S.Ga. native ready for last Netflix season

Dec. 16—LAKELAND — The fourth and final season of a South Georgia native's animated Netflix series drops this week.

"Paradise PD" is scheduled to drop Friday, Dec. 16, on Netflix, said Waco O'Guin, the show's co-creator who grew up in Lakeland.

"The show is about small town cops who are idiots," O'Guin said in a past interview. "I don't know any cops this stupid. In 'Paradise PD,' we're talking about the dumbest people in the world to give guns to."

"Four seasons is pretty lucky on Netflix," he said in a phone interview this week with The Valdosta Daily Times.

O'Guin added he and creative partner Roger Black wrote the fourth season with hopes of a fifth. There is no farewell episode at the end of season four, though the series wraps up several character arcs and plot points.

"We didn't want to write a finale because that definitely means it's the end of the series," O'Guin said. "There are a lot of ideas we still have for the series ... a lot of things we'd still like to do with these characters."

He said some day that may be possible, especially since animated characters never have to age, but for now, Netflix has the rights to the characters.

Highlights of the fourth season include an episode about Elon Musk and some of the final work by the late Gilbert Gottfried.

O'Guin and Black wrote the episodes about two years ago during the pandemic.

The Musk episode, for example, does not include any of the recent developments such as his purchase of Twitter but remains timely, O'Guin said, because the man's character remains essentially the same.

O'Guin added if not for the pandemic, Gottfried likely wouldn't have agreed to perform the voiceover in a different episode.

O'Guin and Black created a character with the comedian known for his grating voice in mind. Technological improvements to Zoom sound quality during the pandemic allowed Gottfried to record his voiceover remotely from Florida. Had the improvements not occurred, O'Guin said Gottfried would have likely never agreed to fly to California to record his role. "Not for what we were paying," he added.

Gottfried died in April, a few months after recording the voiceover.

For O'Guin and Black, they are looking at what's next. It's been a busy ride for the team so far.

They became creative partners in 1999 while students at the University of Georgia. They developed a comedy routine which led to the MTV sketch comedy show "Stankervision."

They created the animated series "Brickleberry" then "Paradise PD." "Farzar," another animated series, debuted earlier this year on Netflix.

O'Guin lives in Burbank, Calif.

He graduated in 1993 from Lanier High School in Lakeland.

As a boy, O'Guin participated in a national Butterfinger candy bar contest which requested drawings of Homer Simpson for a Father's Day card.

O'Guin entered the contest. He won the top prize of a big-screen TV and saw his cartoons published in a national magazine.

It was the start of his cartooning career.

Earlier this week, he was waiting for "Paradise PD" to drop, with conflicted anticipation.

He wants people to watch the season but it's odd knowing by Friday morning some fans will have already binged all of the episodes.

"Yeah, some people will be watching it at 4 in the morning and they will finish two years of our work in four hours time," he said.