Moral Orel is an American stop-motion animated television series for adults created by Dino Stamatopoulos which originally aired on Cartoon Network's nighttime programming block Adult Swim from December 13, 2005, to December 18, 2008. The series follows the titular Orel Puppington, a young happy-go-lucky and naïve Protestant who showcases his commitment to God, while dealing with the cynicism of his abusive and alcoholic father, his lethargic mother, and the devoutly Protestant town of Moralton in which he resides.
Three episodes in this season had to be cleared by Cartoon Network's Standards and Practices office before they could be aired: "God's Chef" (strong sexual themes), "Loyalty" (depictions of homosexuals and violence against them), and "Maturity" (alcohol consumption by a minor). As a result, they were delayed by several months and premiered out of production order.
According to Dino Stamatopoulos in the commentary for the series finale, there were seven episode ideas that Adult Swim chose not to produce due to their decision to cancel the series/roll back the number of season-three episodes from 20 to 13. It was suggested that Adult Swim might be willing to make a "Moral Orel special" in the future, but Stamatopolous stated that he declined the offer to move on to other projects, resulting in the creation of "Honor" as a series finale for the character.
Had the show not been cancelled and cut down to 13 episodes, its second half would have played out quite differently: Orel's paternal grandfather would have joined the cast, appearing in an episode that happens after the events of "Sacrifice" while Clay goes to retrieve the body of the bear Orel shot. Most of the season's latter half would focus on Orel's relationship with his dying grandfather, who would help further Orel's emotional growth into adulthood and help him reconcile his faith with life's realities. Other aborted plotlines would involve Clay's affair with Miss Censordoll and Bloberta's affair with Officer Papermouth, culminating in Orel's grandfather's death and Orel's transformation into a goth-type figure in the wake of the loss of the only good parental figure in his life.
Some of the aborted episodes involve:
There is also another lost episode, "Abstinence", animated entirely by David Tuber and Morgana Ignis, two of MORAL OREL's production staff, that was finished after they learned the show had been canceled. The episode is rendered in a cruder-than-normal style using clay figures, since the animators lacked access to the puppets normally used to create each episode. The episode centers around Doughy instead of Orel, and was originally screened only once at a special live event, "Sunday with Moral Orel" in San Francisco on January 18, 2009. On May 26, 2015, series animator David Tuber uploaded the episode on his YouTube channel.[1] [2]