Season Review: Liverspots and Astronots Season One

Did we need another space-set animated comedy?

It’s so fascinating watching how Cartuna produced two animated franchises with Facebook Watch released within months of each other and the different avenues the series had went in terms of finished product. For my money, Human Kind Of is overall, the better series from a plot and character point of view but one could argue that Liverspots and Astronots has the better voice cast in terms of name value. What we see in their respective deliveries, is that plot is everything and it doesn’t matter how good your cast is, for 21 episodes you better have me engaged to want to keep going or you’re going to lose me.

Liverspots and Astronots is an animated comedy about a nursing home in space, filled with funky old folks who discover they are integral to the survival of the universe.  Colin Mochrie, Keith David, Nicole Sullivan, Maria Bamford, John Waters, Pauly Shore, Selma Blair, Dick Cavett, and Hearty White round out the cast, which, on paper is a very impressive list of names to have for a freshman series. Colin voices the role “Roosi” and while the series was initially advertised as a buddy comedy, it really isn’t, despite the fact that Roosi pals around with whom would eventually be a more important part of the series in “Big Man” (Sullivan in a voice breakout performance). The best way to describe this series is if the producers of Superjail got together and wrote and produced Cartoon Network’s Regular Show in that the show is really an ensemble cast that features players that are just as important, if not more so, than the tagged “buddies”. Dr. Pesh (David) is in charge of the place, but like “Benson” from Regular Show, he has no problem working with the rest of the crew when push comes to shove. Most of the other cast are really one-off guest stars who sometimes return as other characters, but Pauly Shore gives another stellar voice performance fresh from his years on Animals as “Fuff” who becomes an increasingly integral character later in the show.

In fact, from a plot perspective, that’s when the show gets really good. A lot of the episodes kind of gander through a lot of the cliched plot points we’ve seen elsewhere in series like this, talent shows, competitions, nothing out of the ordinary here. But, near the last quarter of the show, it’s like Liverspots and Astronots turns something on and the jets blast off into an animated serial that’s pretty fantastic. The art direction of the series is grim, not unlike Pig Goat Banana Cricket or Superjail only producers Rob Bohn and Nate Milton have a bunch of fun at the get-go in fucking around in this department, as the show finishes up it’s first season run, they definitely hunker down and understand better the assets they have and use them to their benefit. It takes a bit, but the payoff is worth it.

Overall, while Liverspots and Astronots doesn’t quite have the “every episode is important” aspect that Human Kind Of delivers, when the franchise finally DOES arrive to where it wants to be, it’s downright smooth. Fewer episodes with longer run times would do this show really well because it would force the producers to be extra creative and less reliant on gag humor which is what they were more or less going for in the first ten or so episodes, and instead cook up some of the sweetness we see near the end.