I hope Not Suitable for Work can get a long multi season run with 20 episode seasons. I think it has a lot of potential and it feels like the type of ensemble sitcom that we’ve been missing for so long. Sitcoms need time to breathe and for us to explore characters and their relationships and we can't do that with the current format of streaming.
I also need to see a slowburn between AJ and Josh so badly. They give Nick and Jess energy!
Be careful (don't watch it, it's bad, but if you want to try (remember 🏴☠️ is the best option) SPOILERS AHEAD [tw images with gore, blood and vomit]:
I watched (with my personal streaming company called Arrr! Yo-oh-oh!) Velma hbo and I found it so unsatisfying.
tldr; show is garbage. Unfunny. Boring. Crass and Gross. The pacing is all over the place, they can't decide what they are (comedy, thriller, satire or sitcom) and it's bad. Dialogues are cringe and are AI generated from tweets around the internet. Characters have no grown, no evolution. They end as they started, also many more miserable than before, because of Velma. The show should be called "Performative Activism: Velma the Series".
This is the summary of the fucking show:
My first problem: Velma character
Like it ends how it started. The protagonist Velma is annoying, infuriating, piece of garbage, the most unsympathetic character I ever saw and I mean I grew up with my big brothers watching Simpons, Futurama and Family Guy, I know that there are character who are born to be hated...
But she is absolutely the worst, no redeeming quality. Even when the fucking show tried to make you feel sympathy for her (they try so damn hard) you just end up hating her even more. Seriously I have no idea how the manage to do that.
My biggest problem: The Pacing
The pacing is all over the place. They try to be funny and they fail, they try to be self aware and it's hideous (and if you don't die of cringe, you want to close the internet tab and never watch it again), I sincerely hope they weren't try to be a commentary of real life, because it's even worse than when they make meta joke.
One moment they are cracking an unfunny and raunchy joke, the other they try to be serious and make you care about the absolute shit show this characters are, the next they are back making a sexual joke or making fun of a cultural stereotype. It doesn't work.
I ended watching the last episodes wishing the killer succeeded and murdered every characters. The killer was right. Kill off every one, go ape shit, please, please, please kill Velma first and then the rest.
And, spoiler, they manage to make me hate even the killer and their fucking motives, because honestly? It was so in character for the show, but so damn boring and frankly unnecessary mean. The whole show is mean and I'm a fool, because I had hope that they could be more deep than just plain hate and mean spirit.
They say hate is the real thing that unify humans and, unfortunately, they are right, this is the case, they proved this with the Velma show, with the response of the public. People bond easily when they hate the same thing. Probably this the reason I wanted to be proven wrong, why I search so desperately a bit of people bonding on friendship, in a show born from hate and generally hated. What a fucking fool I am.
But alas my foolish dreams, the show is a mess. There is no evolution, things happen, people exist and never grow up. Everything happen and then it's forgotten, it would be cool in a sit-com, but here it's a serial, you need to make me feel a story. They tried to be too many genres at once and nothing works out.
They try to be a thriller and almost succeeded. The mistery at one point was the only thing I cared for. The characters could die and burn all, honestly. I just wanted to see what the hell was happening with the killer and their motives. But it all crush and burn, because the killer is just the same as all the other characters unfunny, uncanny, mean spirit.
And so I ask if the only thing that differentiate between the big bad of the season and Velma is that one (intentionally) killed more people than the other, what the actual fuck was the message? For who am I supposed to root for? The garbage or the stinker garbage?
They try to be a sitcom and it's fucking awful because the characters are so damn unlikable you don't want to watch what they are doing, you don't care about them, and if you are a little bitch like me, you just wish they fail and never show up on the screen. Also it doesn't work, because again they frame the story as a serial, so you don't have a real end at the end of the episode and the classic sitcom reset of the next episode (so that the characters un-progress and static personality make sense), you frame Velma as a long sitcom season, but it doesn't work. A single episode sitcom is not supposed to go on for ten episodes like Velma did. Also it's not funny, like at all. I can think of three (3!) funny jokes in ten episode of twenty minutes each and one of them was physical comedy in which (thank god!) they didn't talk.
They try parody (?) or satirical parody (?) I don't even know what they were supposedly trying to do. It was satirical? It was actual comedy? It was so unclear I didn't understand. I watched ten episodes and I still don't know if the "jokes" were actual satire of how people on twitter talk or if it were actual joke and the direct meaning was that. Frankly I'm too scared of knowing the answer now.
The whole thing was a mess.
The commedy (?)
Somebody tell the writers that when you write a character being mean to another and try to make it funny, the audience need to hate the character who is the bottom of the joke for some reasons.
Like Sophie. If you present a woman and her only fault is existing, marrying the protagonist's father (which he's also an asshole), having a baby and not being the perfect wife/girlfriend/nurturing woman, it's not a right reason to hate her and her baby and using them as punch ball for half season. It's not funny, you just watch in horror thinking you wish every one in the show die and burn.
Or having a character, Gigi, and her only reason of existing is being the alternative love interest of Norville, is not good. Just to be discarded as an used toy in the last two episodes with no explanation and no characterization (and I mean it, I didn't even recognized her because the only time she talks in the last two episodes is repeating somebody else) after you make me see her as a strong, independent, likable (and for this show is huge, I'm not exaggerating when saying nobody is likable) character. Are you fucking kidding me? Like that she never was a protagonist. For fuck sake, this show is not even coherent with itself. This is the last time we see her:
Edit: My bad writers made Gigi so fucking unnecessary I forgot there was another one appearance in the last episode. She is just a plot device, she has no soul. She defend Norville and say that Velma is a terrible friend and person. She is right, but how she said it was not really a character speaking, but a writer desperately trying to move the plot forward since we have 15 minutes left and multiple loose plot string and still no mystery solution in hand. This actually another way they try to mix teen drama and thriller and doesn't work at all.
(This is were my confusion as if this is satire or actual comedy exacerbate to stellar levels, because performative activism is such a twitter thing, but at the same time the whole show is performative activism with witty lines, it's like an AI writer modelled the whole reading only tweets. So I have no idea, was it to make you see the hypocrisy of the whole performative activism or am I using to much brain power and it's just a stupid and empty show? Logically I would say it's the second one, but I have this stupid hope to wish the best from people.)
The dialogue
Don't make me start with the dialogue. They don't seems real, they are just people on the internet with a maximum character for posts. Unfunny, mean spirit, no deep at all.
I am so fucking tired man.
The show ended as it started. Full circle.
Velma
Velma didn't change. She is a piece of garbage. She succeeded to have back is mum at the expenses of the happiness of ALL the people around her. She made so much apologizes and yet she never changed, never learn, they were all fake apology so the could get over it and help her to move the plot forward. I'm not exaggerating. Everyone is sad and miserable except her. Was it supposed to be a happy or satisfying ending? Because I have bad news for the fucking writers. She has her mum, she fucking lock her father, the woman he love and a new born baby half sister outside the house, framing it as a joke and not a fucking abusive action.
The summary of Velma's character:
She prefer being happy at the expensis of everyone else's and the weird thing is that the show doesn't frame it as negative, toxic and abusive, but as joke???
Norville
He is miserable, he lost his girlfriend (the only healthy relationship she could dream to have), his house is half demolished because of Velma, he cannot sleep because he feels guilty after killing a person because she was about to kill Velma and his dad just says: "Have you tried marjuana?" Cementing the sensation the fucking writers do not know how to write emotional scenes, healthy relationship and about mental health in general without ridicoulzing every subject to an unfunny level.
Daphne
Daphne is back as she was fighting to auto-regulate but this time a little bit healthier exercising fight with her mums. She has a toxic relationship with Velma (I have no fucking clue if they are still together romantically or not, I'm inclined to think they have broke up, because fucking Velma says the wrong name when confessing to her after the mystery is solved. I hope Daphne run the far away from any kind of relationship with Velma, bc she is a toxic, manipulative, piece of trash. Daphne deserves way better), still has no real friends because the popular girls are awful, Gigi has lost her characterization along the way of becoming not an accessory for Norville to have. So yes, that's the end of her character. Isn't been a strong and female character not enough to be a good written character?
Fred
Fred lost his mum, he's stupid and the punch ball. He had a evolution (with feminism and social activism) and than an involution in the last two episodes (he forgot everything, why? I have no idea, I think the writers just are bad at keeping tab of they own characters characterization, also this is part of the sitcom quirk tabula rasa after the episode ends, here does not work at all). His father is a moron and hates him, like a lot, like abusively lot (but here in this world it's just funny). He gets a van with should be the mistery machine, but it's just another nostalgic trope to be ridiculed and mistreated, because it funny? You get it? You get it? It's funny making fun of memorabilia from the original show. And even after all this somehow he is the one who is most grew??? How the fuck is possible? How? You understand my frustration?
Gigi is just a background character. Just like that. She has no more lines in the last episode. She just quietly disappear. I'm angry and relived because that was awful, but at least now the writers cannot make me hate her or ruin her beautiful character arc.
Velma's mum (Diya) should run while she can, because her daughter is awful human being. But in the ends she just laugh with her daughter at his ex-husband, his pattern and their new born baby lock outside the house. I'm not
Velma's dad with all his faults, because he's the same as Velma, like she has all his bad habits and jerkness, should also run and start a new family away from Velma.
That's it this is how it ends. She's screaming: "Happy Dance!"
I hoped they could get better, become similar to the franchise we all love, being a mystery gang with a very rocky start, but now I just hope they never ever get together and that next season will flop even harder than this one, burn and crash.
The fucking end.
Don't watch it. It's not worth it.
If you want to see the show with a commenter who makes everything more bearable I have to suggest this amazing youtuber:
Brittney Reacts
P.S. Don't harass anyone who likes it, do not harass the writer, do not harass Mindy Kaling. Just because this show is garbage you do not have to be the same
Remember that time John Mulaney had a whole bit about how the Ocean’s franchise wouldn’t work with women??? hahahaha...I just finished watching Ocean’s 8. It’s a masterpiece.
