Your Guide to the Craziest Show on Television

August 30, 2016 6:18 PM

Zoo. Season Two. "...But anyway, the sloth and the ants: The evil four-star general — who has his own plan to save the world, which is called the Noah Objective and involves releasing a gas that kills off all the infected animals, and actually seems kind of reasonable if you think about it, because, like, look at the list of things the animals have done — storms the science plane and starts detaining everyone. But the earthquake sloth gets free and shrieks and ...."

"... everything goes to hell. Then two members of the team corner the general and start digging for information, which they do by injecting him with venom and shouting at him. But they give him the anti-venom too late and his heart stops, so a former reporter/blogger — who I still want to call Caitlyn even though that’s not her name, and who recently had to chop off her toe with an axe due to frostbite — ran and grabbed the electocharged ants that tried to blow up Switzerland, put them in cups, and slammed them onto his chest to restart his heart, because the defibrillator got soaked during the sloth earthquake when a freezer holding a giant lizard tipped over.

Good show."

posted by storybored (39 comments total)

i feel like im havin' a heart attack just readin that description
posted by boo_radley at 6:26 PM on August 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

This show always sounds like a fake show they'd have on in the background of a show or movie.
posted by Artw at 6:30 PM on August 30, 2016 [17 favorites]

Bob Benson from Mad Men is slowly turning into a genetically mutated hellbeast

Firing up the Whelk signal, since potential that could place the show in the Fancy Murder Universe, though a really weird corner of it.
posted by Artw at 6:35 PM on August 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

This show always sounds like a fake show they'd have on in the background of a show or movie.

Accurate. This was on in a bar I was at a few weeks ago, with no sound. I had no idea what it was, and I was slightly convinced it was some sort of parody.

(It was the episode involving the toilet snake, as described in the link. )
posted by damayanti at 6:35 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is his becoming
posted by The Whelk at 6:39 PM on August 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

Ok, I gotta watch this show:


the science plane.”

– It is a multimillion-dollar technological marvel, stocked with every sort of medical device and equipment you could ever want, as well as suites for each crew member and basically a small parking garage filled with Hummers and Range Rovers.

– It has a full bar that everyone is always making drinks at, like they’re passengers on a luxury air cruise and not society’s last hope against an animal uprising. This bar, as well as everything else on the plane, somehow remains fully stocked despite the pilot being the only crew member, which means that they must be making booze runs while searching the globe for animals that hold the cure.

– It is owned (or at least controlled) by the ex-stepmother of one of the team members, who was briefly married to his world famous cryptozoologist father (“cryptozoologist” = guy who searches the globe for the Loch Ness Monster, which he believes is real), and is also his ex-girlfriend, and also the Deputy Secretary of Defense. It is not clear if the plane is owned by her or the government, but if it is owned by her, she somehow managed to afford it with funds derived from her family’s small orchard, which the team visited at one point because it is infested with demon snakes.
posted by sammyo at 6:46 PM on August 30, 2016

How closely does the second season hew to James Patterson Presents James Patterson's Bookshots Zoo 2 by James Patterson and TBD? It seems like they would have to spend minutes - MINUTES! - to cover the plot of that little paperfart.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:47 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Is this is bad as Under The Dome? That's the only way I'll watch it.
posted by guiseroom at 7:13 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

and a pack of wolves orchestrated a jailbreak to free a man from prison.

Yes, but can they rob banks?
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 7:14 PM on August 30, 2016

I'm expecting Klaus Kinski to emerge from Island as the steampunk Darwinist, cathodes for arms, glass slides for eyes.

Imagine what an army of Penguins could achieve.
posted by clavdivs at 7:20 PM on August 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

oh shit please tell me Harambe wasn't a viral marketing stunt gone awry.
posted by Atom Eyes at 7:36 PM on August 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

OMG, I spent one mopey Saturday watching season 1 of this foolishness, which through the virtue of being THE BEST WORST SHOW pulled me out of my funk I was kinda sad that I couldn't stream season 2, but from this post it seems that I need to save it for my next hide under the covers episode. I cannot express enough how fabulously ridonkulous this show is. If you think you've experienced maximum silliness, just wait til the next episode. They will surely top it.
posted by Gyre,Gimble,Wabe, Esq. at 7:45 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

The wife is watching this right now. She yelled at me for reciting the quotes on the FPP. Anyone have the anti-venom?
posted by Splunge at 7:46 PM on August 30, 2016

– When they went to the farm, a snake killed a man by bursting up through his throat and out his mouth, and when the team tried to figure out how the snake got into the house the best answer they had was, “Through the toilet,” which seems to imply their best guess for how a 6-foot-long snake got inside a man and slithered out his mouth was that the snake entered his body through his rectum while he was using the bathroom, and he didn’t notice.

Of all the plot devices that you could steal from all the books in the world, why did Patterson go for Stephen King's most risible book?
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:46 PM on August 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

AlonzoMosleyFBI: "and a pack of wolves orchestrated a jailbreak to free a man from prison.

Yes, but can they rob banks? "

I truly LOVE that film.
posted by Splunge at 7:47 PM on August 30, 2016

Seriously, a bunch of bats covered solar panels so that some scientists, who I must note are also mammals, will freeze to death, when they lose power, in Antarctica. ...why bats no freeze show? Who cares? We science gud.
posted by Gyre,Gimble,Wabe, Esq. at 7:48 PM on August 30, 2016 [6 favorites]

Is this is bad as Under The Dome? That's the only way I'll watch it.

It's a lot more earnest in its craziness than Under the Dome, which makes it gloriously worse.
posted by Pryde at 8:21 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

From the FPP description, I had somehow imagined that:
A) This was a cartoon, and
B) The general, reporter, etc. were also animals, a la Bojack Horseman or Zootopia.

Imagine my surprise when neither of these things turn out to be true.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 8:34 PM on August 30, 2016 [7 favorites]

I guess on TV, human-based apocalypses are depressing but animal-based ones are hilarious? Sharknado, what hast thou wrought?
posted by emjaybee at 8:37 PM on August 30, 2016

I would have thought that this was something along the lines of Danger 5, but apparently it's serious?


Where might one watch such a thing, if one should happen to live in Canada?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:44 PM on August 30, 2016

Why haven't I watched this already? This sounds like exactly what I need in my life right now.
posted by BungaDunga at 8:56 PM on August 30, 2016

WAT
posted by scalefree at 10:23 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

My mother has been obsessed with this show since it premiered. It's as crazy as it sounds. Crazier. With the dumbest possible scripts and extremely unironic attempts to act. Also lots of truly awful SFX. Good times.
posted by xyzzy at 10:25 PM on August 30, 2016

OMG THE BATS. I JUST GOT TO THE BATS. THIS IS A MASTERPIECE
posted by PinkMoose at 11:13 PM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I started watching Episode 1 last night, as this is the first I'd heard of the show. I'd barely gotten started when they killed off the black African character they'd introduced, and then had a run-from-the-lions scene in which the woman scientist tripped and fell as they were fleeing the murderous lions. I sighed tiredly.

I'll probably keep going, in the spirit of enjoying the weirdness.
posted by not that girl at 11:47 PM on August 30, 2016

Someone's read John Hodgman's The Areas Of My Expertise and realized there's an "ALL ANIMALS v ALL HUMANS" shaped hole in the canon, I see.

Where might one watch such a thing, if one should happen to live in Canada?

It comes up on as suggested for me on Netflix Canada, which has me questioning my life choices.
posted by rodlymight at 5:28 AM on August 31, 2016

Also, how the fuck is this actually a network show?

The Aristocrats! Summer season!
posted by Etrigan at 6:14 AM on August 31, 2016

I belly-laughed, twice at the Uproxx write-up.
There is no possible way I will enjoy this show 1/10 as much as I did the FPP.
posted by adoarns at 6:22 AM on August 31, 2016

I started watching this the other day and then stopped, because I knew there was just no way that a CBS show was going to be the show I was imagining in my head, but it turns out it maybe is exactly the show I was imagining in my head, so now I know what I'm doing tonight.
posted by Huck500 at 7:02 AM on August 31, 2016

My wife watches the show. I don't. I don't know exactly what it is about CBS, but the main characters are all just too goody-goody with the exception of Elementary...

From what I have seen, it isn't the craziest show on TV, but it does remind you that you regularly that your house cats will enjoy eating your face off when you pass.
posted by Nanukthedog at 9:59 AM on August 31, 2016

I hate to tell you this but this just in from Australia
posted by fallingbadgers at 10:39 AM on August 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

First episode.

"Free will is all that separates us from the animals. Free will and this truck!"

I'm in.
posted by MrVisible at 4:04 PM on August 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

There seem to be a lot of people that look like they're getting set up as recurring characters that then just die unceremoniously. Is that a common thing in this new post-Game of Thrones world or is that just because this show is crazy?
posted by ckape at 10:23 PM on August 31, 2016

There is no possible way I will enjoy this show 1/10 as much as I did the FPP.

I watched some of it on the strength of the FPP and it's absolutely living up to it so far.

The only weird bit is I swear some of the music they use is ripping Fringe's off, which is fine because honestly the whole thing feels like a Fringe monster of the week plot grotesquely lengthened, down to the lead dude, his mad-scientist father and the blond secret agent.

Another observation: they seem to be contractually obligated to include "I don't understand your fancy science-talk, dumb it down for this poor schmuck won'tcha?" in every episode. And blatantly signposted SCIENCE FACTS (did you know that wolf poop is called scat???)
posted by BungaDunga at 12:57 AM on September 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

(or that bats aren't blind??)
posted by BungaDunga at 12:59 AM on September 1, 2016

I'm up to the episode where the pathologist and Abraham are trying to trap a wolf with a net gun. They know, from their visit to the gun shop, that there's a wolf cull going on and the woods will be full of hunters, but neither of them has one scrap of hunter orange on.

Also: is that scene with the bats the only scene the lesbians are there for? Like, they're there to show up and be killed? I had a lot of questions about this scene, like:

1. Since when do people move to Antarctica and live in what looks like a regular house with regular walls, and not at some kind of science station or similar?
2. Since when do people go to Antarctica for two years?
3. Are solar panels a good energy option for a place that's dark half the year?
4. The bats??
5. Why were the bats so mad at the lesbians that they went all the way to Antarctica to die on their solar panels?

I'm struggling with the casual racial stereotyping: "I find Japanese women very sexy." Others I can't remember.

The whole show reminds me of those conversations you used to have in high school, where you'd say, "Do you realize that there are more of us than there are of them? If we just refused to do what they told us to do, they couldn't stop us!"

Why are the kitties and domestic doggies mad? Are there animal Quislings, loyal to their humans? Will this be a thing?

I love it when we're supposed to feel menaced by a dog that's looking cheerfully at a person, or wagging its tail like, "Who's a good doggie? I'm a good doggie!" right before and/or during the time it's ripping someone's throat out while the snarls of a much larger and scarier animal play on the soundtrack. Or at the prison, where there were these scenes with one wolf, but the terrifying sound of all the other wolves howling, to convince us that the threat was real.

It's all very fun, though. So cheerfully ridiculous.
posted by not that girl at 9:24 PM on September 1, 2016

The bats are back! Xnzvxnmr ong SGJ!
posted by not that girl at 9:27 PM on September 1, 2016

I'd barely gotten started when they killed off the black African character they'd introduced, and then had a run-from-the-lions scene in which the woman scientist tripped and fell as they were fleeing the murderous lions. I sighed tiredly.

I hope you kept watching!
posted by fshgrl at 12:06 AM on September 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh no I just saw that season 2 is on Netflix now.
posted by ckape at 2:04 AM on September 25, 2016 [1 favorite]