The Guinea Pig Funeral

The Guinea Pig Funeral is the third episode of the first season of the American-Canadian series High Schooled.

Summary
Derek and Ryan's plans for Derek's birthday are cancelled when Amanda's guinea pig mysteriously dies.

Cast

 * Derek de Jong as Derek Lipton
 * Nicholas Merchant as Ryan Brahmer
 * Ariadne Merchant as Amanda Lipton
 * Charlotte Henderson as Nikki Tyler

Story
The basic premise of the episode was thought of by Nicholas Merchant. The episode's first outline was written before the outline of the previous episode, The Cult. The original storyline was to only feature Derek and Amanda, who were trapped because of a snow storm. The intention was for the episode to build the relationship between Derek and Amanda and to be able to quickly produce it by only requiring two actors who could complete the entire episode in two or three shoots.

During the summer of 2016, the episode was assigned to be written by Meldi SN. Although there were plans for her to write an additional treatment, this never occurred. Instead, another writer, Stephen Cote, wrote a treatment. Although it was not used, his treatment was the first to also incorporate Ryan in a major part (Merchant's outline at the time had Ryan only appearing over the phone). The final story was created by Nicholas Merchant, who decided to add both Ryan and Nikki.

The episode is also the first episode since the departure of Paul Ingersoll. It is the first episode not to feature Sean, although he is mentioned. However, the episode was not affected by Ingersoll's departure, as it was never intended for it to feature Sean anyway.

Script and Production
The cold open for the episode was shot in August 2016. At that time, the plan was to finish the episode for a December release date. Computer generated breath was added in post to make it seem like the scene was shot in the cold. Later, the season order for season 1 was reduced from 6 episodes to 5, so the episode was delayed to February. Production filmed another scene in October, without the script being complete.

Not wanting to repeat the experience of filming episode 2, which never used a full script, and instead scenes were written the morning they were intended to be shot, leading to the show falling behind schedule and for the episode to be much longer than intended, writer and director Nicholas Merchant decided to postpone filming the rest of the episode until the script was fully completed and revised. This allowed him to cut over 6 pages from the first draft (23 pages) to the final draft (17 pages), which was completed on December 12.

With a completed script, production restarted and was completed the week before Christmas (December 20, 21, 22). The original production team, which was formed in January 2016 and was responsible for filming "The Troll", the pilot episode, oversaw development of "The Cult", and shot previous scenes from episode 3, was dismissed and replaced by a new production team. The episode's production and directing is slightly different from previous episodes, which Merchant, who is also the show's director, did to make attempt to distant the show from the visual style he had created with the first production team. The shoot was much more efficient than previous shoots, partially thanks to the new shooting style, and each day ended early. The schedule had to be moved earlier in the day due to winter's shorter days (including shooting on the winter solstice) Normally filming would be from 12 to 5 each day, but during this episode, it was from 10 to 3, although efficient production meant the cast was done by 2 all days.

Before the final day of shooting, Merchant was worried that Derek came off as too mean with the current script and performance. To fix this, Merchant rewrote 3 lines and reshot these small parts of the scenes to make Derek seem more sympathetic. Although the reshoots required a good deal of setup in order to match scenes previously shot, they did not require filming to be extended another day.

Editing
The episode completed post-production in early February, with Ariadne Merchant returning to the studio to provide additional voice over work.

Release
The episode was released in late February 2017. It was the first episode to be released in the same week on both Comedy Cubed and Drakoloid (there was only a two day delay for the Drakoloid release). The episode has been called by critics and Drake Vegas himself "the best episode" of High Schooled, although Derek de Jong, who stars as Derek, has called it his least favorite episode.