Season Review: Animals Season One

It isn’t often that HBO picks up an animated series, but when they do, it’s usually pretty damn good. Spawn, The Life and Times of Ted, and one or two others have certainly stood the test of time when watched even today.

However, when I think of Animals, I can’t help but draw SOME parallels between this show and Rick and Morty in a few ways. No…nothing to do with the premise. But, before Rick and Morty Season One premiered, whenever someone was trying to cover this show, Dan Harmon was the guy everyone wanted to talk to. Yes, he’s an important part of the show, but everyone just wanted to suck up to him because Community was still on the air, and that was the trendy show at the time. Most people didn’t actually give a fuck about Rick and Morty or the show’s creator Justin Roiland. We obviously took the path less traveled, and instead, have enjoyed watching Justin rise from ‘the other guy with Dan Harmon’ to that of the creator of Adult Swim’s most important animated series.

Similarly, leading up to the premiere of Animals, it was all on Mark and Jay Duplass to be the ‘name value’ of the show. Again, outlets were mostly interested in covering the producers of Togetherness, most notably Mark with his runs on programming like The Mindy Project and The League. But, in the background are two guys that are still learning the business. Former ad producers Phil Matarese and Mike Luciano have, I think, successfully risen out of the shadows of their more popular executive producers, and have created a show that is HBO’s most important animated series.

In fairness, HBO only has Animals as its lone animated comedy, but it’s a good one. The series has already been picked up for a second season, but I’m hoping the amount of experimentation done in the show’s first season subsides, and we get a more consistent effort moving forward, and hopefully, a better variety of animals to play with. From unnecessary serials (Squirrels Pt. 1 and 2) to miscast role players dependent more on guest star name value than an actual serviceable need, Mike and Phil definitely had their fair share of bumps and bruises along the ten episode run.

One could point to the lack of variety in animals used as well, we had two run-ins with pigeons, a bunch more run-ins with rats, and the very polarizing “Flies” as instances of a rookie year. And I think we can all agree, Danny McBride had NO business being the turkey in the finale.

But, under all of that discomfort, is a show with a TON of heart, and good ideas that should serve the show for a long time. The main plots of “Flies”, “Rats”, “Cats”, and my personal favorite, “Dogs” certainly showcase Phil and Mike’s talents as very, very good story tellers. These guys have a show here that could very well propel them to different parts of Hollywood rather quickly and hopefully become the faces of their own franchise. The kick off of season two was set up nicely in the show’s season one finale, and I can’t wait to see what it looks like.
So far, the front-runner for best new animated series of 2016 and the field isn’t even close right now.