Animals. (TV Series) Humans (2017) User Reviews

This episode seems very relevant in 2020 and early 2021

[msantos1116 · 7/10 · 20 January 2021]

This is the only episode to date that is not animated and involves actual actors on the screen.

An evil corporation has taken over power and control of everything, selling products that people need for every aspect of their lives. Through this, they also develop a strange virus that infects the population of New York and the cure for the sickness the virus causes.

The government representatives are weak and the President is an actual puppet in this episode - greenlighting anything that the evil corporation does.

I love the dark comedy and satire in this one. It really hits home when watched in context of what's happening right now.

This episode makes David Lynch seem like Laura Ingalls Wilder...

[AlsExGal · 9/10 · 17 April 2017]

...because it is the weirdest episode of any TV show I have ever seen, and it is one more reason I love HBO's "Animals".

This is the only episode so far that is live action rather than animated. Because it is so off the charts strange I can only guess what is trying to be said here, but the show seems to be making the animals seem real with real reactions and thoughts and introspection and the humans behave as caricatures. There is an overarching human story line in both seasons. In the first season, it was the corrupt mayor. In the second season, it's the corrupt mega-corporation that seems to invade all aspects of the world. This episode explores the exaggeration of the human world with caricatures of "the president", of the "ad-men", and of the "chemists".

The ad-men are creating advertisements knowing that their entire line of work is to make people buy something, and they know that their work is just manipulating a helpless population for the benefit of a company that created the problem, and so they indulge in drugs and other self destructive tendencies while manically declaring how much they love advertising. The chemists are just there to work solely in the name of science, with disregard to the world or their impact on it. Plus the chemists are recreationally using their own company's drugs that seem to have no real purpose as in treating any actual malady.

The regulator from the FDA (it's given bogus initials but we know what agency it is) knows that this drug - the green pill - needs to be approved otherwise he'd be the reason why virus x wasn't cured and so he asks - actually begs - for the ingredients, even just one ingredient. But in the end he does approve it knowing nothing about what is in it, losing his short-lived stand-off with a poker-faced Dr. Labcoat.

There is a combination of improvisational and scripted humor here, where normally Animals is improvisational. The part that appears to be scripted is the unscrupulous Dr. Labcoat's speech about his actual long term plan. Everything else is so wild it must have been improvised. By the way, RuPaul is perfect as Dr. Labcoat, creator of "the green pill".

Oh, and Phil and Mike were in this episode, but completely covered as hazmat workers.