Review: Animals ‘Cats’

Spoilers Below

Cats

Mike and Phil have a bunch of cat plans today, but an alley cat shows up and really has to shit because he’s been locked out of his own place. The guys let him in and find out that his name is Alex and at first he seems like a pretty decent guy. Unfortunately, we come to find out that Alex is a cat burglar, and he steals a bunch of shit from the other cats despite their generosity in giving him a tour of the place.

The three cats decide to get high on some catnip, but Alex gets the brunt of the hallucinations. When he comes to, Alex decides to come clean about all of the shit he stole from Mike and Phil. Well, this startling revelation just sets off the feline siblings and go ballistic brandishing knives.

Mike and Phil throw Alex into a sort of holding cell when the cunning alley cat is able to cause the two house cats to be distracted and take off. Back in the alley, Alex takes part in a book signing for his new release that seems to be causing some controversy with the other cats.

Goose vs Swans

A group of Canadian Geese are hanging out when one of them, named Shane, opts to leave the group and go somewhere new. He heads to Central Park and runs into a bunch of swans and runs into one of them named Olivia. Olivia introduces Shane to H&M and this guy isn’t exactly thrilled with this undercover goose but invites him to a DJ gig later on in the evening.

Shane and Olivia seem to really hit it off and end up hooking up in the bathroom later. We come to find out that when Shane orgasms he honks which means his cover is blown and yes he is a goose. H&M calls him out and kicks him out of the club. Shane hits the road and passes out on the side of the street only to be woken up by Olivia. Shane lets his lady know that he plans on skipping town, but he really just rejoins the other geese.

Our Take

So, it was announced that the first two episodes of Animals would be the ones that screened at Sundance Film Festival oh so long ago and that they helped to convince HBO to pick up this series for two seasons. NOW we get into the stuff that was produced AFTER the pickup, and you can tell right away there are some differences.

For starters, the increase in production budget (i.e. not just Phil animating by himself) is definitely noticeable probably more so in the human character designs than the animal ones, but definitely an upgrade. The colors definitely seem to have a bit more pop and character designs look more proper.

And the guys picked a great week to really flesh this out, because ‘Cats’ might be my favorite episode so far this season. We definitely got a more evil show this week, and I couldn’t help but notice that the ‘B’ story got more time than previous weeks. Unfortunately, we seem to be running into a lot of party episodes, like every week so far this season we’ve had some sort of party which was funny when the rats did it, ok when the caterpillars did it, but now the geese/swans can be counted in the tally with, by now, the usually expected hook up scene showing up SOMEWHERE.

Fortunately, the guest stars were solid as well, with roles that maybe took a little more effort from the actors than previous weeks. For example, Eric Andre (The Eric Andre Show) as ‘Alex’ was really funny and you could tell this was Eric because he has a lot of silly mannerisms when he does voice over like fart noises with his mouth. Justin Roiland (Rick and Morty) checks in and normally I would be annoyed when a noted voice actor doesn’t try something different with a character than what he normally does, but Justin almost never uses his regular nasally voice when doing voices, more often he does the higher-pitched type stuff we see with Morty, Fish Hooks, and Adventure Time and of course the unenviable Rick Smith. Doing this allowed Justin to present a different dynamic than we normally see, but again, because I was kind of bored with what seems to be the obligatory party scene, I kind of wanted a bit more.

Still though, ‘Cats’ was enough a laugh riot that that bit alone is worthy of you watching this entire episode.