I watched all of this show properly for the first time a little while back and I really consistently found it to be a very fun and calming show to just chill out with and frequently get a good laugh out of. It's tone is very mellow and lovable, even as some characters get hilariously worked up! Everything about it is minimalistic but I adored the dry sense of humour and I kinda found it to be a perhaps ironically therapeutic show to watch. I saw it as a kid a little but I never really appreciated it's distinct brand of comedy until I saw it with a more adult perspective. The animation was probably a big issue for most viewers and I could see how that style could turn some people off right away, but I didn't particularly have a problem with it, how the show looked and the way the characters appeared like they were constantly squirming around was its trademark, the animation complemented and heightened the humour, if the show had been blessed with better animation then it probably wouldn't have felt the same or maybe even not have been as funny. Dr Katz just wouldn't have been Dr Katz without the famous squiggles that made everything about the show feel so distinct and memorable, I certainly never found them nauseating to look at like some claimed to have been, if you're into the show it's something you don't even register after a while. Something that I did not like at all was that particularly in the early seasons they'd often tend to reuse little parts of scenes, which to me made things feel a little too cheap at times.. Someone said that the show "was only as good as its guest stars." Perhaps but I always loved the interactions between Dr Katz, Ben and Laura, they all played off each other brilliantly. If there happened to be a great guest voice, to me it only really made an already good episode that much better. My favourite of the regular patients was definitely Dom the aggressive yet freakily sensitive man with the thick Brooklyn accent and weird crush of sorts on Dr Katz that frequently saw him getting a bit too close for comfort and even one time dancing the flamenco! The guy was effortlessly hilarious and stole every scene that he - or rather his voice - featured in! I also loved the voice actor as "Ernie" from Hey Arnold. I loved Ben and his relationship with his father who probably was a bit too easy on him and treated him like a big kid too much. It was so funny how Ben was the kind of guy that always acted like he knew about everything even though he barely did anything, and how whenever he would manage to accidentally accomplish something or half-heartedly take up some temporary hobby he'd get a superior attitude about it, usually aimed right at his long-suffering dad! To me the humour wasn't about satire or clever metaphors but just for the most part the honest and bare bones interactions of quirky folks just sitting and talking and I loved that kind of unpretentious blandness of it? You got the humour of it without the need for a lot of 'flash.' I think it may have got better with age. Some things in the overall plot that I think could have been improved upon would have been if they'd have got Ben to start moving towards getting his s**t together, and they should have had a moment where Laura acknowledges and gently puts to pasture Ben's little crush on her, I know it really wasn't that kind of show but it's frequently the little things that can make good animated shows into great ones. Something else that bugs me is that the final episode is just like any other and has absolutely no sense of finality to it at all, and maybe at the time they didn't know it would be the last episode I don't know, but they should have put a little more effort into it instead of the show just getting unceremoniously ditched with a rather unremarkable episode about Conan O Brian showing up again to steal Katz's jokes! The show is what it is, some episodes came together a little better than others and were funnier and the guest voices didn't always exactly shine quite the same way, but overall I really loved it, it was a great show and a very endearing piece of work and it has its own place in time in the history of animated shows that were aimed more at adults, do yourself a favour and check it out, I promise you'll get at least one good laugh out of it and believe me there's plenty of them! Nice one Doc. X
