Review: Housebroken “Who’s a Good Therapist?”

Overview:

Honey and Chief are heading out on vacation as they are boarded at a fancy dog hotel. While away, Elsa plans on taking over as head of the therapy group. Unfortunately, her teachings cause more chaos than good as Tabitha runs away from home, and the group unexpectedly grows exponentially.

Meanwhile, enjoying some well-deserved time off is not any easier for Honey. She hopes to use the time to rekindle her relationship with Chief. However, comparing their companionship with other dog couples only causes things to get worse.  

Our Take:

As Housebroken drops its fourth episode, the leash has come off. The young series about household pets and their mental conditions has been receiving decent reviews across the board. Viewership is doing surprisingly well for the new Monday Animation Domination timeslot. In fact, the new series has been outperforming other Fox newbies, Bless the Harts and Duncanville. Though, to be fair, they are not exceedingly high numbers.

Regardless, Housebroken has had a promising introduction. The series offers a balanced humour of timeless animal jokes with relevant topics like social anxiety. Additionally, the ongoing plots are a fresh direction for Fox animated sitcoms while being in tune with the growing fad developing thanks to video-on-demand. While Housebroken may not be a dominant hit, it offers viewers something unique and refreshing.

This fourth episode is arguably the slowest of the few pieces that we have seen thus far. There is much more focus on Honey’s relationship problems. Unfortunately, this takes away from the silly antics occurring for the remainder of the ensemble cast. As lovable as Honey and Chief’s fragile relationship may be, there remains a need for a good dose of comic relief.

Thankfully, Housebroken has already managed to set a pace. While this episode may focus more on relationships than humour, there is still enough going on throughout the series to keep us interested.  

Additionally, this episode does help to settle things in for the remainder of the season. Thankfully, many of the expected animal puns and jokes were used up to help bolster the laugh count in the early episodes. With the derivative humour past us, it leaves the plots to stand on their own four legs. And the witty writing and strong cast of characters are enough to hold the series without the extra dose of puns.

The strength of this rookie series undoubtedly falls in the paws of the supporting characters. Even if comedic powerhouses like Will Forte and Jason Mantzoukas are limited to a minute or two of screen time, their effectiveness adds much flavour to the show. And the most pleasant surprise was the return of the racoon, played by Timothy Simons, who stole the show in the last episode. Hopefully, the wild beast maintains a part of the series in some capacity.

While this episode may not uphold the level of quality that we have seen in the first few pieces, it does maintain the momentum.  Housebroken has already exceeded expectations that we may have had about a series full of talking cats and dogs. But there is good reason to believe that the best is yet to come. Hopefully, slower episodes such as these will help develop a more significant pay-off further down the road.