Season Review: Royal Crackers Season Two

For those that don’t know, Royal Crackers is an animated comedy about a dysfunctional family fighting over the legacy of their second-rate cracker company. Created by and starring Jason Ruiz, the half-hour comedy also stars Andrew Santino (“Dave,” “Bad Friends” podcast), Jessica St. Clair (“Veep,” “The Deep Dive” podcast), David Gborie (“Exploding Kittens,” “My Momma Told Me” podcast) and Maile Flanagan (“Naruto,” “Not Dead Yet”). The series is produced by Titmouse and debuts new episodes on Adult Swim before streaming next day on MAX.

In “Royal Crackers” Season Two, the storylines delve deeper into brothers Stebe (Ruiz) and Theo’s (Santino) daddy issues as they’re forced to confront their father’s dark past. Theo continues to grapple with the aftermath of his fall from stardom and attempts to navigate his way towards self-acceptance. Meanwhile, Deb (St. Clair) and Stebe’s highly sexually charged relationship undergoes significant challenges, putting their bond to the test. Matt (Flanagan) struggles to fit in at school and with his family. All the while the Royal Crackers company tries to not only maintain relevance, but also to become the most popular snack food in the whole frickin’ world.

While some of these concepts seem like rather every day animated comedy, the show spends a good amount of time flashing back and forth to a time that sees the rise in power from Theo Sr., his wife and kids, and even some of the other employees of Royal Crackers. Specifically in season two the show has noticeably started to distance itself from that of a workplace animated comedy and has delved deeper into the weird auspices of Adult Swim lore like the first six seasons of Rick and Morty, Mr. Pickles, and even non-Adult Swim series like South Park. 

Of course the series is hysterical with constant parodies of nineties pop culture like nu-metal, malls, various movies and TV shows, and the rigor of trying to keep a fledgling business afloat. However, Royal Crackers doesn’t rely on jokes and gags to get through scene-to-scene like a Family Guy does and instead the growth is coming by way of the sophisticated story-telling, multi-layered characters, and stellar animation production. The voice cast is getting increasingly more glitzy with guest contributions from Ana Gasteyer, Tim Dillon, Rachel Dratch, and a slew of others.

Royal Crackers isn’t going stale anytime soon. Make sure to add this one to your MAX watchlist and pray that Utzi Wutzis don’t show up.