...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.

My husband and I know we have a somewhat twisted and dark sense of humor appreciation. Those of us who have really lived life and been to the bottom and the top and inbetween find humor in the ridiculous. So yes, we definitely find this humorous. Questionable jokes for the inherently oversensitive politically correct profiles that may "try this show a couple of times" - because if you are easily offended by jokes that have nothing to do with you, you may find this show unpleasing or unsettling. For the rest of us that can laugh at the ridiculous story lines and satire of current events through the eyes of animals, it is a blast to watch. A couple of episodes were a tiny bit blah compared to the others, but the majority of them are entertaining, silly, goofy, and frighteningly may remind you of humans you may know. Instead of getting angry and trolling online behind your computer screen about the annoying people you saw today, sit back and laugh with the rest of us as animals portray the silly behavior that humans behave in, and laugh your frustrations away. I love the dogs the most, and the squirrels but we also refer to golf as "white man's white ball" now, thanks to the pigeons. ;) It's not an egg! It's white man's white ball. Hilarious. Enjoy! Or don't. It's really up to you. Same as life. Enjoy it or not, it's up to you.

"Animals" is a show that I can see those less keen on understatement and subtlety being confused and angered by, and try-hard critics taking easy punches at, but don't be fooled, what you have here is a nice, smooth stone, even if it's in a bed of jagged rocks.The animation budget of three pennies and a moldy piece of bread is initially off-putting, but it serves its purpose, as with shows like this and Bojack Horseman, the main reason it's even in animation to begin with has to do with something in the overall concept being something that would just be too ugly or downright offensive to look at if it were live action. If this were live action what would it be? Best case scenario would be the actors wearing costumes while in meticulously built sets, both of which cost more money than the wages of a small team of animators. So instead of going that route or the route of making a high budget, highly animated series, with lots of pomp and flash, tightening all the Animation enthusiasts pants, it went with the more sensible and budget-conscious route, knowing that it would still be successful on a technical level, and read well visually.This show knows that everything in it needs to ride on the dialogue, because HBO doesn't give a *poo* about animation, and usually kills off low-rated comedies after only a couple seasons. And that's what it does right. The characters in this are easily relatable, animal characters, in easily relatable, human situations. I AM PHIL. I KNOW FINK, AND I *frigging* HATE FINK. And these characters, in the hands of writers who know just what makes everyday life so laughable, and what makes peering into everyday life through the eyes of an animal remind you how different we really aren't. We all make mistakes. We're all *frigging* idiots. But even still, we try every day to be better. Or we don't. Sometimes we don't want to be better, so we just try something different. The only difference is that when an animal like a pigeon makes a mistake, it's likely to cost him his life.Now this, in and of itself isn't terribly difficult to write, just look around you and give it your take. That's the first lesson in writing. Its ceiling for hilarity also isn't exactly high, and a lot of things that make us human don't make for very highbrow entertainment: everybody poops, everybody has sex, everybody eats food, and everybody dies. So it does lose some points there, if only for being unoriginal in a narrative style which inherently makes everything seem unoriginal.But that said, this kind of narrative still needs to exist in some form in television, and if it didn't, then TV would just be a cold, emotionally distant box with laughing and colorful bright lights. And if something needs to fill that space, then I'd still take this over the tired and uninspired likes of modern "Simpsons", "Family Guy/American Dad/The Cleveland Show", and whatever Comedy Central is trying to push to us this season (at time of writing, "Moonbeam City" comes to mind) In summation, "Animals" knows exactly what it is trying to be, so it pulls out all the stops and goes for broke on a channel where if you use too many dimes, you'll be dropped like a bunch of nickles right on your pennies. That said, it would make a nice quarterly comic, even if nobody would ever notice it. And I'd pay a dollar for that.

I think this show would be better received if it was on Adult Swim and not HBO. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but if you like some nice, simple humor that doesn't try so hard I'd recommend checking it out.There seems to be a lack of love for the animation. It is definitely not the prettiest I've ever seen, but its different. It runs like a comic strip, and it works with the rest of the show because it is simple. Animals is the show that all of us have thought about at some point in our lives. "What would animals say if they could talk?" A lot of the jokes are about sex, but that makes sense in the animal world. What else are animals all about besides getting food and making babies?