Sealab 2021
Undersea workplace meltdown with the greatest captain in Adult Swim history. The Venturini and Sparks years are peak. 52 episodes on Max, most quotable show nobody admits watching.
Cast & Key People
Our Review
Cartoon Network’s Hanna-Barbera archive raid continues underwater, and Sealab 2021 is the one that aged into immortality. The premise is a workplace sitcom played entirely as a nervous breakdown: Captain Murdoch is a war criminal hiding behind a captain’s chair, Dr. Venturini is the only man with a plan and the whole crew hates him for it, Sparks is a golden retriever in a technician’s jumpsuit, and the show finds 52 episodes of comedy in the friction between those three men.
The early season leans on the absurd, the later seasons trust the characters, and the pivot is visible and worth watching. Season two onward gives the best episode lineup on early Adult Swim, the Shark Attack episodes, the season two mutiny nobody prevents until it is too late. It holds 7.8 on IMDb and zero cultural footprint relative to how often its lines get quoted by people who pretend they are not quoting it.
Fifty two episodes on the Max Adult Swim shelf. Put season two on and watch a channel’s identity form in real time. Eight out of ten.
