Everyone’s throwing themselves at him. Literally.
Both Gnosia and Apocalypse Touring had pretty lame episodes this week, so I think I may call it on them. The latter had a freaking swimsuit episode of all things. Three episodes in, and already… that. Gnosia just replayed the first episode, but this time, he voted off the lady who was evil before, but it was a different one, so he could be shocked and aghast that… THINGS ARE DIFFERENT. Still the same schtick of everyone sitting at a table, blathering for twenty minutes while he wiffles and waffles. For the cliffhanger? Different characters cycled in.
Impressions:
I said this with the Chitose show too, but the existence of it flubbing this setup so completely makes it hard to be too critical here. It actually has the correct skeleton and general flow of events, even if it ends up leading to the same “I get you, so stop being sad” final destination, which is not great. He tries to get through to her superficially, fails, goes to talk to his friends, gets a pick me up speech and has a minor epiphany, returns to try again, fails again, both get frustrated and emotional, finally a true epiphany and breakthrough. The trying and failing, but picking yourself up and trying again, is a critical part of showing actual development and struggle, as is the actual emotion and frustration. A couple combative one-liners and the most half-assed “you don’t get me” don’t cut it. Or perhaps it’s the pacing in general. What is tolerable as a little 30 second aside readily becomes obnoxious as a five minute proselytizing speech. Same with a couple minutes “yay for us” party to end things rather than consuming half the damn episode.
I still don’t know that I’d call this anything that sort of okay though. Toning down the horny premise and having them all be a lot more collaborative and appreciative towards each other is a lot more of a pleasant and positive dynamic, for certain, but I still don’t think this is doing the drama side of things all that well. It’s very reminiscent of that Sister is All You Need show at the moment in how it’s brushing up against some decent interpersonal dramatic moments like you’d find in your better sitcoms on occasion (think Scrubs or Futurama’s more memorable episodes), but also like the Sister show, the horny not-a-girlfriend is getting in the way despite being one of the few parts of the humor and character dynamics that is actually a little fun.
Next Episode:
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