The Loud House

Premise

Lincoln Loud is the middle child and only boy in a family of eleven children residing in the fictional town of Royal Woods, Michigan. He has ten sisters, each with a distinctive personality: bossy eldest child Lori, ditzy fashionista Leni, musician Luna, comedian Luan, athletic Lynn Jr., gloomy poetic goth Lucy, polar opposite twins Lana and Lola, child genius Lisa, and baby Lily. Lincoln often breaks the fourth wall to explain to the viewers the chaotic conditions and sibling relationships of the household, and continually devises plans to make his life in the Loud House better.

During the first four seasons, Lori, Leni, Luna, and Luan were in high school, Lynn was in middle school, and Lincoln, Lucy, Lana, Lola, and Lisa were in elementary school. In the fifth season, the Loud siblings aged up a year, with Lori entering college, Lincoln going to middle school, and Lily starting preschool.

Production

Development

Series creator Chris Savino grew up as the ninth of ten children, having five sisters and four brothers. Throughout his childhood, he had been fascinated by comic strips and cartoons, and since he was the quiet one among his siblings, he would frequently sneak away to read or draw comics in a style that mimicked the ones he read in newspapers. By his senior year at Dondero High School, Savino learned about careers in the animation industry and immersed himself in every animation book that he could find at his local libraries. In 1990, Savino received word that Big House Blues, a cartoon that he had viewed at an animation festival earlier that year, had been picked up for a full series in the form of The Ren & Stimpy Show. In response to the news, he mailed a letter and some drawings to its creator, John Kricfalusi, which secured him an opportunity to join that series' staff.

In 2013, Savino was introduced to the Nickelodeon Animated Shorts Program by executive Jenna Boyd. He was presented the opportunity to pitch three ideas as a 2+1⁄2-minute short for the program, out of which one would be picked. The executives selected his idea that involved a big family, which was about a male rabbit with twenty-five sisters dealing with the chaos of living among an extensively large immediate family. Savino had decided to make the characters rabbits because he had come fresh off the production of Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil, which had an all-human cast, and knew that standards and practices are typically more restrictive with human characters, which gave him the desire to explore more extreme physical humor that is generally accepted with animal-based cartoons; he also considered making the characters mice when one staff member took issue with the rabbits. After presenting his pitch, Boyd advised Savino to consider making the characters human, deeming that to make it more likely to get his pitch sold. Boyd's advice inspired Savino to base the series on his own experiences growing up in a large family, so he retooled his concept art of the short's protagonist (at the time named Warren, a reference to rabbit warrens) so it depicted a human and pared down his 25 sisters to ten, which he deemed to be much more manageable and biologically believable from a human standpoint and used it as a reflection of his experiences growing up in a family of ten. The idea of the Loud family being rabbits became reused as Lincoln's dream in the Season 3 episode "White Hare".

While the series was primarily inspired by Savino's experiences growing up in a large family, it was never intended to be autobiographical on his part; to reflect this, Savino characterized Lincoln as the polar opposite of him, stating that "Lincoln’s the type of kid who always has a plan" and that "if there’s something that he wants, and he knows that he has 10 siblings who are basically obstacles, then he’s going to do what it takes to get what he wants." Many of the writers, particularly those who had siblings themselves, would give inputs on things that happened to them as kids, which then blossomed into the premises for episodes of the show. During development, the writing staff took heavy inspiration from The Brady Bunch due to its similar focus on the chaos held by a large family and the heart shared by all of its members, as well as animated series such as Hey Arnold!, The Simpsons and Daria due to their use of young characters "who were allowed to be more flawed and real than their live-action counterparts" within the main cast.

Savino's firing

On October 17, 2017, Cartoon Brew reported that Chris Savino was suspended from the studio due to allegations of sexual harassment, the report noting that rumors of Savino's behavior have existed for "at least a decade". On October 19, a Nickelodeon spokesperson confirmed that Savino had been fired from the studio, and that the series will continue production without him. Six days later on October 23, Savino spoke for the first time since his firing saying he said he was "deeply sorry" for his actions. Alongside the announcement of the series being greenlit for a fourth season, it was revealed that story editor Michael Rubiner had now been named executive producer and showrunner. On May 30, 2018, Savino was suspended from The Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839, for one year.

Broadcast

The series debuted on Nickelodeon on May 2, 2016, with new episodes premiering every weekday that month. The first trailer for the series premiered on March 13, 2016. The series also aired on AFN Family.

Internationally, the series premiered in Israel and Italy on May 15. It premiered in Latin America, Brazil, Poland, Germany, France and Africa the following day. It began airing in Southeast Asia on May 20. Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Ireland's Nickelodeon channels premiered the series on May 30. In Canada, YTV aired a sneak peek of the series on September 5, 2016, which was followed by an official premiere on September 6, 2016.

The series premiered on May 15, 2016, in the Middle East and North Africa on Nickelodeon, dubbed in Gulf Arabic.

In India, the series premiered on Nick HD+ on May 18, 2020.

Reception

Critical

The Loud House has received positive reviews, specifically for its animation, voice acting, characterization, and the heartwarming themes of each episode. Emily Ashby of Common Sense Media praised the show's voice cast and thematic messages, writing that "kids will come to The Loud House for the laughs, but they'll return for the ensemble cast and the surprisingly heartwarming themes that dominate every story." Kevin Johnson of The A.V. Club gave the series a B+, noting that "the female characters are defined by their traits, but never judged for them."

In the show's later years, it received heavy criticism for its long-running status and growing amount of spin-offs and extended media, with critics and audiences alleging the series was experiencing a decline in quality. Ryan Lewis of CBR.com wrote that "Nickelodeon tried too hard to match SpongeBob's influence and immediately took to creating spin-offs, a Netflix movie, and countless merchandise. These efforts may have been justified had The Loud House not been written with one-note stock characters making up its main cast."

The Loud House has developed a fanbase among adults since its debut. In a 2017 study by the University of Turku centered on the formation of adult fandoms around animated series aimed at children and adolescents, the author, Joonas Välimäki, examined the series' adult fanbase through its dedicated subreddit on Reddit, r/theloudhouse. Välimäki found that discussions within the subreddit tend to involve the series' episodes and fan content and conducted a survey with six participants, who were all men around the age of 21. The survey revealed that the participants found out about the series through commercials on Nickelodeon and animated-related discourse on the internet. The Loud House: Revamped, a fan fiction published by Jamesdean5842 and mainly centered around the series was written from 2017 to 2024. It was 16 million words long by 2022 and over 30 million upon completion, claimed by The Spectator Australia to be "the longest fiction work in the history of the world".

As with other animated series made in the late 2010s and 2020s, The Loud House has been noted for its strong implementation of LGBT themes, including same-sex relationships and people of color. The characters of Howard and Harold McBride have received praise for being a positive representation of an interracial gay married couple. They are the first married gay couple to be featured in a Nicktoon. Laura Bradley of Vanity Fair stated that The Loud House "handles the topic [of same-sex marriage] in exactly the right way...this kind of casual representation in children's programming is a milestone." De Elizabeth of Teen Vogue wrote, "The best part is that the show doesn't treat these characters any differently, or even introduce them with a heavy asterisk about their marital status." Time reported that "people are thrilled about Nickelodeon's decision" to include a gay couple. Some conservative groups, by contrast, have criticized the introduction of the characters. The One Million Moms division of the American Family Association objected to scenes featuring the McBride parents and unsuccessfully pushed for the episode in which they first appeared to be edited to exclude the couple, saying that "Nickelodeon should stick to entertaining instead of pushing an agenda." The Kenya Film Classification Board also called for the suspension of the series on pay television service DStv, saying that the animated series "promotes the Lesbian, Gay and Transgender agenda."

Ratings

The Loud House became the number-one children's animated series on television within its first month on the air. Throughout May 2016, it received an average of 68% more viewers in its target audience of children aged 6–11 than broadcasts on Nickelodeon in May of the previous year. As of June 2016, it was Nickelodeon's highest-rated program, beating SpongeBob SquarePants with an average Nielsen rating of 4.9 among the 2–11 demographic at the time.

Los Angeles Times cited The Loud House as a major factor in maintaining Nickelodeon's position as the highest-rated children's network in summer 2016. During the show's fourth week of premieres, Cyma Zarghami announced that it was continuing to draw more viewers than any other program on the channel.

The show's highest-rated episode, with 2.28 million viewers upon its premiere, is "Two Boys and a Baby". This was the first episode to air after it was announced that Howard and Harold McBride would be debuting on the program. The first episode of The Loud House shown at prime time, "11 Louds a Leapin'", was the seventh most-viewed telecast across all U.S. households on November 25, 2016.

Awards and nominations

The Loud House's portrayal of interracial gay married couple Howard and Harold McBride led the series to be nominated for Outstanding Individual Episode at the 28th GLAAD Media Awards and for Outstanding Kids & Family Programming at the 29th, 31st, 32nd and 35th GLAAD Media Awards. The series has also been nominated for Favorite Cartoon at the Kids' Choice Awards every year since 2017.