Season Review: The Freak Brothers Season Two Part One

The dim-witted Furry Freak Brothers are back for more modern-day adventures following the show’s two-year absence. The animated adaptation of Gilbert Shelton’s popular underground comic provided plenty of trippy moments to get its audience high enough to make it the second most popular series on Tubi. This success was impressive, considering it’s the streaming platform’s first original animated series. While I don’t think it’s a great show due to its abundant adult humor and “fish-out-of-water” plots, its voice cast was barely enough to get me intrigued about its sophomore season.

For its second eight-episode package, The Freak Brothers is split into two parts with four episodes each. The first four are what we’re getting today, while the last four will be out in September. Since I’m not a massive fan of the show, it’s better that I take parts of these drugs and save the rest for later instead of indulging them at once. But what matters is whether season two can improve this trippy adult-rated experience for its audience. Based on how they turned out, it seemed that nothing had changed for the dim-witted stoner brothers, for better or worse. By that, I mean the latter.  

The first four episodes of season two contain plenty of elements from season one that still don’t work as well as I intended but will probably be okay for anyone else. One of them is the adult humor. The Freak Brothers is another animated sitcom with many uses of sexual references, adult language, and pop culture references amid its formulaic “fish-out-of-water” plots. It intended to poke fun at the modern topics the characters see as more “screwed up” than in 1969. To the show’s credit, it has a few instances of humor that could’ve been funny, including Ellen DeGeneres’s recent cancellation in “Whack Shack”. Unfortunately, none of the jokes have much of a kick to get me high. Even worse is that the humor was repetitive, bland, and abundant.

The other two elements that were underwhelming were the plots and the animation. The animation style was suitable for displaying the character designs resembling the underground comics. However, everything else surrounding it is another case of modern cheap animation that lacks a compelling spark in its style. As for the episodes, the plots are fundamental sitcom stories involving the brothers getting into ridiculous scenarios. One includes Franklin becoming a cock double for Timothee Chalamet and the characters uncovering a conspiracy in Washington in “The Freaks Go to Washington”.  

While they’re not without a few silly moments that kept me engaged, unlike Paradise PD, the episodes struggled to balance adult entertainment with storytelling to make their tedious narratives enjoyable. The only episode that I liked the least was the third episode, “High School Reunion”, due to its multiple plot points. We have Phineas using face transplants to impress a girl from his high school while Franklin encounters a crab in his pubes. Meanwhile, Freddy attempts to apologize to Kitty for almost giving her away years ago. Compared to the other episodes with straightforward plots, “High School Reunion” offers one narrative too many.  

Lucky for the creators behind The Freak Brothers, the only reason I find it watchable was the voice cast. Despite the characters being one-dimensional or annoying, the cast’s talent provided a silver lining regarding their performances. Like season one, season two’s main highlights of the cast are Pete Davidson, Woody Harrelson, and John Goodman as Phineas, Franklin, and Freddy, respectively. While their jokes were more dumb than ridiculously hilarious, the chemistry between the three main leads offers some slight entertainment through their voice acting. Davidson and Goodman still did very well distinguishing their usual voices for Phineas and Freddy, while Harrelson delivers the usual cowboy-ish charm as Franklin.

Tiffany Haddish still delivers the salty attitude in her humor as Kitty, as she did in season one and her previous projects. If you like Haddish’s brand of humor in her other works, you’ll likely enjoy her in The Freak Brothers. If not, you probably don’t want to keep this frisky feline as your pet. Finally, you have the Workaholics stars, Adam Devine and Blake Anderson, as Chuck and Charlie, the show’s comic reliefs. They’re all right regarding their performances, but like the series’s humor, the “Chuck Twins” are far from crowd-pleasing.

Overall, the first half of the show’s sophomore season isn’t freaky enough to change my mind about its execution toward its concept. The adult humor is abundant enough to the point of being unfunny and tiring, and its plots and animation don’t help much to deliver the “ultimate high”. Fortunately, its talented voice cast for the series’s dense characters provided enough enjoyable moments to keep me from kicking the brothers out of my house. I won’t be surprised if the season’s upcoming final four episodes offer the same amount of weed as its first half. However, I am also hoping that the second half’s drug trip will be a tad more enjoyable than the one I had with the first four.