In the Venn diagram of sitcom success, there would be three overlapping circles: one for great characters, one for big laughs, one for emotional investment. If a show hits at least two of these, you’re in for a pretty good time. Dang! – a new adult animated series from Netflix – remains just about watchable thanks to a smattering of funny moments, but it doesn’t come close to ever earning the two overlapping circles needed to warrant a recommendation.
It’s a shame, because there’s potential in the premise of this eight-parter. It’s created by Andrew Law, a writer on Hacks and The Good Place, who also voices Andrew Dang, one of three Asian-American siblings who are the leads of the show. In the first episode, Andrew is fired from the company he co-founded for setting up a toilet-gossip social media account. He shares an apartment in New York with his sister Eunice (Poppy Liu), who’s been making money as a foot-fetish content creator before getting a job as an unpaid intern at Klerp, described as Kate Hudson’s online newsletter/lip gloss. You should already be getting a sense of the extremely contemporary reference points for much of the humour, which gets wearing fairly quickly.
Andrew and Eunice would probably describe themselves as the screw-ups of the family, so they’re initially thrown into a spin when their overachieving older sister Ruthie (Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All At Once) shows up unexpectedly. But it turns out that lawyer Ruthie’s life isn’t so perfect, either, as she’s become pregnant during an extramarital affair, throwing her tightly controlled existence into chaos. The shift in sibling dynamics could’ve been interesting to explore, but it never really goes beyond the superficial. Ruthie’s pregnancy gives the series the nearest thing it has to an ongoing arc, but really the episodes tend to be largely standalone, often introducing a new character (a friend of Andrew’s shows up, asking to be introduced to NY’s gay scene) or scenario (Eunice trials a celebrity diet drug, ‘Mother’, for her horrible boss) that doesn’t move things along in a meaningful way.
The characters are extremely one note, which wouldn’t be a problem if Dang! was hilarious. But when the jokes often feel forced, there’s little to keep you hooked for eight half-hour eps. Your mileage may vary with the extremely cynical humour, which often goes for the provocative low-hanging fruit and feels edgy for edginess’ sake.
On the plus side, the animation by Titmouse, Inc., the prolific studio behind the Beavis And Butt-Head revival, Agent Elvis and Strip Law, has a pleasing 2D vector animation style, with clean lines and bright colours – an inviting comic strip of a world that’s in contrast to the crudely adult humour. There are also some witty sight gags – such as dating app details and street signs – and there are occasionally surreal excursions, including a cameo from Hayley Williams that’s more WTF than funny, but at least it’s memorable. A couple of supporting characters – including Ruthie’s milquetoast ex, Warren – tend to be more amusing than the main siblings. Maybe that’s because shallow, single-trait characters work in small doses; but when it comes to the lead characters and the story, Dang! needed more substance to satisfy the sitcom Venn diagram.
‘Dang!’ is streaming on Netflix now
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