‘Strange Planet’ Is an Amusing New Show From the Creator of ‘Rick and Morty’
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It’s not hard to understand why Dan Harmon would have been drawn to Nathan W. Pyle’s Strange Planet comics for his latest TV project. Harmon’s Community and Rick and Morty are beloved for the ways they experiment with genre, tone, and sheer self-awareness. But once you strip away the formal playfulness, both shows are most obviously concerned with how society works, on both large and small scales. Community was called that not because the characters were all attending community college, but because Harmon wanted to show how a group of disparate strangers might gradually forge their own small civilization with its own rules and regulations. Rick and Morty break seventeen different laws of physics each week, but the show’s core conflict is about Rick’s refusal to play by the rules of polite society, and whether he is right to do this or just stubbornly toxic.
Apple TV+’s animated Strange Planet, which Harmon and Pyle adapted, is far gentler in its comedy than either of those shows. But its areas of interest are roughly the same: Why do we interact with one another the way that we do? Does societal convention make sense, or do we just do certain things in a certain way because that’s how they’ve traditionally been done?
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The series, which began streaming last week, takes place in a world not unlike our own. It’s populated by non-binary light blue “beings” who are mostly distinguishable from one another through the clothes they wear, and/or their age. They don’t even have names. Much of the action takes place in and around a cafe, Careful Now, whose manager (Hannah Einbinder) feels overworked and underappreciated by their boss (Lori Tan Chinn), and who begins a tentative romance with a customer (Danny Pudi) who has long harbored a crush on them. Around that basic framework, Harmon, Pyle, and other writers weave in a collection of short stories about life on this orb: a flight attendant who feels uncomfortable being promoted above their peers, a band specializing in sad music whose lead singer quits after finding happiness in a relationship, a teenager who doesn’t want to inherit their family’s tattoo business.
This is all familiar sitcom stuff: in one episode, the customer volunteers to watch the manager’s cat, despite being highly allergic, and various hijinks ensue before the manager comes home from a double shift. But the cliches are there deliberately, because they’re filtered through the specific, extremely literal way that everyone speaks. On Strange Planet, there are no euphemisms, and no colorful descriptions. Everything is referred to as exactly what it is. Kissing, for instance, is “mouth pushing,” while tattoos are “ink stains.” Everyone asserts exactly how they are feeling at all times: when one of the parents (or lifegivers) of the ink stain shop is unhappy to learn that their offspring doesn’t want to work there, they bellow, “I’m raising my volume because this is not the answer I’m seeking!”
This straightforward use of language interrogates our assumptions about everyday human behavior. When beings casually refer to alcohol as “mild poison,” it’s startling for a moment, until you realize, Yes, that’s exactly what it is, and why would we want to ingest that?
Most of this, though, hits the level of wry amusement and not much more, not unlike the experience of reading a comic strip, smiling, and saying, “I get it,” without actually laughing. But the softer humor is buoyed by a reliable level of sweetness, particularly in the ongoing stories at Careful Now, which sits precariously on the edge of a cliff overlooking a mysterious void. In a literal sense, the void is the biggest difference between their world and ours. But those beings, like us, have to go through life prepared to face many huge unknowns. Strange Planet is a pleasant enough way to consider many of them.
The first four episodes of Strange Planet are streaming now on Apple TV+, with additional episodes releasing each Wednesday. I’ve seen the whole 10-episode season.
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