Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Paradise PD’ On Netflix, Which Is Basically ‘Brickleberry’ With More Swearing

If you were a fan of the bawdy fun of Comedy Central’s Brickleberry then the team behind it — Roger Black and Waco O’Guin — are back with Paradise PD, only this time the cuffs (so to speak) are off because it’s on Netflix. Is it as funny as their first show?

PARADISE PD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We see children’s drawings by Kevin Crawford (Dave Herman), and we hear a voice over from him about how he always wanted to be a cop, just like his dad, Paradise PD chief Randall Crawford (Tom Kenny).

The Gist: In a flashback, we see that Randall was so loose with his gun that Kevin managed to pick it up and shoot both of his dad’s testicles accidentally as he was about to make love to Kevin’s mom Karen (Grey Griffin).

Cut to 13 years later; Kevin is an adult who wants to join the force. Randall, balding, needing testosterone patches to keep his moustache from falling off, divorced, and utterly defeated, thinks that his kid can’t handle the job, based on the ball-shooting incident. Encouraged by his mother, who is now mayor, Kevin joins the force anyway; his dad makes him a crossing guard.

The Paradise PD isn’t exactly the world’s finest. The best cop is the super-aggressive Gina Jabowski (Sarah Chalke), who scrapbooks all her collars and is on the verge of 100 arrests. She also has a crush on Dusty Marlow (Dana Snyder), a sexually ambiguous cop whose layers of fat can catch bullets. Gerald Fitzgerald (Cedric Yarbrough) is so paralyzed with PTSD he can’t do anything. And the K-9 officer, Bullet (Kyle Kinane) is completely hooked on all the drugs he’s had to sniff.

Our Take: Paradise PD is not only brought to us by the same team who created Comedy Central’s Brickleberry — Roger Black and Waco O’Guin — but it basically looks like the same show, except the forest rangers of the former show have been replaced by an inept small-town police force.

But, being on Netflix instead of basic cable gives Black, O’Guin and their team the freedom to just let it all hang out. Believe it or not,  compared to Paradise PD, Brickleberry felt relatively chaste and restrained. The word “fuck” flows freely here, and they not only imply that the Chief’s balls got shot out, they actually show the bullet heading towards his scrotum. That’s just one of the many more-blue-than-needed jokes that obscure what’s actually a decent story with interesting characters.

In general, Kevin has always wanted approval from his dad, and his dad just can’t give it to him, even when Kevin finds the source of the argyle meth that’s been infecting the town. But the Chief isn’t exactly the alpha male he once was anymore; he thinks the only reason Karen left him was because he no longer had testicles, so he can’t see that she left him because he’s a misogynist jerk who always thinks he’s right.

We loved how committed Kenny, who most people know as the voice of SpongeBob Squarepants, is to the distraught Chief, and Chalke and Yarbrough are especially good at their respective roles (we’re Chalke fans, anyway, and her take on the maniacally violent Gina completely makes the personality-free role she played on Roseanne this past season a distant memory).

But we also know that restraint aren’t exactly in Black and O’Guin’s wheelhouse. So expect to see more genital jokes and other blue material get in the way of story for the show’s entire season.

Sex and Skin: Besides the ball shot, we see a bunch of Bullet’s dog buddies having a blast with the stuff from the department’s evidence room, including a chihuahua being permanently attached to a bigger dog in, um, an inappropriate spot.

Parting Shot: The meth kingpin that Kevin helped catch, Tommy Two-Toes, is shot in the head in his cell by a mysterious assailant.

Sleeper Star: People know Kyle Kinane from his stand-up act or as the voice of Comedy Central, but he’s pretty funny as the constantly high Bullet.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Kevin goes to a movie rental store that’s the source of the argyle meth, the hillbillies in charge give lines that are actually very specific movie titles, a joke that runs about two instances too long.

Our Call: SKIP IT. If it were just a little bit funnier, we’d recommend it. But it’s just not worth sitting through the many unfunny, dirty gags to get to the good stuff.

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, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch Paradise PD on Netflix