Animal Kingdom

I think this is one of the best show I ever watched.

After the final, I feel very nostalgic, and the pilot is even more powerfull if you see it again right now. Even the flashbacks, which may have been boring sometimes, make sense with the ending.

Very great writing, characters... the action scenes are sometimes not very realistic and a little easy but the story is so good and the actor playing so great that this is not relevant.

I really feels like watching another Point Break from 1991 but in a looong, very detailled version. And even darker but with the same adrenaline.

We really care about the Cody's family !

I am in only mid season 3 so far, but having seen this show thus far I felt it necessary to leave a review, especially after seeing the many inexplicable 10 ratings which mention Point Break and High Octane.

Animal Kingdom may be many things, but fast paces and high octane it is not. No, this is much more a rather slow burner of a drama with only tidbits of crime and action thrown in almost as if an afterthought. The show doesn't build around the crimes and jobs the Cody's commit and so far every single one of them has been pretty underwhelming. The viewer is show the highlights of the job, and there is very little victory or celebration to be felt even after the most successful heists because too much happens off screen. The action here is best filed under how to make robbery boring. The heists themselves are pretty ingenious, but the execution is just rather meh look we got more money. Give me the money. No we have to clean it first. Gets a little old.

Where Animal Kingdom gets it right, like other great crime-dramas of the past is that there are no heroes. Every character is shown, the good, bad, the ugly, warts and all. Character development and back story are pretty limited leaving the viewer at a loss most of the time. Even the family tree isn't fully painted to the point that there is no clear vision of who fits where or why. Even the relation between characters is not well defined. In a way, it adds more intrigue, but it can also make it hard to follow at first. The only real thing that can be said is that the Cody family are mostly made up of some pretty horrible people, all very deserving of whatever bad karma may be thrown at them next. It is difficult at times to find even a single person to root for here.

Still the show does have many positives. It is filmed in beautiful Oceanside, California and there are great scenes of the Strand, the Oceanside Pier and other locations throughout the city. As former resident, I loved how the characters talk about how real estate is ruining the beachfront because that is a war that has been raging since the mid 1980s. Some great surfing and other water sport scenes are peppered in as well, and the characters love traveling on a whim to Baja, either winding up in TJ or a bit further down south with mixed results.

At this point there have been some pretty good episodes, but also a lot of dull, slow episodes also. There is a hope that the show will reveal a little more each time, that I think is the main reason to keep watching here. Every time the Cody's do something dirty and you think you've seen their worst, you need to wait as they'll even do something more despicable later on. The reason to keep watching is the hope that this strange ride has a destination or a point somewhere.

As many times as I've been tempted to shut it off, I plan to soldier on through season 4 and hopefully 5 with the rest of you out there. Though often unlikable there is something about these Cody's that is down right addictive. If I had to compare this to anything it would not be anywhere close to Point Break. No, this has much more in common with Shameless.

I absolutely loved Animal Kingdom as it has quickly become one of my all-time favorite shows! It's not only one of the best shows currently on tv but it's also just flat out one of the best shows ever created! I'm just so impressed with how each season continues to be just as good as the others! If you haven't seen this incredible show yet and are looking for a show that will keep you on the edge of your seat every episode then stop what you're doing right now, do yourself a favor and go watch it...I promise you that you won't be disappointed! If you don't believe me all you have to do is look at the ratings or read through the reviews to see how loved this show really is.

Joshua "J" Cody loses his mother to an overdose. He finds new shelter in his grandmother's pompous house, where he also meets his uncles. He quickly discovers that the Cody family finances their lifestyle through illegal activities - from this moment on, J's life changes suddenly.

For my part, I have to say "Animal Kingdom" is definitely a good and entertaining series that draws the viewer deep into the machinations of the Cody family, but the series also has its shortcomings.

The series starts relatively slowly - so slowly that at the beginning of the second season I actually considered whether I should drop the series because it had already been very long-winded up to that point, but I decided to finish at least the second season. I'm glad I did that because halfway through the second season the show finally picks up speed and as a viewer you become more tied to the series.

At the beginning the series also has an unusually large number of sex scenes, but this slowly decreases as the seasons progress.

I saw the series in German and unfortunately the dubbing isn't the best. Sometimes emotions are mostly lost in translation because something is not emphasized correctly according to the situation.

In my opinion, the series could have been significantly shorter, as there is a lot of unnecessary sub-plots or flashbacks, which makes the series relatively boring in some places.

The flashbacks are shown from season 4 onwards and give the viewer context to understand how the characters became the way they are. I learned to love the flashbacks towards the end, but when they were first shown at the beginning of season 4, I found them quite annoying because they took the momentum out of the story in the present.

But the flashbacks contribute a lot to my personal highlight of the series and those are its characters. I've rarely seen a series that wrote its characters as well as "Animal Kingdom." The characters actually all grow on you in some way and that's difficult to master when you consider that you have such a relatively large number of main characters here.

In summary, I say "Animal Kingdom" is far from a masterpiece, but a series that manages to perfectly combine crime and family drama and is clearly worth your time!

It's hard to put into words just how much I love Animal Kingdom. It's such an incredibly underrated show. It's about J Cody (who's mother died of a heroin overdose) and has to move to Southern California to live with his Uncles who are 3 troubled brothers and their crazy mother who make a living doing armed robbery's and other criminal activities. Jay doesn't really like them because they never talked to or helped his mom (their sister) and he blames the family of her overdose. He gains their respect over time and become one of the leaders of the family. This show will have your heart pounding from all the excitement throughout the entire series. Once you start watching you're going to want to binge it as fast as you can.