Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Exploding Kittens’ On Netflix, Where God Is Banished To Earth To Live With A Family As Its Omnipotent Cat

Have you ever gone down the rabbit hole of reading the webcomic The Oatmeal ? We have, and we’ve laughed our butts off at it many, many times. We find it hilarious because its creator, Matthew Inman, sees humans as mostly-dopey, fluid-spewing fleshbags and pets as the flawed heroes that love us (or in the case of cats, tolerate us). But there is also a lot of humanity and feeling underneath the parody. Inman’s animated series based on his popular Exploding Kittens card game brings that combination of silliness and heart to a wider audience.

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Opening Shot: A shot of the gleaming towers of Heaven. God (Tom Ellis) is drinking a martini in a waiting area. An angel comes out and says “The board will see you now.”

The Gist: The board of Heaven Inc. is none too happy with God, due to the fires he accidentally starts and the loud nature shows he plays on his TV. They think he’s out of touch, and the best way for him to get back in touch is to be banished to earth and answer the prayers of a human family there. But he’s going to live there as a cat.

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He finds out he’s Godcat when he lands with a thud on Earth. Aslandeus (David Gborie) and Craig (Tom Kenny), the angels on the board assigned to watch him, tell him he has powers, but they’re limited. Godcat is soon caught by animal control officer Abbie Higgins (Suzy Nakamura), whom he figures out is the person he’s there to help.

Godcat manages to marshal the forces of the other cats at the animal control shelter to break out; he hops on Abbie’s truck as she’s driving home. Somehow, he quickly manages to convince Abbie’s family — role-playing game-creating dad Marv (Mark Proksch), failing YouTuber teen Travis (Kenny Yates) and science-oriented teen Greta (Ally Maki) — that he’s God in cat form. He definitely is a cat, though, as he impulsively pushes things off tables and goes into “cat berserker mode” when he sees a red laser pointer.

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Given how not religious the family is — Abbie believes more in weaponry than religion, being former military — no one knows who prayed to save the Higgins family. He finally goes back and sees the footage of Abbie saying “Dear God, my family’s a mess.” Saying “Dear God” constitutes a prayer, and Godcat is determined to help them in order to get back to heaven.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Co-created by Shane Kosakowski and The Oatmeal ‘s Matthew Inman (Mike Judge and Greg Daniels are also EPs), Exploding Kittens is loosely based on the popular card game of the same name Inman created. Its style reminds us of a slightly more refined version of Inman’s comics, but the comedy vibe is less Family Guy and more Bob’s Burgers .

Our Take: We’ve been a fan of Inman’s The Oatmeal for a long time; we get the biggest laughs from his comics when they depict humans as fluid-spewing flesh bags and pets as flawed heroes. But there has always been a river of humanity running under Inman’s sense of humor, and that’s what we see with Exploding Kittens .

As much as Godcat seems to be a prickly genius who feels that his most perfect creation is the Mantis shrimp, he almost immediately starts caring about the Higgins family and works to help them out. Does he have an ulterior motive? Sure. But when Aslandeus and Craig tell him he’s got a lot to make up for, including people building bathrooms with nautical themes, we can see a scenario where Godcat stays with the Higginses indefinitely, begrudgingly caring for them like most cats end up doing with their human staff, er, caretakers.

There were a number of funny moments in the first episode, but it wasn’t wall-to-wall gags, and that’s a good thing. That feels like Judge and Daniels’ influence. King Of The Hill , which the two of them created, was never about a gag a minute; it built its fanbase with well-drawn characters and good stories. We already have a good idea who each member of the Higgins family is by the end of the first episode, and the longer the show’s writers sit with Godcat and the Higgins family, the deeper their characters will get.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Godcat spies a black cat in the yard next door. When a fire shaped like a pentagram sprouts up around the cat, he realizes that it’s Beelzebub (Sasheer Zamata), who is now on earth as Devilcat. Devilcat horks up a hairball and swallows it while the fire ranges around her.

Sleeper Star: Mark Proksch is always funny as a monotone, nerdy nobody (he plays Colin, the energy vampire, in What We Do In The Shadows , for instance), and he’s pretty funny as Marv Higgins, who loves to torture his family with his extremely complicated role-playing games.

Most Pilot-y Line: After a road rage incident involving a crossbow, where Godcat calls her “Colonel Kurtz”, Abbie sighs and says, “I love being a model citizen.” Talk about delusional.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Exploding Kittens has a surprising amount of heart for a show about a cat who thinks he’s God because, well, he is God.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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