Animal Practice

It's more like M*A*S*H* for the four-legged, a subversive and perversely funny workplace comedy.

The show is cleverer than you'd expect. [20 Aug 2012, p.41]

Not terrible--really--but not yet remotely the winner NBC so badly needs either.

It's too cringe-worthy for overempathizing animal lovers, but general audiences might tune in for lighthearted, escapist fun.

It's knowingly dumb and aiming for smart-dumb, and over time it might get there.

The show may not be comedy gold, but it generates enough laughs to make it worth checking out before hitting the sack Sunday night. But is it a keeper in the long run? We'll see.

Between their personal history and their decidedly different approaches to running the place, they're dealing with plenty of built-in conflict, but if the show's a hit, I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually united, just as Perry and his fellow "Friends" stars once did, to demand an end to (or at least a dialing back of) the monkey business.

Animal Practice might devolve into a lot of jokes about mammalian reproduction and/or defecation, or it might evolve into a goofy workplace drama with reasonably sparky leads and occasionally frisky pythons. Given the quality of the core cast and the mildly pleasing (if broad) nature of the pilot, I've got my paws crossed and I'm hoping for the latter.

If you enjoy animal sight gags, Animal Practice will provide at least a few laughs.

If the show pulls back on the sour humans a bit and keeps it up with the cute animals, it might have something.

NBC's Animal Practice is a lot like ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," except it's furrier and it's a lot less funny.

For this show to work long-term, its human characters have to become richer--and funnier--so that they can evolve with the audience long post the point where the writers have run out of tricks that Crystal and her various winged or four-legged co-stars can do.

There are some funny set pieces in the pilot, and enough fruitful interactions with the patients and their troublesome owners that I could see this show developing into a kind of Scrubs with rabies shots, if the characters can develop beyond the familiar menagerie we start out with.

Cats, dogs, tigers, tortoises, snakes, penguins--they're all mined for laughs in this so-so sitcom set in a New York City animal hospital.

Like a lot of pilots, Animal Practice is messy, and if you don't like the monkey, well, you're probably not coming back.

Kirk just doesn't click in the lead role. Nor do most of the words he's given.

It's hard to imagine Practice ever being more than tolerable, much less making perfect.

The shame is that Practice has a fine human cast... But Kirk and his cohorts quickly get taken down by the barrage of stupidity the show sends their way.

In comedy there's a fine line between wacky and desperate. Animal Practice crosses it early and often.

The show is pretty darn terrible, derivative and tired, co-starring a monkey (never, ever a good sign) and chockablock with characters we have seen too many times before.

Animal Practice seems to know exactly what it wants to do, it just isn't any good at it.

Crystal (previously seen in the Night at the Museum movies, the second Hangover film and a memorable cameo on Community) steals what little show there is here.

Animal Practice is a forgettable show sloppily built from comedy cliches, but it can be fixed by firing most of the cast and rebuilding the show around the monkey.

The animals can't make a sitcom work unless they're surrounded by good human writing and human originality, both of which are in short supply here.

For the humans, nothing ensues that can't be predicted by a comatose cockatoo.