Jim's obsession with Batman, Kisskillya sarcastically says she'll "See [him] in Gotham City." This was Kids WB's Tagline for Batman: The Animated Series.
- When Shelley decides to tag along with Shareena playing hooky in "Too Good to Be Truant", she says the experience will be like Thelma & Louise. Also, Kisskillya's attempts in catching Shareena and Shelley mirror that of Ed Rooney.
- In "What Did You Seance?" Jim has a Batman Beyond poster in his room.
- Spelling Bee: In "The Man With the Golden Brain", six of the kids aim to win a Get Out of Detention Free card. Shareena practices with morbid words, Shelley learns cheerful words, and the twins one-up each other with long words. During the bee, Shareena and Shelley fail to spell words from each other's practice books, Duncan's yo-yo string snaps trying to pronounce one letter too many, the twins get double-disqualified when one of them interrupts the other's spelling of "rivalry" and Gug wins by spelling a word that he heard the twins spell during practice.
- The Voiceless: Duncan doesn't speak, instead spelling out messages with his yo-yo.
- Work Off the Debt: Happens to Shareena and Shelley when they can't pay a coffee shop bill in "Too Good to Be Truant".
- Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: Shareena's pet pig was thought to be male until "he" gave birth to a litter of piglets.
