American Vandal

Sophomoric at times, but painstakingly constructed throughout, it’s a thrilling mystery that feels true--from start to finish--to the real-life stories that inspired it.

It feels like a successful attempt to franchise-ify American Vandal’s peculiar mix of lowbrow comedy, highbrow style, and an ongoing portrait of the American high school as a clash between dueling realities, where the best truths are always fiction.

Creators Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault get plenty of laughs this time around, but it’s often because the actors have crafted such full Christopher Guest-like characters. These suspects have layers and they’re infinitely worth peeling away.

By the second or third episodes I realized I was actually trying to figure out the case, which was never the case with the dick-drawing and the desire to bring the last few episodes became much more about getting answers than just simple amusement. In fact, I barely laughed at all in the season's homestretch, proving that while American Vandal may function as a parody/satire of Serial and The Staircase and The Jinx, it's just as capable of being a moody Encyclopedia Brown for the new millennium.

In its assemblage of footage from Snapchat feeds and other social media sources, as well as its collection of solid teenage performances, American Vandal gets at something true about our obsession with whodunits and how every generation finds a new way to commit very old crimes.

Don’t expect a lot of out-loud laughs with the series, but it is constantly amusing.

By the end, what happened to Dylan Maxwell [in the first season] actually did feel kind of tragic. The second American Vandal, while amusing here and there, isn’t able to do all that. It recycles the same template, but can’t quite convince viewers to invest in everything that transpires at St. Bernardine.

Over the top fake story telling for children, good for dimwitted stoner types.