One Day At a Time! The Cartoon.
If you love one day at a time, tonight’s (Tuesday June 16th) season return with an all animated episode will be something to look forward too.
The half-hour installment titled “The Politics Episode” finds Penelope (voice of Justina Machado) getting a visit from her cousins Estrellita (voice of Melissa Fumero, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”), Tia Mirtha (voice of Gloria Estefan) and Tio Juanito (voice of Broadway’s Lin-Manuel Miranda). But with the election just around the corner, emotions run high and words are exchanged as Estrellita’s conservative views clash with those of the others.
The episode was already planned as live action when production on Season 4 was shut down in March. Believing this episode had something important to say, executive producers Gloria Calderon Kellett and Mike Royce went ahead with the idea of making it animated. So a Canadian animation company was hired, mic kits were dropped off at the actors’ homes and everyone did their parts remotely.
Of course, this being done outside the studio meant there would be no studio audience and hence no laughs to play off of, so adjustments were made to the script. So this in more ways than one will be no normal “One Day at a Time” episode.
Producers Norman Lear and Brent Miller told Larry Flick today on his show “In Depth” on Sirius XM that the team “truly wanted to keep working and find a way to keep the show going” and praised Canadian animation studios Big Jump & Smiley Guy Studios for working so hard to turn the show around in a record 8 weeks.
Watch “The Politics Episode” tonight on POP TV – 9:30pm.
