Moonbeam City is naturally going to draw comparison to FX’s Archer: they are both stylish animated series starring dark-haired, wildly self indulgent members of law enforcement, loose with triggers and belt buckles around attractive women. The similarities begin and end there, however. While FX’s series is primarily focused on exploring the tics and quirks of its eccentric cast of characters, Comedy Central’s new show is scattered and superficial, a shapeless assemblage of random jokes and neon colors that never approaches stepping out of the shadow of the aforementioned O.G. spy series in any interesting way.
Even a talented voice cast can’t help things any. As well as Rob Lowe and Elizabeth Banks fill their roles as idiot, self-obsessed cop and tough police chief (respectively), Moonbeam falls to fill their characters – and those around them – with any sort of engaging personality. The most lively parts of the show come from character names: Dazzle Novak (Lowe), Pizzazz Miller (Banks), Chrysalis Tate (Kate Mara, in a thoroughly unconvincing vocal performance), and Rad Cunningham (Will Forte) are all terrific names, but feel like the only developed parts of any of the characters. The initial introductions of each character are really all we get, as every single one of them is reduced to a single visual cue and personality trait, both of which are repeated frequently (and lifelessly) through the episode’s 23 minutes.
Where Moonbeam really falls short are its central four. Rather than having sharply defined personas setting the foundation for the series to follow, “Mall Hath No Fury” lumps each of its main characters into cliched parodies of ’80s archetypes, without any sort of creativity brought to the construction of each persona. Dazzle’s an idiot, Pizzazz is perpetually annoyed, Chrysalis is lame, and Rad is a jerk; that’s all there is to each character, which theoretically leaves room for a more developed story, but Moonbeam seems interested in neither, electing rather to pat itself on the back for its dry, thoroughly uninspired humor and plot, where a purse thief experiences a dramatic rise and fall as a crime lord, while Dazzle falls for a mall pop singer with a goofy name.
For Moonbeam City to escape the criticisms of being a lesser version of Archer, it needs to find an interesting angle to explore its characters. Archer found this through the messed up family dynamic of Sterling and his mother, which fed directly into the relationships and connections of other characters on the show. There’s no such feeling on Moonbeam – and to properly satire any ’80s cop story, well-developed relationships are everything. Without that, the rest of the pilot feels as empty as its relationships – particularly in the episode’s second half, which devolves into a random, jittery collection of scenes trying to tell an undercooked drug lord story, tied together with some pathetic misogyny and shallow egotism.
In doing so, Moonbeam City feels half-baked, a pilot that feels more like a rough sketch of an animated skit than a fully-realized blueprint for a series to follow. Ultimately, there’s nothing Moonbeam City attempts to do that other shows and films haven’t done better in the past. Without any new wrinkles to offer on its abundantly familiar material and aesthetics, each scene of “Mall Hath No Fury” exists in the shadow of superior works, conjuring a sense of redundancy the show desperately needs to escape, should it be able to find its place in 2015’s crowded television landscape.
[Photo via Comedy Central]
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