Ryan Shoots First: Avenue 5

As the resident Space Show guy, it is my duty to at least check out movies and shows with a ship moving really fast through space. In HBO’s new Sci-Fi Comedy Avenue 5 we see an interstellar cruise gone horribly wrong. Think Wall-E, meets Love Boat meets Passengers.

Three episodes in now and I have to say the show plays off the modern-day idea of wealthy billionaires self-funding their own attempts to privatize space tourism. Think Elon Musk and Richard Branson. Josh Gad plays that wealthy owner who is on board his prize. Hugh Laurie plays the plagued captain of the ship who is of course surrounded by idiots. Both these castings work great and give the show an anchor while the other actors are given time to find their footing and their grooves for their characters. I think we all recognize in many successful comedies characters evolve and change over the seasons as they find things that work and some things that don’t. It is important to have a few mainstays that you can bank on why everyone else finds their voice. A few episodes in and the concept alone is starting to fade and some of the fringe characters are losing their charm but like many first seasons of comedies, I’m willing to give it time. I like the premise and on paper, it seems like something that should work given time to grow. Which again is the beauty of a partner like HBO who are not prone to make knee jerk reactions when it comes to pulling a show, I expect Avenue 5 to be given plenty of chances to find an audience. To compare, Fox is notorious for pulling shows who have even managed to establish a loyal fan base and also pull relatively successful ratings (sorry Firefly fans). 

The obvious comparison for the show is Fox’s Star Trek parody series from Seth McFarlane The Orville. While they both are not 100% the same, with The Orville having a little more area to mine for comedy fodder given the aliens and decades of Trek material to draw from, they do aesthetically look similar. The uniforms and the sterile, clean interiors of the ships, HBO does give Avenue 5 a little more space to be free however not confined by the rules of broadcast television. When it comes to the visual effects, the show is as solid as The Orville which gets typically high marks for its commitment to VFX in a comedy focused show. It may not be on the level of the recent Star Trek series on CBS All-Access or The Expanse but those are dramas that have to make you believe these ships are real. Beyond the big event that causes everything to go wrong, there is a significant twist in the first episode that causes a significant hurdle for the passengers and crew that I don’t want to spoil for you. The show ditches some of the more “Space” themed perils for a much more terrifying prospect. Being stuck with the most obnoxious people at a vacation resort for the foreseeable future. If you’ve ever been on a cruise or anywhere for an extended period of time and felt like everyone else around you was ruining your vacation now imagine stuck in that for years. The show even has a character named Karen who 100% asked to speak to a manager. Almost to the detriment of the show, a large majority of the people and characters on the ship are just the absolute worse and as a viewer, there are very few that you would miss if the ship never returned. It’s not the first show to largely be a cast of imbecile characters but there needs to be a few that come out and can endear themselves to the audience. 

I suppose for now the show is interesting enough, funny enough and has enough twists to keep me watching but it still has a lot of room to grow and if it cannot make some strides I fear it may be stuck drifting in the vacuum of HBO Go’s menus for all time, because in “You Might Be Interested” no one can hear you scream!