Pinky and the Brain

Our Review

Animaniacs spawned the best spinoff in animation history, and it is still a talking lab mouse sitcom that never once explains itself. Pinky and the Brain follows two mice from Acme Labs, one a hyperactive cockney goofball and the other a genius with a head shaped like a filing cabinet and one goal: world domination, tonight, like every other night.

Tom Ruegger built the duo as a double act on a spaceship budget of two characters and a lab cage, and the writing weaponizes that restraint. The Brain monologues, Pinky derails, and the plans collapse in ways that roast corporate culture, academia, and television itself from the inside. Maurice LaMarche gives the Brain an Orson Welles gravity that makes the failures funnier, while Rob Paulsen plays Pinky like champagne poured over a golden retriever.

The side characters (Billie, the Board of Mice, the Snowball arc) hold up better than most shows’ main plots, and the series earned two Emmys doing it. The genius and his idiot partner is the oldest double act in comedy, and this might be its animation peak.

Our score: 8.5/10. Start anywhere, every night is world domination night.