Jaret Reddick remembers the first time he met Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh. He had flown to L.A. because Povenmire and Marsh were hoping Reddick, the lead singer of the pop-punk band Bowling for Soup, would sing the theme song for their new animated series, “Phineas and Ferb.”
The meeting went well and Reddick not only got to sing the show’s theme song, “Today’s Gonna Be a Great Day,” but he was also cast as the voice of Danny, the lead singer of the show’s fictional band Love Händel.
“I walked out of there going, ‘Man I love those guys. I really hope this show does well for them,’” Reddick recalls.
And done well it has. Since its premiere in 2007, “Phineas and Ferb” has become the most successful animated series for children and tweens in Disney Television Animation history. The series about two brothers — Phineas (Vincent Martella) and Ferb (David Errigo Jr.) — trying to make the most of their 104 days of summer vacation ran for four seasons and spawned multiple movies including 2020’s “Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Candace Against the Universe.”
Now, 10 years after the show’s fourth season ended, the series returns for a fifth season Thursday at 8 p.m. PT on the Disney Channel. The first 10 episodes of the new season will also debut Friday on Disney+. Most of the main voice cast has returned, including Martella, Ashley Tisdale — who voices the continually exasperated older sister, Candace — and Caroline Rhea, the boys’ ever serene mother, Linda.
For this new batch of episodes, Povenmire and Marsh embraced the show’s successful formula where the boys come up with new and always increasingly creative ways to entertain themselves. “I think there’s probably a bunch of episodes this season that are going to be people’s favorite episodes that they have ever seen,” says Povenmire, who also voices the show’s inept nemesis Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz.
Just like how Phineas always knows what he and Ferb are going to do today, Marsh knew what Disney was expecting with the show’s return. “They really just wanted more of the same,” Marsh says. “The show always worked before and it was always sort of timeless. It was not anything that relied on current events or the current zeitgeist. We really just had to keep doing what we are doing and keep pushing the envelope into new areas and do it without violating the framework that we had set up.”
One thing that has changed for the new season is the writers’ room, which now includes writers who grew up watching the show. And Olivia Olson — you may remember her as Joanna, the little girl singing “All I Want for Christmas is You” at the end of “Love Actually” — who voices Vanessa Doofenshmirtz on the series, has also come on board as a writer. Olson says this new role formalizes the unofficial one she had shadowing her dad, Martin Olson, who wrote for the series during its original run. Now they’re a writing team on the series.
“There’s a lot more Vanessa in this new season,” she says with a laugh. “It’s really cool to write for my own character and see the stories I wanted to have for her play out and I just learned so much. To come back and write with my dad is really cool.”
Since the beginning, the show’s music has set the series apart. “Phineas and Ferb do something completely out of the box and different every day,” Olson says. “The music just mirrors that.”
Marsh recalls an early episode featuring the song “Let’s Take a Rocket Ship to Space,” which was an homage to Frank Sinatra. Executives were worried the show’s target audience wouldn’t get it, but that wasn’t the case. As the show grew in popularity, so did the music, which crosses multiple genres. “Country songs, rock songs, pop songs, operatics, big band, rap stuff — it’s all over the map,” Marsh says. “The songs move the story along, hopefully they bring humor as well as telling us something about the characters.”
Reddick says during Bowling for Soup concerts, in addition to the band’s biggest hits like “Girl All the Bad Guys Want” or “1985,” fans demand to hear the show’s theme song. “It’s so infectious,” he says. “We managed to record a song that is just accepted by everybody. Everyone loves it.”
When the show was first starting out, Povenmire and Marsh would tell series composer and song producer Danny Jacob to not pick up the phone when they called so they could leave a message on his answering machine with their latest song. “We sounded like a bunch of college frat boys singing into a tape recorder,” Marsh says.
While the technology they use has improved, their approach to the show’s music has not changed. Jay Stutler, senior vice president of music at Disney Television Animation, has been with the show since the first episode. “That pilot was the most fun pilot I’ve ever worked on,” he says. Povenmire and Marsh brought a musical aesthetic that “took chances and leaned into some really obscure musical references from around the world.”
“What this show did better than any other show was establish that the song can be whatever it needs to be,” he adds.
One of the stories from this season’s sixth episode, “Lord of the Firesides,” finds the show’s Girl Scout-like troop, the Fireside Girls, going completely feral, like in the famous William Golding novel. It features the song “Watch It Burn.” “It’s a really thrashing screaming song for the sweetest little girls in the world,” Povenmire says. “It’s the hardest-rocking song that would ever be on the Disney Channel.”
Tisdale, who also starred in the “High School Musical” franchise, jokes that her new edict to her agent is “iconic stuff only please.” Tisdale, who lent her voice to some of the show’s most memorable songs including “Busted” and “Gitchee Gitchee Goo,” is delighted to be back voicing Candace. “She’s so fun. She’s just a crazy sister trying to bust her brothers. I truly just feel like she wants to be seen.”
In the fifth season, Candace is now 16, a year older than she was during the original run. In addition to her updated cellphone, the new season finds Candace getting her driver’s license and going to therapy, “which she totally needs to do,” Tisdale says.
In addition to the returning main voice cast, Povenmire and Marsh lined up many guest stars — they marvel at who they were able to get: Brendan Hunt, Alan Cumming, John Stamos, Leslie Jones, Anna Faris, Cristo Fernández, Megan Rapinoe, Meghan Trainor, Jonathan Banks, Rhys Darby, Ruth Negga and Michael Bublé. Bublé plays himself and serenades an audience during a beach concert. Povenmire recalls Bublé texting him, “You would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the meeting with my manager when I told him what I really wanted to do at this point in my career is sing a song called ‘Tropey McTropeface.’”
The musical guest stars have always been a highlight of the show. Povenmire fondly recalls the time they wrote “I Believe We Can,” which featured performances from Clay Aiken and Chaka Khan for the 2010 episode “Summer Belongs to You,” and then realized they had to actually get Aiken and Khan for the joke to work. They did.
Although they joke around, the series’ return packs an emotional punch for the duo, who famously pitched the series for 13 years before Disney picked it up. “I watched the first episode and came back into the writers’ room and I was crying,” Povenmire says. “It feels like ‘Phineas and Ferb’ are back. That’s what I want people to feel. This show is back with a vengeance.”
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