I’ve recently watched episodes of the Umbrella Academy and I doubt I will ever finish the season. It’s a very stylish show, and it knows it, but it is also weirdly incurious about its own world. And also the writing is not very good.
@robotmango has a series of posts addressing the writing and pacing. I’m going to (mostly) not retread those same arguments because she nails it, but I do want to talk about Umbrella Academy’s worldbuilding and character development, specifically lack thereof in both cases.
(Minor spoils and much critique under the cut)
There’s been posts floating around trying to pin down the time period the show takes place in. We’re given the year 1989 in the prologue scene, which leads us to believe it takes place in the modern day, and yet there’s not a single computer or cell phone to be found. Everything else looks like our world only everyone has paper files with no computer backups and they’re all dependent on landlines. Oh, also they still use walkmans.
So is it the 1980s? Did technological progression just stop for some reason? They have a super advanced AI robot and a sentient talking ape Mr. Pogo but not a single laptop? Also does everyone know about Mr. Pogo or must he never leave the academy lest he be discovered? Lunar travel is also a thing, I guess? So there’s still NASA or its equivalent? How did Luthor get back from the moon so fast? By rocket? Teleportation? Magic?
Who knows! Not us because the show never bothers to world build even a little!
I’m not expecting an entire episode exposition dumping about the history of the world Umbrella Academy takes place in, but some hints would be nice. If I’m being kind, which you all know I’m disinclined to be, then UA seemed to split from our world probably around the time of the births, which would sort of almost not really account for the technological differences. But this is me guessing because the show never bothers to care.
Let’s compare this to the movie version of The Watchmen. I know, I know, but stay with me. Say what you want about the adaptation, and there is so very much to say, the movie at least had that opening montage showing where the split with our world happened and the consequences of said split, all set to an on the nose Bob Dylan song. Was it clumsy? Yes. But did it orient the viewer into the world and provide the necessary structure to support the bullshit built on top? Also yes.
UA never does that, and halfway through the second episode I was spending more time wondering why no one had a goddamned computer than I did caring about any of the characters. It’s like the show saw how popular Stranger Things was with it’s retro 80s setting and decided to copy it.
Here’s the thing. Why not just set the show in the 1980s? Nothing would change. Hell, if anything that would clear up a lot of the weird plot holes floating about.
If I’m being unkind, I’d say the reason that there are no computers or cell phones or mp3 players exist is not because this is a world populated exclusively by hipsters but because if those things were around none of the plot contrivances would work and the entire thing would fall apart.
Patch needs to be fridged to make Diego sad? Well, if they had cell phones there’s no reason she can’t get a message to him in time because the writers are bad at the job and can’t think of one. If computer backups exist than burning the files Five needs would move the plot along instead of delaying it for another couple episodes. Also mp3 players work the same as walkmans so nothing changes there but it’s just another bit where the show cares more about aesthetics than telling a good story.
Stretching the plot out requires characters to not talk to each other, not believe one another even though they live in a world where they have powers and should presumably know what each sibling’s power is and believe them when they say that’s how they did shit , and then magically gaining knowledge they shouldn’t have from the aforementioned not talking or believing. It’s all so very hollow.
I like Allison and Vanya’s relationship the best because they are trying to relate to one another and actually talk to each other like normal human beings would. Everyone else just talks at each other about their shared traumatic past they should presumably know but somehow don’t like weird aliens who have never met one another before. Robotmango does a much better job of explaining this, but the end result is you get the feeling that these are people who have never met one another before.
And another weird aspect of the show is its framing of Hargreeves as a terrible father. It definitely condemns him for ignoring this children and not tucking them in at night but not for, you know, literally sending children out to murder people. The first scene we have of Ben’s powers is him killing six people and coming out covered head to toe in their blood. That is horrific, but the show never examines it. Diego we see is still out on that murdering life, and Allison is the only one of the kids actually trying to be a better person as she was a monster who used her power to get what she wanted by abusing people, but she was a monster who abused people because her father was like hey just make people kill one another it’s cool, but the show either doesn’t care about that or, worse, even realize that’s what they wrote.
And look, UA is not unique in presenting kids as superheroes and not really examining how fucked up that is--looking at you Bat family even if you pay some lip service to it--but it is supposed to be a show about the trauma of being a superpowered kid that would rather focus on how their father being emotionally distant damaged them more. And I’m not arguing that only referring to your children as numbers is not dehumanizing and objectifying and horrific on every level, but the show doesn’t care about how fucking awful it is to literally raise your children to murder people on your orders, which is indicative of their worldbuilding as a whole. Which is to say the implications are never thought out, they examine nothing about this universe or characters, and they just slap shit together to look nice.
Also are they the only superpowered people in the world? What about the other children Hargreeves did not buy as it seems unlikely he would end up with the only seven of them to have powers? Also why is no one in universe horrified when Hargreeves admits on television to buying children to train to murder people? Everyone seems to know about the Umbrella Academy and who the six are, but there’s no mention of it really impacting anything. The kids all disband and go their separate ways and the world just forgets about them? Hell, we still got conspiracy theories about how Elvis and Tupac faked their own deaths and you’re telling me that the academy won’t have some weird conspiracy theorist trying to break in at least once a year? They feel so unconnected to the world around them and just pasted into it. That may be on purpose, if I’m being generous, but, again, from a world building perspective it makes no sense. Oh, and just mentioning the apocalypse every other episode that none of the characters except Five care about doesn’t count as raising the stakes, okay, UA? The stakes do not exist and tossing off witty one-liners is not the same thing as a plot or believable dialogue.
The show UA reminds me most of is Emerald City, an updated adaptation of Baum’s Wizard of Oz. That show also was very stylish and beautifully shot, but things happened in it for no real reason other than the plot demanded it and then none of it mattered. The characters never change or grow. They find out really important shit—this lady is a robot! Ozma’s not dead but hidden as a boy and alive! The scarecrow equivalent character tried to kill Dorothy!—and none of it changed anything. The characters just shrug it off and keep going, and 10 episodes later they’re exactly the same as they were when they started.
UA is the same. It’s very stylish, but peel that back and there’s nothing underneath. And, look, I’m willing to suspend my belief for media. I mean I love Star Wars and it’s not like that franchise doesn’t have its own set of internal consistency problems, and it’s not like you can’t make a good adaptation of a comic book using the same art style—look at Into the Spiderverse—but both those did the work of building a world you want to stay in and giving you characters that grow and change and who you want to spend time with.
UA doesn’t have that. There’s no structure for them to drape their fancy aesthetics on. It’s a beautiful but ultimately empty shell.
Also it does the thing of having Allison and Luthor sexually desire one another even though they were literally raised together their entire lives as siblings and Allison told her daughter stories about her uncle Luthor, but I guess since they’re adopted it’s technically not incest and therefore okay!
