When I saw the ad for this show I was pretty excited, I loved Merchant's "Hello Ladies" on HBO so I figured he was capable of great stuff in the post-Gervais partnership era. Walken being in was a plus too as he's reminded me how much I like him as he's popped up in Severance, one of the best new shows on TV. The show started off interesting enough, a bunch of misfit types from different ethnic & socioeconomic backgrounds forced to come together doing community service, and one of the most interesting parts of the show was the flashbacks as to how all of these people got there. I was pretty excited about where this might go, as I was home sick and prepared to watch all 6 episodes as something to take my mind off how I felt. Unfortunately though, the show only really only goes downhill from there, which is so disappointing due to its potential.
I recently started S3 of Atlanta, one of my favorite shows. Donald & Stephen Glover give the viewer great insight into what it's like to be black in America & Europe, too. The unsettling weirdness of being in a world & culture that you're often an outsider in. It's always shown as part of the larger plot or building the characters or setting, perfectly integrated into the story they're trying to tell.
The contrast of going from Atlanta to The Outlaws, which is one of the most heavy handed approaches to discussions about race and woke BS (when I say woke I mean the zealot like religious ideology, not the underlying real and true social issues that exist) I've seen in a long time. I mean it just totally ruined so many parts of the show for me, shoehorning in some comment about someone being a black man or a white cis male or a lesbian when it was completely irrelevant to the story being told. The whole plot line that basically makes the one guy look like a terrible person because he beat up a home invader who was black while his wife and two little girls lay scared upstairs. The worst are two characters, one ultra liberal and one somewhat conservative, who are always arguing about these social issues, especially racial, throughout the show. The only reason they're there is because the writers couldn't think of a better way to work any of this into the story, so they literally just brought a YouTube comment section to life. Why...just, why?! If you can't work this into your story organically, it probably means that it's irrelevant to what you're trying to say! Not everything has to be politically charged.
Anyway, this story had great potential, personally I liked all the characters other than the two I just mentioned, they're one dimensional but that's fine for a story like this. If it was kept lighter and just made a fun story about a diverse group of individuals thrown into a crazy scenario or conversely had gone full on thriller/adventure story with social commentary (which I don't think Merchant has the chops for) it could've been much better, but in it's current form it will just have you feeling like you're being preached at one second while listening to a large woman make jokes about how she "has a great tush" the next.
PS - apparently dozens of people who had written 0 or 1 reviews previously were inspired to give this 9 & 10/10 right after it came out. Nothing suspect about that at all BBC/Amazon 🙄
I recently started S3 of Atlanta, one of my favorite shows. Donald & Stephen Glover give the viewer great insight into what it's like to be black in America & Europe, too. The unsettling weirdness of being in a world & culture that you're often an outsider in. It's always shown as part of the larger plot or building the characters or setting, perfectly integrated into the story they're trying to tell.
The contrast of going from Atlanta to The Outlaws, which is one of the most heavy handed approaches to discussions about race and woke BS (when I say woke I mean the zealot like religious ideology, not the underlying real and true social issues that exist) I've seen in a long time. I mean it just totally ruined so many parts of the show for me, shoehorning in some comment about someone being a black man or a white cis male or a lesbian when it was completely irrelevant to the story being told. The whole plot line that basically makes the one guy look like a terrible person because he beat up a home invader who was black while his wife and two little girls lay scared upstairs. The worst are two characters, one ultra liberal and one somewhat conservative, who are always arguing about these social issues, especially racial, throughout the show. The only reason they're there is because the writers couldn't think of a better way to work any of this into the story, so they literally just brought a YouTube comment section to life. Why...just, why?! If you can't work this into your story organically, it probably means that it's irrelevant to what you're trying to say! Not everything has to be politically charged.
Anyway, this story had great potential, personally I liked all the characters other than the two I just mentioned, they're one dimensional but that's fine for a story like this. If it was kept lighter and just made a fun story about a diverse group of individuals thrown into a crazy scenario or conversely had gone full on thriller/adventure story with social commentary (which I don't think Merchant has the chops for) it could've been much better, but in it's current form it will just have you feeling like you're being preached at one second while listening to a large woman make jokes about how she "has a great tush" the next.
PS - apparently dozens of people who had written 0 or 1 reviews previously were inspired to give this 9 & 10/10 right after it came out. Nothing suspect about that at all BBC/Amazon 🙄