They see you when you’re sleeping
We can’t escape (or know) what our pets think of us
“Once again, she locked me in the sex room.”
Nope, that’s not a line from the next Fifty Shades movie. It’s the reaction of Downward Dog’s canine narrator, Martin, after his human, Nan ( Fargo’s Allison Tolman), leaves him trapped in her bedroom during an ill-advised tryst with her ex-boyfriend (Lucas Neff, sporting a look best described as lumber hippie).
“I have a very sensitive sense of smell,” Martin points out as he scratches at the door.
While many dog owners have suspected their pets of silently judging them, Martin actually does. But he doesn’t talk to her. He merely broadcasts her shortcomings (“Nan makes the same mistakes over and over again”) to the audience.
“Dogs are there at all of the most intimate moments,” explains executive producer Samm Hodges, who voices Martin in the eight-episode ABC comedy premiering Wednesday (9:30 ET/PT, then moving to Tuesdays at 8). “They see humans at our highest and lowest points.”
He and co-creator Michael Killen first explored the concept in a series of Web shorts. But adapting Downward Dog into eight half-hour episodes allowed them to use a dog “as a way to observe and reflect the odd humans around him.”
The show also transforms Nan, who never uttered a word in the Web series, into a character interesting enough to entice the Em- my-nominated Tolman.
“Even though it was from the dog ’s point of view,” she says, “we had to explore the human world as well, or they wouldn’t get any human actors who wanted to be background props for a dog show.”
Nan spends her days trying to appease her idiot boss with creative advertising ideas and her nights trying to do right by Martin — and falls short at both. (“We used to go on walks,” he complains. “Now she just kind of shoves me out in this little prison yard and acts like that somehow counts as connection time.”)
As far as Martin is concerned, he and Nan are a couple in a longterm relationship who’ve grown a little too comfortable around each other. Eventually, his eye wanders.
If that sounds human, that’s by design, Hodges says, citing the show’s prime directive: “Whatever Martin’s existential crisis is, it has to be a thing that affects both humans and dogs.”
Killen knows a thing or two about selling talking dogs to an audience. His Animal Studio did the special effects work that put the words “¡ Yo quiero Taco Bell!” in the mouth of the fast-food chain’s chihuahua mascot in the 1990s. The key: “Use as much of the live dog as possible, and use CGI as little as possible.”
It helps when your star has serious hound-dog eyes like Ned, the 4-year-old shelter dog who plays Martin. (“You can see into his soul,” marvels Killen.)
Despite his humble beginnings, Ned developed some Feud- worthy diva tendencies on Dog’s Pittsburgh set.
“He could not handle sharing a set with his stand-in,” Tolman reveals, explaining that he had a habit of trying to murder Stuffy, the plush dog used to adjust the lighting. “We get it, Ned. You’re the star, no need to throw a tantrum.”
The show may be a tough sell for some: “We really are relying a lot on word of mouth with this show because there are people who would avoid a talking-dog show,” Tolman says. “Or their first impression might be like mine, which was, ‘Yikes, that’s not for me.’ ”
But Killen hopes “we’ll get people who are looking for a heartfelt show that feels like it has a lot of truth to it.”
And maybe it will affect viewers’ relationships with their furry friends: “People say, ‘I look at my pet differently now,’ ” Tolman says. “I even do it with my cat, like, ‘ What are you thinking?’ ”