Dream Corp LLC

Our Review

Adult Swim’s strangest therapy allegory: an absent-minded doctor (Jon Gries) runs a dream-therapy clinic where patients are strapped into a tanning-bed-looking contraption and sent into their subconscious, rendered in gorgeous rotoscoped animation. The live-action waking world is shabby and deadpan — the clinic is staffed by a dead-eyed nurse, a cheesy robot, and a lobotomized intern named Randy, whom the show slowly reveals is its actual protagonist.

The dream sequences are the reason to watch: surreal, hand-drawn, genuinely inventive, and often funnier than the frame story. The problem is the frame story — the jokes about dysfunctional healthcare are thin, and the pace is glacial even by Adult Swim standards. But Randy’s arc (a nobody who becomes a god inside dreams, which is the saddest kind of power) gives the show an unexpected melancholy core.

Verdict: Watch it for the animation and the weird. It’s a curiosity, but curiosities have their place.