Once upon a time, during the golden age of crap (i.e., my childhood), cartoons were made for children. Many children who watched several hours a day--isolated from parents, other children, and reality—oddly enough became emotionally retarded. Thus, a potential market was created for cartoons once these kids became adults (or as they are more commonly known, “losers”).

By the 1990’s, there were enough child-adults channel surfing between infomercials and reruns of "Full House" to justify the creation of cartoons aimed at the “failure to launch” crowd. One such overarching attempt was “Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist.”

Oddly, the most appalling aspect of the show is not the lame writing or two-dimensional voice acting, but the low-budget animation technique invented by one of the show’s cheapskate producers. This type of animation, charmingly referred to as “Squigglevision,” should more aptly be called “Car Sick Vision,” as it involves taking a static drawing and vibrating it to give the illusion of animation. After watching a couple of episodes, I wasn’t sure if my splitting headache and nausea were due to the animation or the writing. Truly, it’s a bad sign for a show when the budget is so low the producer can’t even afford to outsource to a company using Chinese prison labor and has to resort to fake animation that makes "Clutch Cargo" look like a Pixar Studios production.

The show revolves around the life of bland, soft-spoken psychiatrist, Dr. Katz, played by Jonathan Katz. Of course, his medical office wouldn’t be complete without a self-centered, cynical, humorless receptionist, whose name I can’t remember, but who I think of as “Bitch.” Bitch is played by comedian Sarah Silverman’s sour older sister, Laura. The other major character is Dr. Katz’s useless son, Ben, played by H. Jon Benjamin. Ben is 24, unemployed and still lives at home. If Ben were a real person, he’d probably enjoy watching “Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist.” There are two other minor characters barely worth mentioning. One is a personable alcoholic Katz hangs out with at a yuppie bar, and the other is voiced by one of the show’s producers (to save money, no doubt).

In between glacially-paced vignettes from Dr. Katz’s moribund life are segments where he treats patients. These patients are played by actors who are allegedly comedians. Except that you’ve never heard of most of them, except for Ray Romano and Joy Behar, who you wish you’d never heard of. I suspect that the majority of these so-called comedians are actually relatives of the producers, who work even cheaper than D-list hack comedians who are one step away from cleaning up illegal immigrant vomit at Walmart.

Like "Seinfeld", this show is about nothing. Even worse, this show IS nothing. And, although one set of this 13 DVD waste of precious natural resources costs less than an hour with a real psychiatrist, the damage done to your psyche by watching “Dr. Katz” might cause more damage to your mind than even Sigmund Freud could repair.

--Oddball