...which I watched in its entirety yesterday. I came across the show quite by accident. I was flipping through channels when HBO's Animals caught my eye. I figured it was going to be another attempt at stealing South Park's thunder as kings of adult cartoons. I was wrong. Like South Park, the minimalist animation keeps the focus on the dialogue which is a social commentary on sibling rivalry, sexual identity, steroids, bullying, how the roots of traditions need to be tested, and just some situations that show how people - shown as animals - in different phases of life deal with situations in general. The show has an improvisational spirit, and everything said has a reaction that is hilarious, but not in a staged or forced way.
Each episode of the first season is named after the primary animal that is the focus - "Squirrels", "Rats", "Cats", "Dogs", etc. All of them are living in New York City. In parallel with these animals dealing with what is for the most part, every day life, there is an ugly tale of human life going on in which there is corruption in high places, adultery, and murder. The humans never speak in recognizable words. They just speak gibberish like the adults in Charlie Brown do - "wah wah wah blah blah" - or something similar. It is the animals who speak and often eloquently so. Only in the last episode does the ugly tale of human behavior that has been building in all of the episodes intersect with the stories of the animals, and then in the most ironic way possible.
