'Childrens Hospital' Series Finale Postmortem: Rob Corddry Explains it All
Warning: This story contains major spoilers for the series finale of Childrens Hospital.
Not every creator can choose exactly when or how his or her TV show is going to end. But Childrens Hospital mastermind, Rob Corddry, is one of the lucky ones. Tonight, the cult medical show spoof, which follows the eccentric staff of the titular kid-friendly hospital, aired its series finale on Adult Swim, its home for the past seven seasons.
Corddry only announced that this would be Childrens Hospital’s final year midway through the current season, catching the show’s devoted fanbase completely off guard. As the actor, comedian and Daily Show veteran told Yahoo TV, it came as a surprise to him as well. “We had no idea we were ending the show until we were done editing the last episode,” he says. “It occurred to me that the season finale exists as a series finale better than anything I could have written if I’d tried. Adult Swim probably would have let us run forever, but I just didn’t have the energy or passion to do anything else. And I always [told myself] that once the show stopped being fun in any regard, it would be time to pull the plug.”
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Intentionally or not, Corddry made sure that Childrens Hospital went out with a bang. For a series that’s always thrived on the unexpected — there’s deliberately little to no continuity between episodes, which means that relationships, characterizations and tone can always change to suit the writers’ whims and/or actor availability, since Hospital boasts one of the most star-studded casts around — few could have predicted that the series would end with an extended two-part riff on The Matrix. The first half of the finale is closer in spirit to a traditional Childrens Hospital episode, with Lola (Erinn Hayes) suspecting she’s being haunted by the specter of Chief (Megan Mullally), while Glenn (Ken Marino) and Owen (Rob Huebel) experience their own strange hallucinations.
At the end of the episode, though, it’s revealed that those “hallucinations” are actually part of a hole in the fabric of the characters’ reality that’s about to be ripped apart. As they awaken to the true nature of their surroundings, a simulation of the real world that’s monitored by stern digital wardens, the comedy steadily drains away from the proceedings. By the end, Childrens Hospital becomes an earnest sci-fi parable, with the characters even coming face-to-face with God. But then a black-and-white coda brings back the funny, cutting to a screening room where it’s revealed that we’ve been watching an aborted movie version of Childrens Hospital alongside the actors of the show-within-the-show. Corddry gave us the scoop on how this wild ending came about. But first, he had some questions of his own…
Well, that ending was certainly unexpected!
I’m glad you said it was unexpected. That’s what we like doing; we have the completely freedom to mess with genre and convention and tropes, because we’re a live action cartoon. Let me ask you: Once you realized what was going on, what was your reaction? Honestly.
Honestly? I was thrilled that someone made what seemed to be a heartfelt love letter to The Matrix Reloaded. I adore everything about that movie, even the Architect scene.
The Matrix Reloaded! Exactly! [Laughs] But I dunno — the Architect scene is nuts, man. C’mon! That makes no sense whatsoever. I was watching Reloaded in a hotel this one time, and I watched that scene really carefully. I was actually rewinding it and saying, “I’m going to follow it this time. It’s gotta make sense.” [Laughs] That’s funny — you got into the fact that this was an absurd comedy show where the characters are being told they’re meeting God. So how did you react to the final scene in the screening room?
I don’t want to call it an apology, but it did feel like you were throwing a last wink at the fans there.
No, an apology is exactly what it was. [Laughs] It was like, “No, we haven’t completely lost our minds!” Knowing we were going to do that last scene gave me permission to really indulge myself and write what I wanted to write. I felt like fans were going to spend most of the episode going, “F–k you!” and then at the end they’d go, “Oh, all right.” And when Ken [Marino] looks at the camera at the very end, it kind of blows up that world a little bit when you think about it. If he’s aware that there’s [a camera] there, it’s like another world exists inside that other world and so forth. That moment seemed like the way I wanted to end the series. And I like how someone says in the background, “We made something beautiful,” over that final shot.
I was surprised that you didn’t appear in the finale as your signature character, clownface clone doctor, Blake Downs.
The original conceit for the finale was that we were going to do the Childrens Hospital movie, which we already showed a clip of in Season 6. But when I went to write the script, that wasn’t satisfying. So we decided that maybe they made another movie, so we wouldn’t have to tie it into the bit we did a year ago. But Blake died in that other movie, and once we did away with that conceit, I cut myself from this episode. I thought that if I put Blake in, I’d have to deal with the whole clone issue from Season 5. Not because I have to, because it’s arbitrary what counts as important mythology. But Blake having many clones one of the things I felt I’d have to deal with, and I didn’t think it would fit into this story. Also, while Blake prominently featured on the billboards and posters, if you really look at the episodes, he’s a peripheral character at best. I’m like seventh on the call sheet!
You probably had your hands full with the technical demands of this episode.
That was another good thing about not being in it. Danny Jelinek directed both parts, and he was very patient with me, because I’m such a control freak about this show. That’s what one of the reasons I had to end it! But everyone was really jazzed about it; our special effects guy came up with the effect where the bad guys turned into little cubes when you shot them. They were all excited that we were doing something so weird, as was the cast. When we were shooting the second part, I had to explain to them, “You can’t be funny.” Only Huebel makes jokes, because he’s the comic relief character in a sci-fi movie — he’s Joe Pantoliano [from The Matrix]. They didn’t know what to think, but they committed to it. Like, “We’re not going to make jokes on a comedy show? Cool, man.” [Laughs]
Erinn Hayes kills it as a more dramatic Lola.
She’s so good! Erinn’s like a big Swiss Army Knife that I can’t keep in my pocket, because she can do too much. The dramatic stars of the episode are Erinn and Brian Huskey, who plays Chet. The way Brian’s face changes when Chet becomes Dr. Vale is a huge acting moment for him. After making this finale, I’m finally excited about diving into Childrens Hospital again! Adult Swim has told us there’s an open door to do specials, so we’ll come back when we’re inspired by ideas rather than when it’s time to shoot the season.
If and when Childrens Hospital returns, will you pick up from this point? Or just pretend the events of the finale never happened?
Who knows? When it’s a special, it’s special. [Laughs] Remember, if we continued from where we left off, the studio executive in that black-and-white scene does tell the cast to go back and do the TV show. So within that world, the TV show, Childrens Hospital, is still being produced! It’s just business as usual. This finale is a movie that got thrown away. So it doesn’t exist unless we want it to.
Do you have ideas for future installments?
I’m always writing down ideas for another season. And I can’t wait to hear the reaction to this finale. I’m going to read every Internet board comment. I’m talking to you, readers! I’m reading your comments. So make ‘em count. [Laughs]
