Praise Petey review: Freeform gives adult animation a whirl

There comes a time in every network or streamer’s life when it gets into the adult-animation game. Cartoons are generally cheaper to make, and with recent series like Netflix’s Arcane and Big Mouth, Max’s Harley Quinn, and Adult Swim’s Tuca & Bertie earning critical acclaim—and scoring star-studded voice casts—the genre is thriving.

So it’s only natural that Freeform would launch its own animated offering: Praise Petey, a new show (out July 21) from comedy stalwart Anna Drezen (SNL, Girls5eva, Miracle Workers). What’s more, it stars Schitt’s Creek Emmy winner Annie Murphy, who recently led AMC’s Kevin Can F**k Himself and anchored a memorable episode of Black Mirror.

Despite this pedigree, based on the five episodes made available to press, Praise Petey isn’t destined to go down in the history books. It’s the type of show you might put on in the background while doing the dishes or folding laundry, or maybe play on your laptop to unwind before bed. It’s a wall-to-wall send-up of TV tropes, ranging from Hallmark romances about a city girl finding love in a small town to peppy comedies about a feisty lady trying to make it in the magazine world (including, ironically, Freeform’s own The Bold Type).

Murphy voices Petey, the “senior assistant editorial assistant” at a Manhattan fashion mag who’s engaged to a blandly appealing guy (and by that, we mean a literal wooden plank named Brian). After she loses her job, discovers her BFF cheating with her fiancé, and watches her apartment go up in literal flames, Petey is fresh out of options.

But she’s in … luck? Turns out her dead dad (Stephen Root), whom she never met, owns a small town in, yes, West Carolina that he’s bequeathed to Petey. When she arrives, she finds out that New Utopia is, in fact, an old-school cult that’s into polygamy, comet-worshipping, and human sacrifice.

Petey begrudgingly accepts her lot as the new charismatic leader, determined to reform the cult and give it a facelift it for the modern era—which, at first, means moving from male boomer to female Gen-Z aesthetics. She’s helped and hindered by her self-assigned new bestie, Eliza (Kiersey Clemons); Mae Mae (Amy Hill), her dad’s most devoted follower; and Bandit (John Cho), a sexy farmer in the vein of, well, Mutt from the first season of Schitt’s Creek.

In fact, from the fish-out-of-water, turns-out-I-own-a-town premise to the heroine’s uncanny resemblance to Murphy, Praise Petey feels like it’s trying to be Schitt’s 2.0—or, at least, a parody of it. And therein lies the problem: There’s no replicating or satirizing a show as beloved and hilarious as Dan and Eugene Levy’s Emmy sweeper. (And Petey is decidedly no Alexis Rose.)

Whereas Schitt’s shines because of its specificity, Praise Petey is generic by design—and there’s only so far a satire can go without an emotional anchor to keep viewers invested. We’re well past the heyday of unrelentingly cynical adult cartoons like Family Guy and Drawn Together. Shows such as Bob’s Burgers (which also once made creative use of an anthropomorphized piece of wood) and BoJack Horseman that lean into complexity, blending fast-paced comedy with genuine pathos, have long since changed the game.

That said, Praise Petey is undeniably charming, with mile-a-minute jokes that land at least … mmm … 70 percent of the time. And heavyweights like Murphy, Cho, Root, and Clemons—not to mention Christine Baranski in a deliciously acidic turn as Petey’s ice-cold mom—make us care at least a little bit about the characters, even if the script doesn’t. The animation is fluid and appealing, and Elson & Co. clearly enjoyed designing blood-red cult robes and big-city fashion alike. (The backgrounds are also bristling with written gags that will give you a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it chuckle.)

And to be honest, in the age of prestige television and comedies that feel more like dramas, we need shows like Praise Petey to take the edge off. Sometimes a flash in the pan is all you need to bring a little sunshine into your day.

Praise Petey premieres July 21 on Freeform