Review: Animals “Squirrels: Part II”

Spoilers Below

Squirrels

Despite last week’s ending, Phil actually runs into a cool old squirrel named Ben. Meanwhile, April and Mike are looking all over Phil but split up rather quickly over an argument. April actually finds Phil clearly hallucinating, all the while Mike is getting his shit kicked in by Dennis. April and Mike show up and it’s Mike that actually has to make the save for his bro and his…mother?

Dennis and his friends take off, and the trio head for the exit where we see squirrels with fire hats and everyone re-teamed with their family.

Ants

A queen ant meets up with a former classmate named Lauren and the two decide to hang out at a book club so that the queen can be normal. That said, all of the other ants start shitting all over the queen and of course now everybody fears for their life.  Turns out the queen isn’t that much of a bitch, and everyone agrees to try and have a fun book club.

Our Take

Again, I’m all for Phil and Mike trying new things in the writer’s room. As I mentioned in my review last week for the first part of the “Squirrels” saga, I really didn’t think a TV series that has sub plots really needs to do a “part 1” and “part 2”, but having Jon Lovitz be a pseudo narrator/story-teller was a nice touch. But, what I would’ve done is had the one long “Squirrels” episode, and then have Jon I guess “host” the entire affair, rather than have no Jon Lovitz the first-time around, and a bunch of Jon Lovitz the second time around. Also, Kurt Vile is boring. Personally, I think Kurt Vile should’ve been used in an episode called “Crickets” because that’s what I hear when he sings or tries to read lines.

In any case, the second part of “Squirrels” was a lot of fun and together with the “Flies” episode, “Squirrels” showcases a different side to the writers than we usually see and provides perfect counterweight to this fucking “mayor” story line. By the way, this is the first week I’ve mentioned the mayor story line and his murderous ways to stay on top of his game, but I am actually enjoying it more and more. I didn’t care for it at first because I didn’t get the point, but it’s been getting more fun the last few episodes.

“Ants” was cool, but we already have a movie called Antz, and the latter did it better. Though again, I probably would’ve taken the “Ants” deal, and plug it into last week’s episode in favor of plugging “Squirrels Part 1” into this week’s episode. The consistency would have been better and serial cliches can be avoided.