Season Review: Super Slackers Season One

Legendary Simpsons director David Silverman is behind 420TV’s new superhero parody.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS BELOW)

For anyone who’s watched the countless superhero movies and TV shows released in the past decade, the rapid pace at which Super Slackers introduces its characters and premise will be much appreciated. Overall, however, this season’s short length is its own worst enemy, since the show’s new ideas are forced to fit within uninspired settings instead of being given room to flourish.

The pilot alone introduces us to the 5 titular heroes, Jerry, Max, Nam, Arantza and Piques, would‑be supervillain Olivia and reluctant mentor (and centaur) Professor Ecksmann within four minutes, which is impressive but doesn’t give the script room to do anything else. As a result, the second episode is a direct continuation of the first, while nearly every episode of the season features a similar plot of the group attempting to foil one of Olivia’s plans; unfortunately, she never becomes an interesting enough antagonist to deserve this, which renders this aspect of the season’s arc a missed opportunity. Those who remember the Australian animated series/disaster Ibis Queen should recognize why serialization is a bad idea in series with short episode lengths, but the problem is best summarized for unfamiliar readers as everything feels shorter. In Super Slackers’ case, I found myself thinking “oh, I guess that’s it” at the end of both the pilot and season, although, thankfully its foundation is solid enough that this seems to simply be due to format limitations.

For instance, the heroes and Professor exchange banter that feels surprisingly believable for housemates, stoners, and young people in general. The cast is largely comprised of performers whose popularity began on social media (shout‑out to Vine in particular) and they seem to be playing alternate versions of themselves, which helped their acting come across as more organic than I’d expected for amateurs. As Archer exemplifies, perfecting character interactions early on can be a huge asset, and given how predictable Super Slackers’ story beats tended to be, the dialogue-heavy scenes felt like moments of reprieve for me. The only exceptions to this were the jokes about horses directed at Professor Ecksmann, which were too frequent and forced. In fact, most of the show’s humor was typically unsubtle or relied on easy targets; I understand the series is a 420TV original, but the countless jokes about pot hit a point of diminishing returns somewhere in the first two or three episodes. Nevertheless, David Silverman’s wacky, early‑Simpsons influence seemed to occasionally shine through, such as in one absurd sequence involving a Samsung Note 7 as a literal bomb.

OUR TAKE

It’s tempting to consider Super Slackers for what it could be rather than what’s been shown so far. This season too closely resembled a proof of concept for my liking, but there’s enough here for me to believe that the series deserves future installments. While it hasn’t demonstrated anything near the quality of the other show Silverman still notably works on, an emphasis on original storytelling would give these heroes a chance to play with our expectations and create their own identity.