• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 3 hours ago

Animated sitcoms sometimes raise a question: Why is this show animated?

Take the new Netflix sitcom premiering Tuesday. Titled “Dang!” The half-hour show is about the family dynamic of three 20-something siblings living in New York.

On the face of it, this cartoon comedy about a dysfunctional family would easily work as a live-action, non-animated sitcom with real-life actors and a laugh track.

But Episode One of “Dang!,” which the TV Blog previewed on Friday, demonstrated once again that animation allows a greater range of creativity.

For example, one sight gag in the episode involved a rat humping a cockroach. Try doing that in live action!

Episode One also has an elaborate, acrobatic chase scene through a corporate office that is inspired by non-animated action movies. 

A sequence such as this one is much cheaper to make in animation than a live-action version (or so I presume).

One of the most notable traits of animated sitcoms like “Dang!” that does not translate well to live action is the ways in which the characters behave, mainly in how they react to various situations.

In “Dang!,” they react with exaggerated motions and facial expressions that would be derided in live-action TV shows and movies as ceaseless mugging.

In these ways, “Dang!” justifies its animation. In cartoons, ceaseless mugging is more or less acceptable.

The title of “Dang!” is a reference to the family name of these sibs, which is Dang. The name is supposed to be vaguely Asian, although this was not entirely clear in Episode One.

The sibs comprise one brother and two sisters. The brother, Andrew Dang, works in the development of websites, and we see him comically getting fired in the show’s opening scene.

His sister, Eunice Dang, is a jobless 26-year-old who makes money on a web platform modeled on OnlyFans. 

The third sibling is Ruthie Dang, an attorney who is more successful than her brother and sister. As a result, Andrew and Eunice hold her in contempt.

At the outset of the series, Andrew and Eunice are roommates in a New York apartment. Soon, however, Ruthie comes to them in a crisis and she ends up living with them too. In a nutshell, the above description sums up the show’s sitcom situation. 

One aspect of animated shows lies in their ability to run for years without ever aging their characters. 

The TV Blog predicts that “Dang!” will not be around long enough to take advantage of this unique feature.

“Dang!” starts streaming Tuesday (September 8) on Netflix.