2020-03-26 The Hollywood Reporter

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 75 MARCH 26, 2020

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but the seventh episode made me

laugh hard. I guess I ended up

feeling like the first season was

a frustration. A lot of the class

struggle the show was trying to

depict was semi-timely. What I

never got was any level of satire

beyond that. Still, I found Hugh

Laurie consistently engaging;

when they gave Zach Woods

enough to do, he was hilariously

unhinged; and this may be the

juiciest part Suzy Nakamura has

ever had. But that’s sort of liking

the show for its pedigree rather

than what said pedigree is being

deployed in service of.

I felt the same way about HBO’s

The Outsider. Great auspices!

Stephen King! Richard Price!

Emmy winner Jason Bateman!

Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo,

who’s great once she shows up,

poor, dumb Wile E. steps on a

string of bear traps he’s laid out

for the Road Runner, and that’s

sort of how I feel right now. The

show that inspired my observa-

tion of this deceptive-pedigree

moment was HBO’s Avenue 5,

which seemed to have everything

going for it: cherished creator

Armando Iannucci (Veep), a cast

of comedy veterans (Hugh Laurie,

Zach Woods, Josh Gad) and a

genius premise of a spaceship

cruise gone awry and the vari-

ous performances of authority

and expertise that quickly reveal

their hollow core. Wrapping up

just as the White House finally

began to take the coronavirus

seriously, it even derived some

unexpected relevance with the

DANIEL FIENBERG We’ve all spent

a lot of time recently staring

at picked-over grocery-store

shelves, pondering why one kind

of peanut butter is out of stock

while another remains. It ’s t he

same when we look at our TV

options in these long, socially

distanced or quarantined days

and nights. Who doesn’t know

the feeling of having an hour for

free viewing and wasting that

time looking over the menu bars

at Netflix? Often, of course, what

jumps out is the show from the

big-name creator or headlined by

the A-list star, when the reality

is that some of the best stuff out

there is the stuff that doesn’t

come with that pedigree, that

preordained aura of prestige.

INKOO KANG I think I saw a Wile

E. Coyote cartoon once where

The Pitfalls of Pedigree TV

Recent shows created or headlined by big names (Iannucci! Witherspoon! Pacino!) have disappointed — providing

a chance for homebound viewers to discover less prestigious but more pleasurable offerings By Daniel Fienberg and Inkoo Kang

flailing of its fictional leader in

the face of calamity mirroring

our own country’s leadership. But

holy moly, did it underdeliver on

nearly every level of execution.

Writers and artists are of course

prone to missteps, and mistakes

might even be necessary to the

creative process, because how else

are people to learn and evolve?

But Avenue 5’s fatal unfunniness,

grating characters and curiously

uninvolving storylines certainly

reminded me that there’s no such

thing as a “sure thing.”

FIENBERG I gave Avenue 5 a some-

what positive review because I felt

like the third and fourth episodes

showed improvement. Then the

fifth and sixth episodes were

generally chaotic and unfunny,

Clockwise from left: Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere, HBO’s Avenue 5, Hulu’s High Fidelity,

Amazon’s Hunters, AMC’s Dispatches From Elsewhere and HBO’s The Outsider.

CRITICS CONVERSATION

Television

Reviews

10rev_opener-3_L [P]{Print}_53633793.indd 75 3/23/20 4:39 PM