What to Binge This Weekend: Paul Feig's Galactic Comedy 'Other Space'
If you’re still on a comic high after seeing Spy, the latest big-screen collaboration between star Melissa McCarthy and director Paul Feig, continue your Feig-fest this weekend with his Yahoo Screen series, Other Space. Launched in April, the futuristic science fiction comedy is like what might happen if The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy were to cross intergalactic paths with the gang at The Office. In the distant year of 2105, an eccentric spacefaring crew find themselves stranded on the far side of the cosmos and have to work their way back to the civilization they know and love.
Leading this routine mission-turned-survival expedition are battling little brother and big sister Stewart and Karen Lipinski (Karan Soni and Bess Rous, respectively), whose lifelong sibling rivalry continues even in a different quadrant of the galaxy. Also aboard is Stewart’s unaware crush object, Tina (Milana Vayntraub), his pal Michael (Eugene Cordero) and a computer program with the face and voice of a fashion model. But the show’s not-so-secret comic weapon is Joel Hodgson, the Mystery Science Theater 3000 veteran here playing burnout engineer Zalien. (In a nod to Hodgson’s past critiquing Z-grade movies aboard the Satellite of Love, Zalien is buddies with a sarcastic robot, A.R.T., voiced by MST3K’s Trace Beaulieu.)
Over the course of the first season, these misfits confront ship repairs, a robot uprising and a sudden space storm. And no need to worry about mastering any futuristic jargon — everyone pretty much speaks (and cracks wise) like they’re back in 2015 rather than 2105. Maybe that’s just Feig’s subtle commentary on how the more things change, the more they stay the same — or, more likely, it’s just funnier that way.
All episodes of Other Space are streaming now at Yahoo Screen.
