Apple TV + “Theft”: A TV Review

The last time Alan Young and Matt Hubbard collaborated with Maya Rudolph on a streaming comedy was on Amazon. Ever, an ambitiously strange and formally inventive study of love and the afterlife. Young’s other streaming credits include Apple TV+ little americaAn anthological survey of immigrant experiences and the latest season of Netflix nobody’s masterWho boldly (if not always successfully) expanded their beloved Emmy-winning series with new characters and new tones.

It’s no wonder that, using the ever-expanding landscape of television to tell often experimental stories, Young and Hubbard are back with a new streaming comedy, Apple TV+. swag. the most unusual swagTurns out that’s where it’s going.

swag is a low-rated NBC sitcom, moved to a place where at least the creators wouldn’t need to know if it’s a low-rated sitcom that will definitely help perennial bubble veterans like parks and recreation s 30 stones. Episodes actually last longer than TV shows allow, and there are some four-hundred-word words scattered throughout the area. But otherwise it’s a streaming comedy, with its general availability and feeling that its characters and tonality are ongoing.

to the best, swag it’s in the vein parks and recreation ANY Good place – A ensemble built around fundamentally decent characters trying hard to do the right thing, or at least trying to understand what it would be like to do the right thing in our difficult modern world. In the worst case, swag it’s in the vein Mrs. Mary – A set of football players who are tasked with doing the right thing, but their shoe horns are involved in ill-defined workplace hygiene, without a kicking relationship consistent enough to justify the actor’s potential.

to have pleasure is a lot swag, starting with its timely narrative and strong exposition of several of Maya Rudolph’s many skills. At the same time, it is a show that is seen more for its potential than for its immediate performance.

Rudolph plays Molly Novak, the wife of tech mogul John Novak (Adam Scott, not exactly a cameo, but not big enough for today’s investments either). Molly turns 45, so he buys her a yacht with four swimming pools and tosses them into his extravagant Hollywood Hills mansion.

All is going well until Molly discovers that John had an affair with his assistant. He is seeking divorce and as they did not have a premarital marriage, he is headed for $87 billion. It all boiled down to 10 minutes of the pilot, but I could easily point to Melinda Gates or Mackenzie Scott and you’d understand how things were.

Molly and her assistant Nicholas (Joel Kim Booster) must figure out how to spend their time and how to spend their money when Sophia (Michaela Jae Rodriguez), who is impatiently drunk with Molly, calls Molly into her charity office. Sowing oats affects the foundation brand. Molly takes an interest in the useless Sophia and decides to help a charity, with a particular focus on economic inequality in Southern California, do some good. He and Nicholas soon discover they are working with Sophia, Molly Cheerful Cousin, Howard (Ron Fanche) and accountant Arthur (Nat Faxon), who bond with Molly due to their shared status as newly divorced.

At the end of the 10-episode first season, swag It begins to establish a similar perspective on whether the solution to systemic inequality involves more donations from the grotesquely wealthy, but for most of the season, Molly takes an aggressively offensive stance. Rudolph, with his more refined comedic timing and improbable cadences of his contemporaries, finds it very hard not to like him to some degree, no matter how you think of eating the rich. This isn’t exactly a problem, just the announcer’s friendly attitude towards the character as unforgettable, but fundamentally and harmlessly benign. Molly is very fickle when it comes to money, but not so frivolous as to have serious lessons to learn, and indeed, there is little room and little need for Molly to develop Molly from episode to episode. მსგავსი is similar Carol If Scrooge gave his team a long Christmas weekend and after visiting three ghosts, he missed an extra half day. See also the character Ted Denson Mr. Maria.

Due to the minimal need for a visible bow, Molly doesn’t have time to settle into a charity rut, with only the easiest complications to sort out. For some reason even more bizarre is the ease with which Nicholas goes from being a terribly superficial and fabulous butler to a half-stuffed cubic drone that only makes sense because what he really wants is to be an actor. Looks. And it doesn’t matter if the character’s traits make any sense, as Booster is Rudolf’s equivalent when it comes to comic book-inspired reactions and one-sided lines.

Molly’s wealth and isolation should at least make her a distinct character. But once he enters the comic structure of the workplace, where only Sophia is responsible for the track work, he’s just a slightly richer but interchangeable member of a crew that starts doing interchangeable comedy jobs, like a unexpected spa day for women and a drink. at lunch men. Everything will benefit from a clearer definition of Molly’s personality and foundation goals, including reporting on zoning boards and board meetings (again, Mrs. MaryWhere Danson’s character and his team followed policies without any justification).

I use this review to think aloud about aspects swag Which stops them from meeting again in the show’s first season, because the reasons you want to keep watching are easy to identify.

Rudolph and Kim are fun together and can easily deliver dramatic notes when scripts wrapped in sharp pieces of lining invite them out. I hate to say ‘take season 2 more seriously’ but if you have vendors that can bring gravity to you, why not give them a try? Kim has a friendly relationship with Panche, whose praise as a smile thief I’ve sung many times, while Rudolph has sweet chemistry, willingly or at least with Faxon, who will also use it. A rare opportunity to play a character that can appear in the romantic comedy host.

Fashion Emmy nominated Position A hand that had humor but wasn’t really focused in that direction, Rodriguez might not look instantly comfortable in this format, but it passes quickly. In the second episode, there are laughs, some big ones, at her dry delivery, as Sophia simply goes from being a rigid boss to revel in the excesses that Molly’s status gives her.

Great place to grow up, and Young and Hubbard worked on sitcoms that ranged from weird early seasons to masterpieces. Maybe it’s just the semantics that make the streaming series that aired a little frustrated, or maybe more than a decade of believing Rudolph was worthy of a classic series using all of his talents. swag Not yet this TV series – Ever It came close, but it might have been too artistic and unpredictable for survival, but it could have been. Simply change your initial expectations. Hell, there have been some really solid network comedies this year… Abbott Elementary, ghosts, wonderland years, Big team – Let’s think that Apple TV+ wanted to participate in this action.