Review: Dr. Katz’s Audio Files Season 1

Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist might be one of the best examples of a cult adult animated series. No new episodes have aired since 2002, and I’ll admit that my first experience with it came from a Family Guy cutaway gag. However, clearly, Amazon believes that a small but passionate fanbase for the show is still out there since their audiobook service Audible has been quietly releasing a new 15-episode season since June.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS BELOW)

Similar to Radiorama, these latest installments remove the visuals, which in this case seems like a good idea given Dr. Katz’s characteristic Squigglevision style always seemed destined to be polarising (see the previously mentioned Family Guy cutaway). Rather than switching to a teleplay format like the Futurama team did for their podcast though, this season’s simple, conversational approach to the interactions between characters will be instantly recognizable to fans.

With that in mind, I think that the audio-only format is a surprisingly good fit overall. While I’ve always thought that the show’s use of color exclusively for characters and shades of black and grey for backgrounds was clever, I was never a Squigglevision fan. The audio format shifts focus to the dialogue, which mostly consists of the title character (voiced by Jonathan Katz) exchanging banter with each episode’s guest comedian/patient, with occasional asides featuring his slacker son Ben (H. Jon Benjamin), secretary Laura (Laura Silverman) and the latter’s sister (Erica Rhodes). There are very minimal sketches of plots and continuity, largely through references to how characters have aged, or been doing the same jobs for 20 years, but given how improvised most of the recurring characters’ dialogue seems, these rightfully aren’t a priority.

The only other major difference between this season and previous ones is that the episodes are half the usual length. Which is also a smart choice, given that the biggest problem I have with the original series is once again present here: the quality of episodes is frustratingly inconsistent.

My least favourite Dr. Katz episodes are the ones that seem to consist purely of a comedian regurgitating pieces from their set as Katz nods opposite them. Out of curiosity, I researched how many patients from the new season had played themselves during the show’s original run, which revealed a slight preference for new guests (8 of 15). It seems inevitable that how much you enjoy each episode may depend on your feelings towards its respective guest, but I found that my 5 favourites, Ted Danson, Maria Bamford, T.J. Miller, Sasheer Zamata and “Weird Al” Yankovic, were all first timers who managed to capture the feel of a genuine conversation between two funny acquaintances. By contrast, Ray Romano rambles about his wife and family for 13 minutes, which is hardly new if you’ve seen his numerous appearances on the animated series.

To further demonstrate this difference, consider that the numerous references to current U.S. politics place the Audio Files squarely in 2017. T.J. Miller discusses his relatively recent departure from Silicon Valley, but somehow a conversation with Ray Romano makes no reference to what he’s been up to since Everybody Loves Raymond finished. Talk about Ice Age if you have to, Ray, just give me something more current. Ted Danson has the best episode of the season by far, and although he doesn’t discuss the specifics of his everyday life, his comments feel totally improvised and manage to subtly reference the therapy setting in a way that most other guests ignore.

Meanwhile, although I said above that the audio format is a good fit, they probably should’ve ditched the original series’ scene transition music when changing formats. Not only does it sound generic enough to be comprised of GarageBand presets, but its placement often seems arbitrary, even being used without the dialogue switching to different characters. Yet when this does occur, the lack of consistent music placement means that it ends up failing to help the listener recognize the change at all, which should literally be its only function. On the topic of scene changes, as much as I love Benjamin and Silverman (huge Bob’s Burgers fan here), the new format also makes most of their scenes feel jarring, and detract from the central therapy sessions. They’re great performers but could’ve been used better.

As a final stray observation, I found it strange that Dr. Katz himself seemed poorly mixed and mastered at times, especially given Jonathan Katz won an Emmy for his voiceover work on the original series.

OUR TAKE

Hopefully, I haven’t sounded too negative so far. I honestly believe that the audio format has plenty of potential if Katz and Amazon feel like making more episodes. With moderate improvements to scene structure and content the series could be much more effective at resembling improvised conversations, which seems like their desired tone, and overall helped make this season a relaxing change of pace. I also should add that Audible is a really intuitive listening platform, which would encourage me to come back and try another season if the suggested changes were made.

At the time of writing though, listening to the whole season is a little pricey. Unless you’re a diehard Dr. Katz fan, I’d suggest trying the 5 episodes I listed as my favorites above first, then sampling the rest on Audible to slowly work out your preferred listening order.

The full season of Dr. Katz’s Audio Files is available now on Audible. Episodes start from $3.07 each (no word yet on how that converts to dollarydoos)