Category: tv

Just my luck, as soon as I start watching this series, Netflix cancels it. But maybe that means the show will leave behind a positive legacy like the first three seasons of Arrested Development and not live long enough to become the villain (like Arrested Development). At only two seasons, though, American Vandal is a delight. It excels so much at being a mockumentary that you’ll frequently forget it’s all fake. This isn’t like the Christopher Guest films, where the whole thing feels almost like the cast is holding back laughter from being in on the joke. American Vandal is played dead serious, which only makes it funnier when the investigation gets more ridiculous.

Of course, the crimes in Season 2 veer on the gross side way more than Season 1 did. Watching found footage of the “Brownout” event (a.k.a. school-wide diarrhea) is pretty disturbing, real or not. But it’s kind of strange that we’re also shown reenactments of this and many other events with staged actors. Season 1 felt very grounded and down-to-earth, since the entire thing was a mash-up of whatever footage the crew could film on their own, beholden to the restrictions of their school’s rules. With fake funding from Netflix, however, Season 2 is more “professional” but, consequently, not as endearing.

Nevertheless, Season 2 is a fun mystery to watch unravel. Because the crimes are more sinister, the show is a bit darker, but there’s still some great humor to glean. Watching the filmmakers argue over the use of emojis as the perp’s telltale makes so much sense but is also so bizarre, you can’t help but laugh. American Vandal’s use of social media is eerily spot-on and makes me glad I didn’t go to high school during this era. I knew a couple of Kevin McClains myself and could totally see their antics going viral on YouTube. Damn, American Vandal, why do you have to know us so well? It’s a shame the show’s canceled now, because I would have loved to see where they went with a third season.

For a show that’s supposed to be about the struggles of puberty, Big Mouth sure wastes a lot of time following the adventures of the adults. Coach Steve was one of my least favorite aspects of Season 1, so it’s pretty annoying that he’s still a major player in Season 2. The character is simply not funny, and Nick Kroll’s Steve voice is absolutely grating. Kroll does not have the same vocal talents of Seth MacFarlane and can only do about 2-3 good voices. Unfortunately, Kroll plays more characters than necessary and ends up ruining a lot of the show’s potential. Lola would be a much more endearing character, for instance, if she were voiced by an actual woman and not Kroll doing his best “bitchy voice.”

It also feels like, this time around, the kids don’t have as much to learn. They were actually giving Coach Steve advice during their sex ed class. And so this feels less like an honest take on growing up and more like just a really raunchy sitcom. The season’s not a complete wash, though. There are still some great themes at play that balance the gross with the sweet. I ended up really liking the addition of the Shame Wizard, particularly in the two-parter gym episodes where he drills into everyone’s insecurities with cruel glee. Big Mouth is still a weirdly charming show that excels at anthropomorphising our most private thoughts. It just needs to stop going out of its way to be “funny,” because it’s never a good look when you’re obviously trying too hard.

I like John Krasinski, but I don’t think he was the right person for this role. He excels at being the lovable goof or put-upon smart guy, which is why the scenes of him in the CIA “office” worked, but as soon as they shoved him into the field, gun in hand, it was hard to take him seriously. I get that that’s kind of Jack Ryan’s thing, balancing office smarts with tactical know-how, and that there’s inherent, internal conflict that comes with that. However, I didn’t really see it in Krasinski’s performance and, in his defense, the writing, either. Jack Ryan wasn’t so much a person as he was a crutch to move the plot forward.

The story is somewhat oddly structured, though. For many episodes, the good guys are simply too close to capturing their terrorist target, deflating some of the intensity that you would get in a show like 24 where the terrorists are always one step ahead. Here, it’s pretty obvious they’re gonna get their guy. It’s only in the last few episodes that things heat up, but part of that heat-up is because we’re really rushed through the final stages of Mousa Bin Suleiman’s evil plan. I criticize Netflix a lot for having overlong seasons, but Amazon could have really benefited from 1-2 more episodes.

That, or cut out the sub-plot with the drone pilot. I kept waiting for this to tie into the bigger story, but it just never paid off. It ended up being a really weird thing to include. The plot I did like, though, was getting to watch Suleiman’s wife become disillusioned with what was going on and try to flee with her children. It was nice to get that human glimpse into the “other side” instead of the usual “Muslims hate America” rhetoric, though there’s plenty of that, too. The show loves to remind you that 9/11 happened (and could happen again), but I suppose it handles these topics with a little more grace than you might have seen 5-10 years ago.

I’m glad that Matt Groening finally got to work on something other than The Simpsons or Futurama for once, but Disenchantment is easily the weakest of the Groening trifecta. And, yeah, that’s not very fair to say this soon, because his other works took a while to find their footing. I think Disenchantment has the potential to turn into something really funny and charming, though. Much like Futurama’s sci-fi setting, a fantasy landscape is perfect for random, zany adventures. Plus, with the story taking place in medieval times, that means no obnoxious “celebrity of the week” cameos. That’s already a huge improvement over modern-day Simpsons.

The problem with the show in its current state is that it feels so small-scale and empty. Bean and her two sidekicks aren’t intriguing enough to carry each episode on their own, and the supporting cast is pretty limited and seldom seen. John DiMaggio as King Zog is great, of course. John DiMaggio is great in everything. But he’s really the only side character that stands out and doesn’t always—and maybe to good effect—get much screen time. Nat Faxon as Elfo, on the other hand, is fun in small doses but is in the show a little too much. If they can find the right balance with their characters, then I think the jokes will start to fall into place and feel more natural. As is, I’m interested… but not a fan yet.

It’s hard watching one of your favorite TV shows grow old. While it’s pretty neat that services like Netflix are willing to resurrect 10-year old properties (and even more miraculous that the original cast and crew are still willing to be a part of it), I think I would have preferred for Arrested Development to rest in peace after three perfect seasons. 2013’s Season 4 was definitely messy. It was a fun experiment and had its moments of greatness, but it clearly struggled to get the cast all in one room and tried too hard to tell a cohesive story. Five years later, Season 5 struggles again to pick up where Season 4 left off, weighed down by some of the plot points the prior season unfortunately set up for it.

Season 5 works best when it’s not trying to be a sequel. Once we get into newer storylines—like Maeby pretending to be a senior citizen or Michael finding out about the family’s beach cottage—glimpses of the original Arrested Development start to shine through. This is also helped by the fact that the cast interacts with each other more. This isn’t a hodgepodge of character-specific vignettes anymore. Scheduling conflicts are obviously still at play, though, since some characters seem to rarely run into each other, and Lindsay is altogether banished to green-screen hell. Honestly, if Portia de Rossi can’t be there in-person, they should just write her out. It was really distracting how fake her presence was.

At the end of the day, Season 5 is a lot better than Season 4 but isn’t nearly as good as the original run. The cast just feels worn out, and the writing isn’t as snappy. Young Arrested Development excelled at setting up jokes in early episodes that paid dividends later on or slowly escalating recurring one-liners until they became old hat. Season 5’s running joke about Michael not knowing about the beach cottage was funny but was the only joke that felt truly “Arrested.” Other times, it seemed like the show was setting something up but would then deliver the punchline during the same scene. In the era of streaming, it feels weird for a once progressive TV show to dumb down its long-game cleverness.

Whew, I finally did it! I made it through the new season! I wasn’t expecting this to be such a chore, but I think that’s largely because it’s hard to dedicate time to a 90-minute TV show anymore. I’ve found that I much more enjoy watching 30-minute bad movie reviews on YouTube. I really am a sucker for critiquing bad movies, though. I grew up on the original MST3K show, but those episodes are hard to rewatch, because a lot of the humor was timely. So a reboot/return was definitely due. While you could argue that RiffTrax has been a great alternative, nothing beats an actual guy and his robot buddies sitting in front of a screen and physically pointing out the absurdities.

That is, until the new cast spoke. Their voices were so off-putting. Tom Servo’s voice actor didn’t even try to do a “Tom” voice, and he ends up sounding too much like the new host, Jonah, making it difficult at times to keep track of who’s talking. Crow still sounds somewhat Crow-like, though, a feasible jump similar to Beaulieu being replaced by Corbett in the show’s original run. Gypsy is also completely wrong, and her occasional pop-ins during the movie segments never worked for me. They really hammed up the “people sitting in front of a screen” shtick, as the characters interact with the movie way more (and way more distractingly) than they ever did before.

But with MST3K, the setting is all fluff, anyway. It’s the jokes that matter! And the jokes are a mile-a-minute in this new iteration. There’s rarely a moment where Noah and the bots aren’t saying something. However, that means that fewer jokes actually land. Singing a line from a song isn’t even really a joke, and yet it’s something they fall back on time and time again. Many jokes are also obviously scripted. Yeah, I know, the show’s been scripted from the start, but at least the original episodes felt organic. Mike Nelson constantly broke character and laughed, which made it more funny. There are a few moments like that in The Return, but maybe the problem is that the new cast just hasn’t fully warmed up to the system yet.