Review: Animals “Dog”

It’s a dog-eat-dog world.

Spoilers Below

Dog

We meet a dog named Dorothy, the dog owned by Sam, the lady who has been leading the charge against Pesci Corp. Dorothy tells us that her master is as good as dead and reminisces about her life. We also meet Dorothy’s pal, Murphy the Duck, aka the pup’s chew toy who seems perfectly fine with being chewed up. Dorothy goes to sleep and Dr. Labcoat makes a speech and lets out a poisonous gas into NYC that kills everyone including Sam.

Rats

Phil and Mike are graduating from high school, but Phil can’t graduate because his grades suck, but he goes along with the flow in going to the graduation ceremony. Mike graduates at the top of his class and gives a speech where he thanks Phil, but the Principal Little Dick announces that Phil has, in fact, failed his senior year and has to repeat. Phil is kicked out of the celebration much to the shock of everyone attending.

At the graduation party, Phil’s dealing with the after effects of what went down, but Auntie May shows up and gives Mike the business. Mike and Phil get into an argument which escalates into a fist fight and Phil leaves the party in anger and heads back to his room where he imagines 311 coming off of one of his posters. Turns out, not only is 311 a pretty good album, but they are experts in thermodynamics and they use this knowledge to help provide some valuable insight to Phil who decides to leave and make things right with Mike.

Mike and Phil make nice and note all of the dead humans and a city overrun with animals. We then get a montage featuring all of the animals from prior episodes complete with a Broadway send-off.

Our Take

This week’s episode was way more of a “Rats” episode than a “Dog” episode with both serving as a wrap to their respected storylines, but all in all, it was a pretty well-done finale for Animals. I think producers Mike and Phil may have produced this episode with the possibility in mind that another season wasn’t going to happen, but SURPRISE! IT DID!

The 311 guest spot was hilarious, fans of their catalog will certainly agree with Phil’s quick assessment of the band’s musical history. That, and I think the bit helps to reflect Mike and Phil’s real lives with nods to musical tastes, family, their journeys to that of television producers from advertising dudes, and everything in between which makes the ending send off and the “Thank You” credits that much more heartfelt.

I think I kinda had higher hopes for both the announced Whoopi Goldberg guest spot AND the role of Dorothy but was a bit let-down, but “Rats” was so good that I almost appreciated the breaks in between THAT story. We’ll go into further detail in the season review next week, but yes, the third season of Animals sounds good to me.