Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!
Warning: There be spoilers.
I haven’t read the comics, but have every intention to do so, but I don’t know why I haven’t praised the many great aspects of The Umbrella Academy (2019-2024). I have insomnia these days (or nights, rather), and so it takes something stronger to keep me watching attentively during the small hours. That bunch of ever-bickering unrelated siblings is a treat with comedy, drama, weirdness, psychological depth and the fear of the end of the world (more than once, hehe).
Let me point out two excellent casting choices. The first is Aidan Gallagher, who was 15 years old at the time of filming season one; he plays Number Five, a 53 year-old man trapped in the body of a 13 year-old school boy. His manners are so different from his looks and stance that I believed him from the moment I saw him. And it is somehow not as weird as it should be that he has a store mannequin as a girlfriend. Then there is Robert Sheehan, who starred in another, quite different super-hero series called Misfits (2009-2013), where it is unclear for very long what his superpowers are. Here, he plays Klaus, a drug-addled airhead who sometimes saves lives, sometimes not. He has a comic side to him that I responded to immediately; the sympathetic pot-head has been done to death, but Sheehan brings something new to the role.
It may be that some viewers find the series slightly slow-paced, but I think the ensemble cast is fun to watch so that the attention and interest in the series never really suffers. A series that deals with quasi-parental abuse sometimes has to take a long, hard look at trauma, and it would be a mistake to rush things like that. We are not in Zack Snyder country, after all.
You can look at time travel as an annoying ploy to show off great production values while explaining the whole thing with straws or a not-quite-logical voice-over explanation. Me, I had fun watching Five getting older, sturdier and more paranoid until the Handler visits him. And while the end of the world is such a tired old prime mover, I didn’t mind it one bit here. The end of the world here comes in many ways, more than once, and from different, sometimes unlikely sources. Do the gang save the world from ending? Well, yes and no. You’ll see.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 
You write about teen bullshit shows? Why is this not a surprise?