There are shows, especially comedies, that you can tell are in a nice, solid groove. Animal Control, entering its third season, is in one of those grooves. It’s got all of its characters in place, and it’s mining lots of funny moments from those characters and their foibles. The third season starts off with what passes for a big event on the show: A zoo break.
ANIMAL CONTROL SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Shred (Michael Rowland) pulls up to an apartment building to pick up his partner Frank (Joel McHale) in their Animal Control squad truck. Behind Frank, his on-again, off-again girlfriend Yazmin (Sarah Chalke), hands him a Stanley cup containing a smoothie she made.
The Gist: While it seems that Frank is enjoying being in a relationship with Yazmin, he tells Shred that he needs to end it, because she’s “obsessed with me.” She watches him sleep and other stuff that Shred thinks is just the attention of someone who is in love, but the relationship-averse Frank thinks otherwise.
They’re distracted from their discussion by the site of a giraffe walking the streets of Seattle. At the same time, Ravi (Amit Patel) and Victoria (Grace Palmer) get a call about a gorilla loose at a birthday party in the park. This can only mean one thing: A zoo break!
Emily (Vella Lovell), the squad’s administrator, calls all hands in to collect the animals, knowing that this is a once-in-decades-type of event. At the same time, Shred radios in to ask Emily if it’s still OK if his girlfriend Isabelle (Chelsea Frei) comes to the office for lunch. It’s important, given their history together and the fact that Emily just broke up with her boyfriend. But Emily has more important things to think of right now.
Ravi, who is increasingly concerned that his 13-year-old daughter is freezing him out of her life, manages to tranquilize the gorilla — after deflating a bouncy house with his first dart — and Victoria instructs a TV reporter on the scene to talk to him instead of her. She figures if he shows his daughter the report, he’ll look cooler in her eyes. Instead, his exclamation about the gorilla’s opposable thumbs goes viral.
After the zoo break is corralled, not only does Isabelle visit the office but so does Yazmin, fueling Frank’s paranoia. Emily and the squad’s receptionist, Bettany (Krystal Smith), get ready to do a deep dive into Emily’s pain. Then a visit from Fiona Holcombe (Lucy Punch), a billionaire lifestyle guru seeking to adopt a dog, pumps Emily up more than any deep dive could accomplish.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Animal Control is a classic workplace comedy in the vein of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Office, Parks And Recreation, etc.
Our Take: Rob Greenberg and Bob Fisher, the creators of Animal Control, aren’t exactly trying to reinvent the wheel with their show, and that’s a good thing. The show has stayed pretty consistent as it enters its third season, with a fun cast of off-kilter characters bouncing off each other in funny ways. They continue that formula in the third season, with the only concession to anything in the season premiere being an “event” is the zoo break that begins the episode.
Even there, that zoo break is mostly contained, except for a wayward penguin named Oreo, within the first ten minutes of the episode. As we’ve mentioned in past reviews, the show isn’t really about the CGI animals that the gang encounters — or, in the case of Ravi, an actor in a gorilla suit. It’s about the “found family” of this unusual workplace. Because Greenberg and Fisher has established such a strong cast of characters, they don’t need CGI animals to make audiences laugh.
It says something when a show looks like it basically picks up where it left off, even if where it leaves off is just a day in the life of the office it depicts. The folks at Animal Control know that the show is all about spending time with likeable characters who are funny because of their various quirks and foibles, and they make sure that aspect of the show is as strong as possible.
Sex and Skin: Besides Shred tickling Isabelle’s feet when she visits the office, there’s nothing.
Parting Shot: After Frank visits Yazmin to tell her that his hangups about relationships are what’s getting in their way, we see evidence that he may have been right about her.
Sleeper Star: Krystal Smith’s Bettany is funny because she doesn’t pine for Emily, she openly and freely tells her boss how much she likes her, even though she knows Emily won’t reciprocate. That’s quite a fun bit of character humor that the writers have stumbled upon with the squad’s receptionist.
Most Pilot-y Line: We’re not sure if the gorilla looking so fake was part of the joke, but we were really wondering if Ravi would end up finding out he tranquilized a man in a gorilla suit by mistake.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Animal Control continues to be a solid workplace comedy that’s in a nice, funny groove as it enters its third season.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
