TV Review: Weird City
Youtube Original, Weird City, truly is weird. It thrives from its “Huh?” Factor and dives into surreality; making you feel like a every episode is a batch of easter eggs that you have to break and dissect. In some ways, Weird City is the Comedy Central version of Black Mirror. It is too funny to make you as potently scared as the hit Netlfix series, but it leaves you with some scary, valid analysis of society.
Weird City runs on a Drunk History sensibility by getting powerful stars to fulfill roles that obliterate their usual type-casts, which I love. I thought Episode 1 was brilliant because of that very notion, and it allows you to see, differently, every actor that guest stars such as, Dylan O’Brien, Ed O’neill, and Awkwafina. Moreover, again like Drunk History, Weird City takes a serious note and makes it comical. While it may not be covering history, in commenting on society, the show lightheartedly approaches our tendency to diminish human worth. Yet, to approach darkness with light does not mean you shine all shaded notes.
In between the laughs, the series created by Charlie Sanders and Jordan Peele, does call out humanity’s tendency to act inhumane. Yet, for the creative duo, it is not just that humanity can be savagely cruel. It is also that we can be lazy, cowardly, and oblivious to the social ills sickening our chances at joy. It is in this idea that I find Weird City distinct from its natural comparison: Black Mirror. In the latter series, there is a feeling of awakening; a presumption that its viewer is not “seeing” how much technology and socio-cultural dynamics can poison human beings from bettering themselves and each other. Yet, Weird City brings in a new idea; what if it is not that human do not know what is wrong with the world, but, instead, feel too tired to do anything about it.
Each episode is, somehow, interconnected, but the final episode ends with a quote that, at first, is strangely random but comically insightful: “Aren’t we all actors in an under-budgeted episode.” The episode, of course, being life, and the actors being “us.” It may seem like a simple quote and not one that will be placed in every, recited history book. Yet, the quote alludes to a recurring theme within Weird City; how watched we are? From social media to television, particularly reality tv, every person seem to be watching each other. We are always looking at others’ lives, which is why Weird City contrasts Black Mirror. In this world, people are informed, but they do not have the heart or are not at the point in their journey to do something good with the knowledge they have. The problem how long do you need to realize you are needed?
Alright, that got serious. Yet, I want to elaborate the intelligence of Weird City because it might get lost upon first viewing. This show wants to be poignant and thought-provoking, but it also wants to be silly and goofy, of which the latter can shroud the first. Of course, this is not a bad thing, at all, but I feel compelled to remind that it takes wit to be witty. Weird City is smart, and, as an anthology, succeeds to be “bingeable” and further proof that Youtube is COMING for Netlfix and Hulu. Weird City Premieres on Youtube Premium on February 13.
