Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later

Ten Years Later is sturdier and better paced than its admittedly great predecessor, but there are times when you’ll look around and wonder, “Where’d everybody go?” And then the complement to that question: “Why is everybody here?” If there’s any definition of the spirit of Camp Firewood, it’s that the people need the place more than the place needs the people.

Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later is fun precisely because it seems to be flying by the seat of its early-’90s jeans, feeling free to do whatever it wants, any old time.

Overall, it’s broad, ridiculous, silly humor that isn’t as daring or progressive as some of the best comedies on TV but it works more often than it doesn’t.

With Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, there are definitely barren stretches and the overall thinness of the narrative is, especially toward the end of the eight episodes, a part of the story itself. Being the worst of the Wet Hot American Summer entries is no disgrace and there's enough lunacy, inspiration and cleverness here that Ten Years Later at least makes for a fast binge.

It is, like First Day of Camp, very hit-or-miss. Some of the newbies never entirely click, while other relative latecomers (particularly Wain and Lake Bell as Hebrew-speaking lovers who rope Ken Marino’s muscular virgin Victor into solving their fertility issues) inject some fresh life into the proceedings given the absence of some characters and the diminishing returns of others.

Gone are dumb adolescent antics; replacing them are jokes about careerism, the fear of settling down, and the perils of being young parents. It’s as staid as it sounds, and the show isn’t helped by the fact that many jokes referencing the movie have only grown more stale.

Ten Years Later, with its adults now playing adults, is less emotionally rooted and its parody more scattershot.