Love, Death, & Robots (2019)
I’ve never reviewed a show before. Not because I don’t watch them, but often because they’re just shows. They have an arc, some main characters you do (or don’t) like, and a series finale that tries to sucker you in for the next season. Maybe it’s because they’re 13-24 hours of show to watch, and that’s hard to compress into a ClawReview, which only covers a 120-minute movie.
I’m never going to review “Star Trek Discovery” season 2, or “Lucifer” season 3, or “Game of Thrones” season 8.
Those are adventures that you need to buy into and experience for the long-haul.
Even an anthology like “Black Mirror,” which I love, isn’t something I want to write about - sure, it’s a collection of stellar science-fiction concepts, but it’s all by the same director (Charlie Booker), so it ultimately feels the same, even when very episode is “unrelated” to every other episode.
But there’s something different about “Love, Death, and Robots.”
None of the episodes are longer than 20 minutes, with some as short as 8 (including the Netflix intro and a 1+ credits sequence at the end), and every episode has a different art style, a different director, a different theme.
This show is the visual equivalent of those “Best Sci-Fi & Fantasy Short Stories of the Year” collections you can find at any bookstore.
And it’s perfect.
Just like those books, this show has some truly stellar stories, and some incredibly stupid ones, and part of the joy of the show is not knowing what’s coming next.
You have no idea if the spectacularly rendered CGI space epic will be followed up with body horror, a cartoon, a light-hearted comedy, or someone’s acid-trip-turned-animation.
There were definitely vignettes that, in retrospect, I could have skipped, as they lend nothing to the realm of sci-fi and fantasy, but without bad episodes, how can you really enjoy the good ones?
Because it’s Netflix, and Netflix doesn’t seem to care about anyone’s sensitive constitutions or pearl-clutching propriety, the animators were given free reign to animate as much nudity and gore as they felt like. Sometimes it was to great effect, like in “Sonnie’s Edge” or “Beyond the Aquila Rift” while other times it felt like it was crammed in simply because the artist was finally given allowance to do so, like in “The Witness” or “Sucker of Souls.”
This collection has such a broad range of themes, being an anthology and all, that if you just wanted something light-hearted, you could watch “Three Robots,” “When the Yogurt Took Over,” or “Blindspot,” and turn off your screen with a smile on your face.
There were also some episodes that were just kinda goofy, like “Zima Blue” or “The Dump,” but again: without the bad, you can’t appreciate how good the good stuff is.
There’s even an episode that’s just “StarCraft” in show form, “Suits,” complete with an insectoid Zerg rush, giant battle robots, and a gruff-but-loveable farmer who just wants to live in peace, until he’s force to the line of duty to protect the people he loves from an alien invasion.
This is an outstanding show, and I hope that they either make another season, or used it to gauge interest for other Netflix Originals in the future.
It’s absolutely NSFW, so viewer discretion is advised, but I highly recommend it if you’re a science-fiction/fantasy fan.
