Comedy Central’s
Review is the most insane and
insanely funny show on TV. It has a premise – an overcommitted nerd
reviews audience-submitted life experiences, from eating a truly
upsetting amount of pancakes to using a glory hole to staying in a
haunted house to eating even more pancakes – that seems naturally suited
for a series of sketches. And while each episode is basically
structured as a triptych of largely self-contained reviews, there is a
continuity tracking the utter destruction of host Forrest MacNeil’s
life, and that of his loved ones, as well as any number of unfortunate
bystanders, in this pursuit. It’s this continuity that makes the show
into a shockingly dark, stealthily insightful satire of the risks of
disassociating ourselves from our own experiences, as these crazy modern
times wut we lives in makes it easier and easier to do.
As someone who spends much of his free time dissecting and
criticizing what should by all accounts be leisure activities, Forrest’s
position as a reviewer who destroys his own life by dissecting and
rating it resonates with me on a rather specific level. While having an
intermittent TV blog does not put me in much danger of being stranded
on an oceanic trash flotilla or shot by my father with a bow and arrow, I
do sometimes worry that, for example, I may have soured myself on
True Detective’s universally-beloved first season by forcing myself to put each episode under the microscope on a weekly basis. I love
Game Of Thrones
to bits, which I why I’ve chosen to write extensive analyses of its
last 30 episodes, despite literally no one asking me to do that. But
does forcing myself to adopt a pose of semi-objective even-handedness,
to obsess over the bad parts and vivisect the good ones, actually make
me enjoy it any more?
 |
“I’m
going to cover your request in butter and syrup, and dig in to try to
find some important deep meaning in a giant, steaming pile of
flapjacks.”
|
Review would suggest the opposite. The act of
reviewing life turns Forrest’s own into a parade of horrors that would
make Job weep in pity – except that our guy is bringing it all directly
upon himself. It’s not the first narrative to satirize the act of
criticism, but what makes
Review’s take stand out is
that it avoids the standard saw that critics are just bitter hacks who
tear down works of true genius out of jealousy. No matter how much
truth there may be to that assessment, it is always going to feel
self-serving coming from the pen of someone whose work is subject to
attack by such critics. But there is not the slightest trace of
bitterness in Forrest’s disposition. He’s full of enthusiasm for his
work no matter how much it costs him, though it doesn’t take long for it
to cost him so much that he has to either double down or face the
reality that he gave up so much for nothing. He’s a million miles from
one the spiteful caricatures you’ll find in
Birdman or
Lady In The Water, or even Anton Ego. He’s more like Lenny from
Of Mice And Men,
petting his beloved rabbits until they die (not, in Forrest’s case,
before leaving him with a drug-resistant strain of gonnorhea).
 |
“Take
note: this is apparently one of the things that can happen
when you are
so determined to have sex on an airplane
that you hire a prostitute to
travel with you.”
|
And so
Review’s needling of the critical mindset
never betrays the defensiveness you can feel in so many of these sorts
of depictions. It feels a great deal of compassion for Forrest, and by
extension all of us blogging, Yelp-ing folks who are prone to
exsanguinate the things we love most, sacrificing our own enjoyment of
our experiences in the name of some critical distance that no one else
gives much of a shit about anyway.
 |
“Spending
time alone on a rowboat is a horrifying and desperate
struggle for
survival that cuts a man off from his life and
love ones, and frequently
makes him wish for death.”
|
Because the other important facet of Forrest’s character is that for
all his suitability as a crash test dummy, he is an absolutely atrocious
critic. He takes great pains to paint his reviews in the pretense of
objectivity, while the results could not be any more wildly subjective.
Fed a steady stream of dangerous, horrifying tasks, he consistently
takes them to horrifying, destructive ends that he nonetheless treats as
if they are the natural, essentially inevitable, outcome. The pretense
of randomness allows him to abdicate responsibility for his actions,
and he embraces that excuse to behave transgressively with nerdy gusto.
 |
“Arbitrary
choices could lead to inspired exhilaration, or aiding
in the escape of
a violent felon. In the end, it is always better to captain
one’s ship
on gut instinct. If I crash into the rocks of life, I
want it to be
because I steered the ship there myself.”
|
The effect is that seemingly innocuous tasks like visiting space or
spending time alone in a rowboat consistently lead to the worst results,
and receive lower ratings than self-evident horrors like being buried
alive or founding a cult. If there’s a “message” from
Review
to its audience/critics (and in the internet age, how meaningful is
such a distinction?), it’s not to worry about being objective or
categorizing your experiences. If Forrest was capable of living in the
moment every now and then, his father-in-law may not have died in space,
he wouldn’t be reduced to catfishing his ex-wife, or a diet that swings
between hand-murdered raw seabird and really, just an
ungodly
amount of pancakes, or be left with weird, frequently infected genitals,
and of course he would not have been shot, stabbed, institutionalized,
fallen off bridges, or kicked in the balls nearly as much.
“Life: it’s literally all we have. But is it any good?” Forrest asks
at the beginning of each episode. But the season 2 (series?) finale
closes with his chipper, vaguely sociopathic co-hostess opining “Life!
You’re already living it! Ain’t it great?” It is at that, AJ. Even
when it’s horrifying, and hilarious, and random. Kind of like your
show.
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