American Auto- Season 2

8.5/10

In season 2 of this NBC comedy about a bunch of dysfunctional higher ups at Payne Motors, CEO Katherine Hastings (played by SNL alumni Ana Gasteyer) and her team must get the stock up to a certain number within the year or they'll all lose their jobs. 

If you're familiar with the show, this is from Superstore creator Justin Spitzer, and American Auto is sort of its opposite. Whereas Superstore was a positive ode to the people working at the bottom, this is a cynical, but silly critique of those at the top, looking at how people don't intend to be unethical or uncaring and such but how it just happens. And man does the show do it so well. This is one of the two funniest series I'm watching right now (the other being Rick and Morty). It's such a delightfully pointed jab at the corporate world, and the jokes work so well. I highly recommend the episode The Letter, funniest and best written one of the season, a savage take on outrage culture. 

Though most of the cast is self-serving, this season does makes more of an effort have the characters be three-dimensional. You may not sympathize with their choices, but you get where they're coming from and see them as actual people. I especially appreciate that the show cut down a bit on Katherine messing up public interviews and announcements. Given that she was a CEO of a pharmaceutical company for a while, it's a little hard to swallow that she has absolutely no experience handling these things.

Cast remains great. Wesley Payne (Superstore's Jon Barinholtz), the last remaining member of the Payne family working at the company, is definitely the MVP. He's kinda the most likeable because he's kinda the most honest in his goals in that he truly wants his family legacy to survive. He's like a big child that wants approval. Gasteyer, Michael Benjamin Washington as snarky and completely pragmatic and self-serving Chief Product Designer Cyrus Knight, and Harriet Dyer as CCO Katherine Hastings, one of the saner voices that has to deal with everyone else, all give excellent performances. (Gasteyer, I apologize for thinking back in the day that Cheri Oteri would be the one that would go on to other stuff and that you'd be the one who'd vanish. I've shamed myself.)

Highly recommended. The show is hilarious. Unfortunately this may be the last season as its viewership numbers are even less than last season's which wasn't great. Too bad, I really felt this was one of the best comedies out right now.