Welcome to the weekly TV thread. There’s no prompt today.
May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, so in every header this month, I, an Asian American writer, will be discussing a recent or current TV role played by an Asian American performer.
The Original TV Score Selection of the Week is Paddington and Quiz Lady composer Nick Urata’s main title theme from Animal Control.
A solid Fox single-camera comedy about Northwest Seattle animal control officers (it’s filmed in Vancouver instead of Seattle), Animal Control is the creation of The Moodys co-creators Bob Fisher and Rob Greenberg and The Interview screenwriter Dan Sterling. One of the funniest scenes from Animal Control’s first season is the return of Rick, the Northwest Seattle precinct’s beloved former boss, to the precinct.
Played by Kevin Bigley from USA Network’s Sirens, one of Fisher’s earlier creations, the easygoing Rick retired after surviving a mauling by a mink, which cost him most of his left ear but left him with a hefty settlement from the city. Rick’s much less confident replacement is Emily Price, played by series regular Vella Lovell, whose best role prior to Animal Control was as Heather, Rebecca’s college student neighbor, on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Emily never met Rick before. His plastic ear terrifies her.
Animal Control’s great ensemble cast is led by Joel McHale in his usual snarky mode as Frank Shaw, a swole ex-cop who misses having Rick as his partner in animal rescues and can barely tolerate the idealism and clinginess of his current partner, ex-professional snowboarder Fred “Shred” Taylor, played by stand-up comic Michael Rowland. Frank prefers the company of animals he rescues (or the company of tall and hot blondes like, in the most recent season, Lucy Punch’s bisexual philanthropist character from the U.K.) over the company of people.
But the most consistently funny regular on Animal Control is Ravi Patel as Amit Patel, a slightly less cynical animal control officer than Frank. In the recent episode “Goats, Snakes and Dogs,” Amit’s sensitive side infects the behavior of Frank, whom he occasionally partners with, when they drop by a facility for animals that are about to be euthanized.
Amit constantly complains at work about his chaotic (and largely off-screen) home life as a married dad with four kids (one of whom tagged along with Amit to work in “Dogs and Bears and Minks”). (The character was originally called Hickey before Patel was cast in the role.) “Parenthood is like a zoo” jokes are as old as Make Room for Daddy, but Patel makes them feel as new as when Rhea Perlman did them on Cheers as a similarly overextended parent who can’t stop popping out kids. The novelty of a second-generation Indian American guy as a male Carla Tortelli adds to the hilarity of Patel’s scenes as Amit.
I first noticed Patel in two different roles in 2015: as Ravi, the head chef at a restaurant owned by a Lothario played by John Stamos, on Fox’s short-lived Grandfathered and as a fictional version of himself in Master of None’s “Indians on TV” episode. In “Indians on TV,” Patel stole the show as himself, a friend of Dev’s who auditions for the same roles Dev tries to score. Patel brought to life a struggling POC actor so well that I wished he was the lead character on Master of None instead of Dev.
On Grandfathered, a much funnier “John Stamos has a bunch of adorable interactions with a baby girl” sitcom than Full House, Patel didn’t really have much of a character (I can’t remember any of his key moments from the show). Had Grandfathered, which was created and showrun by Simpsons veteran Daniel Chun, lasted more than a season, we probably would have gotten to see Ravi interact more often outside the restaurant with the characters from the show’s domestic scenes. Meanwhile, on Animal Control, the show’s writers have tried every different comedic combination of two or three regular characters, and Patel is such a great performer that I always look forward to whatever duo he is half of each week.
Patel’s most frequent scene partner is Grace Palmer as Victoria Sands, Amit’s New Zealand-born partner and workplace best friend despite each of them being at different stages in life. The bisexual (and secretly religious) Victoria is single and promiscuous, as well as totally unaware of Frank’s growing romantic interest in her, while Amit is faithful to his wife despite their off-screen arguments and regular visits to a marriage counselor.
Amit and Victoria have one of the most enjoyable platonic friendships on TV, and that’s mostly due to Patel and Palmer’s comic timing in their scenes together. And in the second season, Amit began teaming up with Shred to flip a house, a side hustle they continued to run in the third season, and frankly, Shred is more appealing in his scenes with Amit than he is in his scenes with Frank.
Shred’s ongoing (and very childlike) desperation to get Frank to bond with him and call him his best friend is—just like Charlie Brown’s preference for kicking the football Lucy always pulls away from him instead of doing what he should be doing, and that would be kicking Lucy in the shins—more sad than funny. I keep wanting to grab Shred by the lapels and say to him, “Frank is from a cop family that hates any kind of intimacy, man! You’ve got a best friend already in Amit.”
I didn’t get into Animal Control until last year (its second season). I came for McHale because I was a fan of both The Soup and Community. I stayed because of the officers’ amusing mishaps with animals, hilarious workplace scenes like the above lunch scene where Emily tries to stop herself from puking from looking at Rick’s fake ear, and Patel’s terrific comic timing.
“Amit often plays the butt of the joke in the show’s various gags, and it’s not unusual for him to get beaten up or mauled during animal-related incidents. The key to Patel’s performance lies in his tremendous charisma, comedic timing, and extreme relatability. Patel exceptionally channels Amit’s nervous energy and anxieties,” said Collider’s Jeffrey Harris in a recent piece about why Amit is one of TV’s most likable and relatable underdogs.
Animal Control also has some of the best editors on network TV. I don’t know the names of Animal Control’s editors, but thanks to them, you’re never able to notice that the animal actors are clearly taking direction from off-camera trainers or that many of the animals are played by puppets.
Sometimes I can’t tell if the animal Frank and the other officers are trying to rescue or apprehend is a puppet or a human performer wearing an animal suit. (When it comes to cetaceans, I had no idea that Darwin from seaQuest DSV was a mechanical dolphin this whole time, and I was surprised when I found out that the humpback whales in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home were nothing more than mechanical miniatures that were filmed by Industrial Light and Magic effects wizards in a San Mateo high-school swimming pool.)
Animal Control got bogged down in romance in its most recent season. It’s better when it’s not a show about romantic relationships and it’s just a slapstick procedural about rescuing cows or tracking down escaped penguins. There aren’t a lot of procedurals about rescuing cows or tracking down escaped penguins. Animal Control is the funniest, and that’s often thanks to Patel.