Tuesday, June 8, 2021

M.O.D.O.K.

7/10

M.O.D.O.K./Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing, the Marvel villain who grew popular due to his distinctive appearance, he's got a giant head disproportionate to his body and moves around in a hover chair, gets his own stop-motion comedy on Hulu. In it, M.O.D.O.K. (voiced by Patton Oswalt) is faced with a tech giant buying his evil organization A.I.M. and his wife Jodie (Lucifer's Aimee Garcia) leaving him.

This is a mixed work. The biggest issue with this is that it exercises worn character types and their associated jokes without adding anything new to the table. M.O.D.O.K. is the typical selfish, kinda dumb, and oblivious character. The show goes all in on him, but his jokes can be soooooo predictable. The Super-Adaptoid (Jon Daly) is the guy who gets dumped on for no reason, a trope that is really worn out. You could leave him out and the show wouldn't really change that much. M.O.D.O.K.'s son Lou (Ben Schwartz) is the weird one. Usually that guy is the really funny one, but I've never seen this type fail so hard. Most of his lines bomb. He goes into these ramblings about magic or dancing, and they're so indulgent and run out their welcome.   

On the other hand, the show can be pretty funny at times. The first half of the show is finding itself. The humor hits its stride in the second half. There are approximately three jokes in this that are truly inspired. A.I.M.'s second-in-command Monica Rappacini (Reno 911's/The Goldberg's Wendi McLendon-Lovey) is rather fun. She's a little nuts and has an obsession with weird biological experiments like cyborg manatees.

Occasionally the show will get a little more serious, and those moments really work. Although M.O.D.O.K. can get tiresome, you can feel for him sometimes. Oswalt really nails these moments. The finale... Wow! It's really something. Not the usual type of finale. It'll keep you hooked.   

The stop-motion in this is pretty impressive given all the high concept superhero world stuff that happens in this. M.O.D.O.K. usually hovers and that must've been very hard to pull off.

I see this as one of those shows that'll get a lot of mixed reactions. Some'll really like it and some'll be turned off. Though I'm definitely coming back to the second season, I don't know if I can just recommend this to everyone as the writers often do coast and there are just so many stronger comedies out there to watch. Still, this can be an interesting watch if you so choose to stick through this.

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