“For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a cop just like my dad.”
Sounds like the first line of an inspirational tale about heroes, justice and the American dream, right?
Wrong. It’s actually the opening of adult animated series Paradise PD, where neither heroes nor justice can be found.
Paradise PD follows the police department of the small town of Paradise through its many, many mishaps. While the show is intended to serve as an absurdist satire of law enforcement, any profound statements it may have about corruption or misuses of power evaporate completely in favor of content so depraved that it’s tough to believe it was ever green-lit for a public audience.
Harsh? Maybe. But Paradise PD refuses to pull a single one of its shameless punches, so it’s only fair we do the same.
Kevin Crawford has spent his entire life looking up to his father, the police chief of Paradise, and dreaming of following his footsteps into law enforcement. After an unfortunate incident during his childhood, however—one involving Kevin, a gun, and a certain crucial part of his father’s anatomy—the police chief has done everything in his power to ensure that never happens.
But Kevin is an adult now, and the police department has lost so much of its funding it really can’t afford to hire anyone else, so he finds himself the newest addition to the Paradise PD, joining a team of horrifically incompetent officers as they wreak havoc throughout the town in the name of justice.
It seems unfair to say that Paradise PD lacks a single redeeming quality. But when the series seems intent on going as depraved as humanly possible, it’s difficult to phrase it any other way.
From explicit (albeit animated) nudity and sexual activity to bloody animated violence to a constant stream of foul language and drug usage, the list of reasons this show is worth watching is very, very short, if it exists at all.
Police officers are depicted as menaces toward innocent civilians, beating and murdering them at every opportunity to run up their numbers. Both male and female nudity is shown, as well as some content so appallingly vulgar it’s difficult to imagine it eliciting a laugh from even the least mature of viewers. Every scene begs the question, “Well, surely they’re not going to show that, are they?”, only to be answered seconds later by, “Oh, well, I guess they are.”
Every once in a while, a television show comes along that restores our faith in the medium, that proves powerful and uplifting stories are still being told in the entertainment industry and that art is still alive and well. Paradise PD, to put it very mildly, is not one of those shows. When it comes to this Netflix adult animation show, this reviewer has only one piece of advice: run away. Run far away.
Kevin’s mother gives birth to her and Randall’s baby, and Kevin quickly finds himself replaced as the favorite son. Video-store owners Robbie and Delbert discover a new civilization growing inside of their giant mutant child Dobby, and Officer Dusty goes on a quest to adopt a new cat.
Dobby terrorizes the town of Paradise while completely naked; explicit male nudity is shown. A homeless man is shown fully nude as well. Female nudity appears when Karen breastfeeds her new baby. The baby, who already acts like an adult, brags about hooking up with women on dating apps and mixes his mother’s breast milk into a cocktail.
Robbie and Delbert discover that people are living inside of Dobby and decide to join them. Because his rows of teeth make going in through the mouth too dangerous, they resolve to enter the other way. Inside of Dobby, the terrain is formed by organs, urine and feces. Hopson, one of the older cops, has become a “sperm rancher” and rides around on giant, horse-like sperms. Later, the cops, Robbie and Delbert, are forced to escape Dobby; both the front and back entrances are blocked off, so Hopson finds a third way out, and that’s about all we can say about that.
Dobby terrorizes the town, tearing people in half and sending animated blood flying everywhere. Kevin’s baby brother shoots him in the leg (to his father’s delight). Dusty has a habit of accidentally killing his cats; his car is shown covered with cat blood and with dead bodies stuck in the tires. He sits on them, squeezes them until their heads explode, splashes them with boiling water and causes their violent deaths in many other unfortunate ways. One of the cats in the shelter hangs himself rather than go home with him.
Randall and his baby participate in a father/son deer hunting competition, during which the deer decide to revolt and fight back against the hunters. They cut off limbs, blow off heads and cause general bloody carnage. We later see the hunters’ heads displayed on pikes.
While giving birth, Kevin’s mother Karen defecates on the table, which Randall mistakes for the baby. We see a fantasy montage of the poop-baby growing into a teenager, smoking marijuana, driving drunk and getting into a bloody car crash.
A priest is shown praying to God looking for approval for his pedophilia. The f-word is used 26 times, the s-word 19 times, “a–” eight times and “b–ch” twice. Graphic references to genitalia are made five times.
Kevin Crawford, son of police chief Randall Crawford, joins the town of Paradise’s police force (much to his father’s chagrin) and sets out to track down a notorious drug dealer.
To list every single instance of adverse content in an episode of Paradise PD would be to write a review the length of the Magna Carta, so be warned that this brief summary covers only the largest of issues, and that many smaller ones still lurk beneath the surface.
Animated nudity and sexual activity are both present within the first few minutes of the episode. A young Kevin walks in on an intimate moment between his parents; his father is naked, and we briefly see full nudity when Kevin accidentally fires a gun at his genitals. This situation is brought up constantly later on, with various graphic references to Randall’s genitalia.
Gina, a female cop extremely prone to violence, gropes Dusty, one of her male coworkers, without his consent (the encounter is intended to be comedic). Later, when Dusty is in the hospital, she lifts up his gown to see underneath; no nudity is shown. Bullet, an anthropomorphic dog on the squad, hosts a party for all the other dogs in town, complete with explicit drug use and simulated sexual activity (no nudity is shown, but the actions are clear and graphic nonetheless). We see a homeless man nude from the waist down with a sock covering his genitals.
The main conflict revolves around an investigation into a local drug dealer, so naturally, drug use is prevalent. The police discover a new type of meth that they dub “argyle meth” due to its unique pattern; labs are shown producing the drug and when a man tries the meth, one of his eyeballs pops out of his head. Bullet the dog struggles with a drug addiction, and when he tries to quit, he is haunted by images of a floating bong and block of cocaine. We see him explicitly snorting cocaine along with other dogs at a party.
Animated blood and violence make frequent appearances. Each of the cops pride themselves on beating up and terrorizing innocent civilians, but none more than Gina, who’s determined to make her 100th arrest by any means necessary. Blood flies as they run through the streets cutting up and shooting anyone they come across. Gina beats up a video store employee and Kevin cuts off a drug dealer’s hand, showing gratuitous blood and exposed bone.
The cops question a pastor at a local church, during which a hobo recruited to the force eats pages from a Bible. Bullet sees a vision of his dog friends in heaven, and after vocalizing his surprise, his friend Buster says “these s—heads have low membership standards.” Vulgar references to urine and feces are made as well; the hobo wets his pants, and a cop named Fitz mimics him.
The f-word is used eight times, the s-word is heard 25 times, “a–” (most commonly attached to ‘hole’ as an insult) is used 15 times, God’s name is taken in vain nine times, and graphic references to both male and female genitalia are heard four times.
Lauren Cook is serving as a 2021 summer intern for the Parenting and Youth department at Focus on the Family. She is studying film and screenwriting at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. You can get her talking for hours about anything from Star Wars to her family to how Inception was the best movie of the 2010s. But more than anything, she’s passionate about showing how every form of art in some way reflects the Gospel. Coffee is a close second.
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