Review: Milo Murphy’s Law “Going the Extra Milo; The Undergrounders”

What could possibly go wrong?

Spoilers Below

From the creative minds that brought you Phineas and Ferb, comes a show with a similar animation style and tone; incorporating my personal saviour/idol, Weird Al Yankovic, as the lead. Milo Murphy is a kid with an ever-persistent optimistic attitude, as he walks into and out of, constant death traps. His bad luck follows him everywhere he goes and within about a 5-foot radius of his personal being (hence, why his friends usually steer clear). On the bright side, and to quote the theme song, his life is “never boring, even for a minute.”

Frankly, I’m surprised that it took this long for a show with this concept to be conceived. We have shows about talking food, talking squids, platypuses that are secret agents, dead people, rich people, poor people, people with grand fortune, people with grand misfortune, etc.; but to my knowledge, this is the first show to have a character suffer constant peril and near-death experiences but to be perfectly alright with it, and actually thrive off of it. Milo couldn’t be any happier, taking into account the string of catastrophes that follow him around.

A lot of the show’s humor stems from Milo’s nonchalant, cheerful reaction to these spontaneous calamities. They got the perfect guy to portray Milo too: I’ve never seen or heard of an instance in which Weird Al,  was not being extremely pleasant to be around. [Not to brag, but I’ve met him, and I’d spend a day with a rabid wolverine in my underwear, just to go get coffee and talk,one on one, with this man.] Al’s personal friends have said that his optimism is infectious and at times, get this, weird. With no better choice than the king of parodies and polka as the lead, we have a believable voice put to an unforced and funny character.

“Going the Extra Milo” served as a good introductory pilot to the meta-atmosphere and array of characters. There is Milo, who we’ve already discussed; Zack, the new kid in town who isn’t yet aware of Milo’s legacy; and Melissa, Milo’s best friend who knows that he’ll always ultimately come out on top. Zack is by Milo when his daily craziness happens and goes on the journey with him. The journey for the pilot, is just arriving to school on time, for the first day of school. A string of wacky close-calls go down, and ultimately the boys make it to school just as the bell rings.

‘The Undergrounders” uses what we just saw as material to have the crew go on another wild adventure. This time, a subway train gets derailed while on a field trip and the characters end up underground with other stranded survivors who have spent the last month, below the surface. In the end, everything works out and we have more comical banter along the way.

I’ll be interested to see just how much this show delves into character development. Will it just be misadventure that ultimately turns out fine, after misadventure that ultimately turns out fine; or will the show start to personalize the characters and give each a backstory. A synopsis from Disney said that Milo is the ancestor of the  person responsible for “Murphy’s Law” so I’ll be interested to see how much insight they put into that. Al gives constant amusing dialogue and the voice acting is on par with other high-budget Disney cartoon shows. I’d definitely recommend checking it out when it premieres on October 3, 2016 at 8:00 pm EST, especially if you are a fan of Phineas and Ferb.