Review: Animals “Rats”

Spoilers Below

Rats

Mike and Phil discover pants and they are a HUGE hit with all of the other rats. To help impress a girl, Mike agrees to make Phil 16 more pairs of pants by the next day. As time goes on, pants go out of style, and Phil comes up with the idea of a pants-suit. This new ‘outfit’ is a hit and now Phil’s making waves with the press all the while Mike’s back at home making shit for everyone without really no recognition.

The success of the clothing empire officially gets to the head of Phil whom now has an Australian accent and comes clean to a girl named Sharon in that his inspiration for producing this line was her. But what exactly is BEHIND the scenes with Phil’s new clothing success? Welp, we soon find out that Phil’s running a sweat shop run by child labor and Sharon uncovers the illegal operation. Mike quits as a result, and Sharon wants nothing to do with Phil whom is now swearing to produce his clothing line by himself.

Turns out, Phil can make nice clothes, but when he shows them off at his new fashion show he’s booed off the stage. Phil breaks down and cries, but when Mike shows up wearing nothing he starts a new revolution in fashion that seems to serve rats just fine. As time goes on, Phil apologizes to Sharon but gets a boner in the process causing security to show up and throw him off campus. Later, Phil tells his story on Marc Maron’s podcast.

Moths

Moths are getting high and hallucinate just like we do.

Fish

Two couples are out to dinner and one of the couples is having a pretty big argument in front of the other fish Scott and Jen whom are just coming off of a failed pregnancy. Soon both couples are getting into a crazy argument but I guess they kinda just have a truce and finish their meals.

Our Take

At first when I saw that only five episodes in to season one of Animals we were getting a SECOND ‘Rats’ episode, I was a bit worried. Here I’m thinking, “Have writers Mike and Phil run out of ideas already?” I think it’s a plausible concern given that all of our animals are in NYC and these guys live in Los Angeles now and can certainly see how some people forget that there are other animals besides rats. Fortunately, after watching this week’s episode, I’m a bit more at ease.

The Moths and the Fish were fun, but Rats Part Two was just the meat and potatoes and they tasted so good. If a lot of the principles put in place for the bit were done for people instead of rats, people would think nothing of it as we get a perfectly logical reflection of how fame gets to people, but with rats I suppose it’s an easier pill to swallow.

The guest stars this week were great, the brilliant Marc Maron as a rat is a hysterical idea, though I was a bit let down by the fact that Tom Lennon wasn’t used nearly as much as he should have been. And the Moths bit was just way too short for me to invest into it, much preferring the episodes that have at most TWO plots about animals not three.