Like most fan-made projects, I expected the final product (if there even was one) to have lackluster performances and director’s-friend-who-knows-After-Effects visuals. Considering the amateur nature of similar productions, it is understandably surprising that Third Street, the final product which debuted this Fall was… good. Surprisingly good. It not only featured well-known Netflix talent to portray the long-lost animated gang, but delivered network-quality visuals and an unexpectedly horny storyline. Once-heavyset characters are now totally jacked, the popular girls have mastered the Instagram influencer pout, a “totally hot” playground king is assumed murdered, and the main character, TJ, bites into a snack that dilates his pupils and “makes [him] frisky”. Think Recess meets Riverdale, an odd combination that somehow works.

Despite the not-so-subtle adult themes, the episode (it was written as a pilot in a series, though no further episodes are currently in production) features just enough cartoon tropes to ground it in the familiar. Beautiful exterior shots almost perfectly mimic the fictional town from the original series, thanks to location scouting and cinematography from Jeremy Cox. The performances echo the characters fans know and love, but aged in believable ways, which is helped by the fact that so many of the cast members are experienced actors. Some look like they could have been the inspiration for the original characters themselves, just older.

I caught up with director Jerome Yoo, who explained how this all came to be. “My co-writer, Zlatina Pacheva, and I started our first draft back in May. Once the cast and crew was assembled, we had a tiny window to shoot over a single weekend in mid-July. It was a labor of love.” As Recess is intellectual property of infamously litigious Disney, the project is completely not-for-profit and is considered a fan-made production, despite the talent behind it. Yoo says its sole purpose is to satisfy the nostalgia for Recess fans.

With a production budget of only $3,500 (crowdfunded on Indiegogo), the veteran actors had to be convinced of the vision as well. There were no network salaries to be had. Yoo explained that casting was easier than expected in this regard, “Many [of the cast members] just happened to be perfect for their characters, but a few names like Benjamin Wadsworth (Deadly Class), Louriza Tronco (The Order), and Sean Depner (The Order, Deadly Class) were courted through the help of Adam DiMarco (The Order, The Magicians), who has been a close friend for a while. They were all big fans of the show themselves, which made it a shockingly easy conversation.”