WiC Watches: Avenue 5

Image: Avenue 5/HBO

Episode 9: “Eight Arms But No Hands”

Well, the first season of Avenue 5 has come to an end, and mostly I think…there are worse shows out there?

Although probably not many on HBO. The high point for Avenue 5 definitely came last week, when “we watched seven people stupid themselves to death,” as Captain Clark put it. In exploring the aftermath of that event, “Eight Arms But No Hands” has fun bouncing the characters off each other. But this is still far short of the most electrifying cast in comedy.

There’s an unpleasant herky-jerky way the show heaves from one scene to another. There’s a bit in the middle of this episode, for example, where everyone is looking for Matt, who’s hidden himself after changing the airlock codes, meaning they can’t jettison all the passengers’ junk into space and shave years off their travel time. Doug and Mia and Spike and a bunch of other people gather in an office and Doug gets into a wrestling match with Mads, the hot-but-dumb crew member Mia has been sleeping with. There no build-up to it, and no cool-down. Neither character is deep enough for the fight to have real stakes, and the whole thing is over and done with before it builds any real comic momentum. It’s just not really doing anything for anybody.

Every episode has scenes like this. There’s another floater of a scene between Iris and Karen, who make…I think they’re supposed to be jokes?…about whether Karen and Captain Clark are sleeping together. The show has a fine ensemble cast, it just doesn’t have much of a reason for them to exist.

That said, the characters have become more interesting as the show’s gone along, and there were some fun moments tonight. I enjoyed seeing Rav slap Judd…twice. I mean, someone had to do it. Judd was actually a highlight throughout, whether he was getting giddy over Clark’s new take-charge attitude or mewling like a baby as the shuttle left with Iris, one of the few people on board who actually didn’t want to leave the ship, in the passenger seat. “Iris,” he wails as she blasts off, “you were like a coworker to me.”

I’ve also gotten more used to the very stylized language on this show. I chuckled at Captain Clark describing the dearly departed Sarah as having a “potato-y grandeur.” And here he is on his lack of leadership ability: “I had the decision-making powers of a pigeon in a library…I saw a pigeon in a library once. It did not make good decisions.” This kind of circular comedy writer-speak doesn’t work as well on Avenue 5 as it did on Veep, in part because I’m never sure exactly what the context is (tonight we learn that Barney Rubble and Audrey Hepburn are still points of reference in the future) and in part because the writers turned the quirk up to 11 right from the start, but I am developing more of an ear for it.

At the same time, the finale doesn’t feature any crowd work, which has kind of been the distinguishing feature of Avenue 5 since it began. This played out more like a standard sitcom, with the hundreds of passengers boiled down to the small group we actually know. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if the show wants to last, and apparently it does, it should lean in to what makes it interesting. If you’ve read these reviews, you’ll know I don’t have a terribly high opinion of its sitcom fundamentals.

At the end of the episode, Karen jettisons all of the gathered luggage off the ship in the wrong direction, knocking the Avenue 5 off course and stretching its journey through space to eight years, at least. HBO has renewed the show for a second season, and who knows: maybe Iannucci and crew can find a version of the series that works. But eight years? Let’s have a decent season of TV before we commit to that.

Episode Grade: B-

Season Grade: C

Bullet Points…In Space!

• “Life without you would be…the only word I can think of is ‘easier.'”
• “We are gonna find him, we are gonna get the code, and we are gonna kill him.”
• “Maybe I should shave this off. It’s giving me delusions of wisdom.”
• “All this time I’ve been unduly pleasant to everyone and there’s been a way to get off?”
• The plot contrivances on this show are very…contrived. They have to get Joe’s hands for print recognition? If that was a possibility why did they launch his dead body into space in the first place? Although I did like when Cyrus showed up with the body parts in a plastic bag. “Do you only have a clear bag?” “No, it took me a while to find this.”
• “My patience has snapped like a 200-year-old breadstick!”
• “The door is closed.” “Yeah, I’m allowed to have it like that when we go into space.”

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