If only the show was juicy enough to match the uproar. Love Story, all but the finale of which was provided to critics, turns out to be nothing more than an exquisite diorama: gorgeous to look at and not much more. Worse, it’s fundamentally inert.
Their misadventures spiral into odd, escalating situations that would play better with sharper writing or more adventurous direction. Worse, the show ultimately backs away from its most interesting instincts. Though it sidesteps the usual Marvel crescendo of apocalyptic spectacle, the final stretch still resorts to a superhero-size resolution that flattens the human texture the series has worked to establish.
Where the first season felt genuinely searching, extending its ideas with the elegance of a team still working to win you over, the second has the arrogance of one that it believes it already has. Such self-assurance brings nagging blind spots. The Pitt extends enormous empathy to its protagonists — it clearly views Dr. Robby as a flawed saint, Jesus Daddy — but its generosity toward patients is more uneven.
You owe it to yourself to give Pluribus a chance. Something glorious is gestating inside this entrancing piece of television, and to experience its full effect, you have to trust the process.
Maia and Tallulah’s relationship gives the show a buoyant us-against-the-world energy, a sense of shared delusion and drive that powers both its comedy and its ache.
Miraculously, even improbably, it all holds together. The Chair Company coheres into a gestalt, a whole that’s somehow greater than the sum of its absurdities. It’s a more confident expansion of Robinson and Kanin’s sensibility than Friendship
Chad Powers is, for the most part, a cynical corporate experiment, engineered within an inch of its life, but in fleeting moments it threatens to transcend itself.
The Lowdown is also quite the showcase for Harjo’s creative vision. His world-building is lush enough to smooth over however you may feel about Lee’s rough edges, and his gift for seamlessly weaving together his expansive cultural appetites gives the show a kind of referential heft that feels inviting as opposed to alienating.
