Exploding Kittens - Season 1

Imagine being God, summoned to a celestial board meeting, only to find that the heavenly shareholders are not pleased with your divine management. Your punishment? A demotion to Earth in the form of... a cat.

In short, that is the premise of Exploding Kittens, a show loosely based on a card game. I say "loosely" because the series shares little more than the quirky art style and a penchant for irreverent humor. Spoiler alert: there are no actual exploding cats in this show.

Once God, or from that point on GodCat (voiced by Tom Ellis, Lucifer), ends up at Earth, he quickly finds himself with a somewhat dysfunctional family. While father Marv (Mark Proksch, What We Do in the Shadows) would preferably spend all his time playing board games and table top RPGs, mother Abbie, a former Navy Seal, (Suzy Nakamura, Dr. Ken) would rather lead a more active lifestyle, consisting of strength training and shooting with a crossbow. Daughter Greta (Ally Maki, Wrecked) wants to become a top scientist, while son Travis (Kenny Yates) is mostly concerned with gaming and the disappointingly low amount of viewers on his stream. GodCat’s divine mission? To bring this wildly disparate family closer together.

But then the Devil (Sasheer Zamata, Saturday Night Live) is also sent to Earth as a cat, hellbent (pun intended) on thwarting GodCat at every turn. What ensues are nine episodes of general insanity and a lot – and I cannot stress this enough, A LOT – of jokes about everyday things that were invented by either Hell or Heaven (or both, such as SeaWorld).

The humor, though plentiful, sometimes misses the mark.

Each episode is a wild ride, packed with enough absurdity to keep you entertained. However, if you’re expecting groundbreaking social commentary wrapped in edgy, over-the-top humor, you might be slightly underwhelmed. While the show does serve up a healthy dose of satire, poking fun at everything wrong with the world (or perhaps suggesting that the world itself is fundamentally flawed), it never quite reaches the heights of other animated series that excel in this genre.

The humor, though plentiful, sometimes misses the mark. Some jokes are overplayed, others simply fall flat. It’s not a chore to watch, but that's hardly a glowing endorsement. Despite its ambition to be daring, the series often pulls its punches, and is sometimes more wholesome than anything. Sometimes it is just not too clear what the creators actually wanted to do with this series.

In the end, Exploding Kittens delivers good, mindless fun—nothing more, nothing less. It's an amusing distraction, but certainly not a standout. Not every show can be a masterpiece, and this one, while enjoyable, is more of a middle-of-the-pack contender.