Over eight seasons on Netflix, the animated series “Big Mouth” made raunchy humor out of anthropomorphizing human emotions. Starting with the Hormone Monster, who personified the raging id of puberty, the show’s menagerie soon expanded to other abstract concepts: depression, anxiety, even love. Assigning personalities and quirks to everyday parts of human life, it turns out, pays dividends.
Comedian Joe Wengert served as a writer, producer and voice actor on “Big Mouth” for many years, and has applied this lesson to his new venture “Kevin,” which streams on Amazon Prime Video. Co-created by Wengert and actor Aubrey Plaza, who voices several characters throughout the eight-episode first season, “Kevin” swaps abstract mental health concepts out for something more concrete, if no less mysterious in their inner workings: our pets. The title character — played by Jason Schwartzman, who also sings the very catchy theme song — is a tuxedo cat whose life is thrown into disarray by the breakup of his human owners. Rather than follow either party to their next apartment, Kevin opts to take up residence in a local shelter, among a ragtag crew of his fellow animals.
Much like “Big Mouth,” the humor in “Kevin” combines the gleefully raunchy with the sweetly sincere. (The newer show even looks a bit like “Big Mouth,” since both series are produced by the animation studio Titmouse.) In her capacity as the voice of feral cat Cupcake, who hangs around the shelter to freeload, we’re treated to Whoopi Goldberg — a “View” host beloved by Middle America going back to her edgier roots — bragging about her “kitty clit” being “so erect.” But “Kevin” is also a tale of self-discovery and embracing independence. It’ll never be mistaken for a kid-friendly weekend cartoon; with a surprisingly specific New York setting, the feel is closer to a feline “Broad City.” Yet there’s a feel-good arc to Kevin’s journey that carries through even its most absurd and over-the-top concepts, like a production of “Mame” entirely staffed by horses.
Kevin’s new roommates at Astoria-area adoption center Furrever Friends are a motley bumch. (Between “Kevin” and the election of local assemblyman-turned-mayor Zohran Mamdani, the Queens neighborhood is having a moment in the national spotlight.) Token, pushover human Seth (Gil Ozeri) lives under the thumb of the tiny, domineering dog Brandi (the incomparable Amy Sedaris), a high maintenance diva with a yen for single-use Stanley cups. (Just don’t call her yappy: “That’s our word!”) Disease-ridden cat Judy (Aparna Nancherla) has goop-crusted eyes and a die-hard sense of optimism, both conditions equally incurable. Presiding over it all alongside Goldberg as the elder statesman is camp impresario John Waters, who plays the louche Persian cat Armando — a role model for Kevin’s new, mostly post-human existence.
The episodic subplots hopscotch between pop culture references, urban odysseys and, of course, animal puns. One clever installment shows the nightmarish onslaught that is the 4th of July from a cat or dog’s point of view; another sees a field trip to a “Grey Gardens”-like estate of luxury breeders; a third tracks a kennel cough outbreak as it rips through the shelter populace. Guest stars run the gamut from Charles Melton to Patti LuPone to Stephen Malkmus, all playing themselves. (Or at least versions of them: LuPone’s character may be a theater star in a notorious, long-running feud with a director, but her name is Patti LuPony.) There are hyper-local gags about the Williamsburg bar Union Pool and the undesirability of living in the Financial District, and a creature known as Rat Pizza — like Pizza Rat in reverse.
The wide-ranging nature of the show’s interests fits Kevin’s attempt to figure out who he is through experimentation. Does he never want to rely on human companionship again, like Armando and Cupcake? Is he willing to give things with his ex-owner Dana (Plaza) a second shot? Or does he want to find a third path that’s somewhere in between? The world-building of how the “Kevin” universe, in which animals and humans converse freely and geese use their corkscrew-shaped genitalia to open wine bottles, can be a bit all-over-the-place. (As is its prerogative — no one’s coming here for realism.) But its sense of Kevin’s journey from a shy, kept cat to one ready for whatever life hands him is clear, a North Star to guide all the otherwise enjoyable chaos.
All eight episodes of “Kevin” are now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
