Paradise PD – Season 1: Review

Paradise PD is the latest Netflix animated series to hit the service, advertising itself as offensive to pretty much everyone. Coming only weeks after Disenchantment, this animated series seems determined to offer a Family Guy/American Dad style humor mixed with the Reno 911 concept of inept police officers in a small town. Does this combination work or offering anything the other shows haven’t?

The show attempts to use the direct streaming service venue to offer a crude, offensive animated show not bound by the same censors as network television. Similar to Netflix alum Big Mouth or F is for Family. Unlike the other animated series which uses that freedom in clever ways to obtain legitimate laughs they couldn’t on network TV, Paradise PD just comes off as crude.  The show, and the series, starts off with our main character Kevin, as a child. Desperate to one day become a cop like his father (Randall), he is playing with his dad’s gun when walking in on his parents having sex, accidentally firing the gun, shooting Randall’s nuts off. The show then flash forwards several years to Kevin becoming the newest cop on the force that his neutered, testosterone patch covered father, is the chief of.

If you think that set-up is hilarious then this is the show for you. Beware, some minor spoilers lay ahead.

In case you didn’t know, Stranger Things is also on Netflix

There’s not much more depth to Paradise PD beyond that. The show does take a few jabs at being topical. Most notably with an early episode in which Fitzgerald, the show’s only black officer, accidentally shoots himself. The onslaught of 24 hours news coverage, half of it portraying him as an innocent black man shot by a police officer and the other half portraying him as a thug who was brandishing a weapon, even manages to border on clever. The episode culminates in Fitzgerald (or G-Fitz depending on which news station is reporting) losing his mind and leading a high speed chase as he tries to reconcile being both an African American and a police officer. This causes CNN’s Anderson Cooper to go a little Mad Max and leads to what is honestly the funniest few minutes of the show. Unfortunately this storyline is only one of the plots of the episode, the other being that Bullet (the Brian Griffin rip-off, talking dog with a drug problem) and Hopson (an elderly police officer used to make cliché old person jokes) discover a plot by Red Lobster to grow seafood on the elderly in nursing homes. Which is a thing.

Look at all this stuff we ripped off. Also Drugs!

One thing the show does have going for it though is the talent behind the primary voice cast. While there is little to no world building outside of these characters (with only a handful of characters outside of the principle cast ever popping up more than once), the main cast is great. What little bit of Paradise PD does work, works because of the voice acting; with Dana Snyder (most well known as Master Shake from Aqua Teen Hunger Force) often stealing the show with his Dusty character.

Thus is Paradise PD. The attempt at raunchy rarely pays off, often coming off as simply stupid and crude. Even at its’ strongest it fails to really satisfy more than a few brief laughs. Netflix should have released Paradise PD before Disenchantment as the latter only looks better by comparison to the former.

Final Rating: 5.5/10

GoG Break Down:
How it was viewed: Binge watching, of course
Running time: Each episode averages about 25 minutes.
Recommend viewing: Preferably while not sober
Why you should see it: The voice cast is solid and there are a few legitimately funny moments sprinkled throughout.  
Why you shouldn’t see it: You haven’t watched Big Mouth or Disenchantment yet, both of which are far superior.