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''Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist'' is an American animated series that originally ran on Comedy Central from May 28, 1995 to December 24, 1999, with a final set of three shelved episodes airing in 2002, starring Jonathan Katz, Jon Benjamin, and Laura Silverman. The show was created by Burbank, California production company Popular Arts Entertainment (executive producers: Tim Braine, Kevin Meagher, and David Pritchard), with Jonathan Katz and Tom Snyder, developed and first made by Popular Arts for HBO Downtown Productions. Boston-based Tom Snyder Productions became the hands-on production company, and the episodes were usually produced by Katz and Loren Bouchard. It won a Peabody Award in 1998.〔(58th Annual Peabody Awards ), May 1999.〕 The show was computer-animated in a crude, easily recognizable style produced with the software Squigglevision (a device Snyder had employed in his educational animation business) in which all persons and animate objects are colored and have constantly squiggling outlines, while most other inanimate objects are static and usually gray in color. The original challenge Popular Arts faced was how to repurpose recorded stand-up comedy material. To do so, they based Dr. Katz's patients on stand-up comics for the first several episodes, simply having them recite their stand-up acts. The secondary challenge was how to affordably animate on cable TV at the time. Snyder (a boyhood friend of Braine's) had Squigglevision, an inexpensive means of getting animation on cable, which could not afford traditional animation processes. A partnership between Popular Arts, Tom Snyder Productions and Jonathan Katz was formed, and ''Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist'' was born. ==Format== The show focused on the title character, Dr. Jonathan Katz, who was voiced by, and visually based on, the comedian of the same name. Dr. Katz was a professional psychotherapist who had famous comedians and actors as patients, usually two per episode. The comedians' therapy sessions generally consisted of them doing their onstage material while Dr. Katz offered insights or simply let them rant. Meanwhile, therapy sessions featuring actors and actresses offered more interpersonal dialogue between Katz and his patient to better suit their predisposition. Dr. Katz is a very laid-back, well-intended man who enjoys playing the guitar and spending time at the bar with his friend Stanley and the bartender, Julie. Interspersed with these scenes were scenes involving Dr. Katz's daily life, which included his aimless, childish 24-year-old son, Ben (Jon Benjamin), his uninterested and unhelpful secretary, Laura (Laura Silverman), and his two friends: Stanley (Will LeBow), and the barmaid, Julie, voiced by one of the show's producers, Julianne Shapiro. In later episodes, Todd (Todd Barry), the video store clerk, became a regular character. Each show would typically begin with Dr. Katz and Ben at breakfast and initiating a plotline. These plots included events like Ben attempting to become a radio personality, believing he is in possession of ESP, or suffering a moral conundrum after receiving a chain letter. The development of these plotlines would occur in alternation with the segments between Dr. Katz and his guests. The show would end in a similar way each week: while Dr. Katz was in a session with a patient, music signaling the close of the show would begin to play. Katz would acknowledge it by saying, "Whoops, you know what the music means... our time is up" or some variant thereof. Much of the show's content, particularly dialogue between Katz and Ben, was improvised through a process called "retroscripting", in which a vague outline is developed but the actual dialogue is ad-libbed. This style, as well as Squigglevision, would reappear in ''Home Movies'', a cartoon on which many members of the Dr. Katz cast and crew worked. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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