YMMV / Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist

• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Has a fanbase in Latin America, thanks to airing on animation channel Locomotion.
• Growing the Beard: Arguably, the later half of season 3 is when the show really improved; the energy level was higher, the father/son tension between Dr. Katz and Ben was lessened, the improvised dialog was more tightly edited to produce the most laughs, and Laura periodically lightened up a bit. In her own way, of course.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • One of guest Jon Stewart's bits was how America needed a new enemy, now that communism isn't relevant. The episode in question was from 1996; only five years later, America would get an enemy in the form of Al Qaeda. And we can't forget about North Korea...
  • Any of the Self-Deprecation jokes that John Pinette made about being fat stopped being as funny after he died of heart disease in 2014.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One episode had Dr. Katz and his son humorously discussing horror movies where the killers were little people. In 2009, Warner Brothers released Orphan.
  • The last episode of the series concerned Dr. Katz noticing that Conan O'Brien used his jokes in a monologue on his show. Guess what happened in 2017?
  • Jon Stewart had a bit about how the U.S. should make Canada its enemy. This is three years before such a thing was a plot point in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.
• Ho Yay: Dom Irrera constantly hits on Katz.
• Older Than They Think: A lot of the veteran comedians' material has been part of their act since the '80s. It's not uncommon to watch an old Johnny Carson episode and see a comedian doing a routine that would be done in Dr. Katz ten years later.
• Padding: "Day Planner" ended up this way, largely because guest Rodney Dangerfield only gave the staff about three minutes of material to work with. This is why there are two other guest stars in the episode, to make up for the shortage of Rodney material.
• Spiritual Successor: With its largely improvised dialogue and conceit of comedians playing themselves, Dr. Katz definitely feels like the spiritual predecessor to Curb Your Enthusiasm.
  • Comedy Central's Shorties Watching Shorties was basically the same premise: Animating the audio of stand-up routines. It was produced by a different company, though, and was animated in Flash instead of Squigglevision.
  • Home Movies became its true spiritual successor, since they're both dialogue-heavy cartoons with very limited animation that both happened to be produced by the same company with most of the same crew.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • Aside from Todd the video store clerk, computers are scarce: In an early episode, Dr. Katz announces to Laura that the office will be upgrading to a computerized filing system, but nothing ever seems to come of it. In another episode, Dr. Katz also mentions that he has a computer while talking to guest Marc Maron, but it's never shown on-screen.
  • In "The Particle Board", Marc Maron complains about how his friend is always trying to get him on the internet. This was in 1996. The whole idea of being reluctant to use the internet seems laughable today.
  • Also zig zagged with the comedians who guest star. Many of them are still well known today ^note  Jon Stewart, Marc Maron, Jim Gaffigan, Joy Behar, Tom Kenny (especially for a series that came out, Louis CK, etc. but some are no longer alive ^note  Mitch Hedberg, John Pinette, Robert Schimmel, Gilbert Gottfried, Gary Shandling. and some are simply obscure ^note  Has anyone heard of Tom Agna? Or James Leemer, who doesn't even have a profile image on Behind the Voice Actors?

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