2020-03-26_The_Hollywood_Reporter

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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

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