Season Review: Hot Streets Season One

The needle tears a hole.

One of the things that I worried about when I reviewed the pilot episode of Hot Streets a couple of years back was that Chubbie Webbers was going to be the accidental star of the series, both in terms of servicing the series being a funny dog and the fact that Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland voices the canine character.  And in a lot of ways, the shitty clickbait press for Hot Streets printed everywhere but here did it’s best at trying to get the same sort of fervor that Adult Swim’s #1 series (in terms of audience) got, but quite frankly, you’re average Rick and Morty fan was already sick and tired of Rick and Morty. Not so much the series, but the shitty clickbait articles that haunted the show’s 2017 run that would cause such controversies as the Szechuan sauce bit, fans attacking the show’s excellent women writers on Reddit, and a just missed controversy with Dan Harmon and an ex-Community co-worker. Fortunately for Hot Streets, the show not only was able to avoid any tangible connection between the series, other than resumes, and instead stand on its own two legs as a solid series for Adult Swim.

For those that don’t know, Hot Streets follows an FBI division that does investigations of the paranormal, an X-Files meets Scooby-Doo if you will in terms of the premise that saw Agents Branski (JD Ryznar) and French (Scott Chernoff) travel between different dimensions, timelines, and yes even outer space. For my money, Bryan Wysol was a longtime writer on Rick and Morty, and so it would make sense that the first season of his brand-new TV show would feature a bunch of possible subconscious similarities to the altruistic sensibilities that that show would bring to the table, but there’s also a lot here that’s begging two things…1) a series of episodes at double the length and 2) going a different kind of crazy than what Rick and Morty was.

Fortunately, from a technical perspective, the visual differences between Hot Streets and Rick and Morty are as such that no one is going to confuse the two shows on their face value. Wisely, Hot Streets employed Pete Michels (Family Guy/The Simpsons) as the show’s director, which is JUST as important a move as Justin Roiland did with tapping Wes Archer for his series. Why? You get two guys that can literally get you whatever you need, and in terms of Hot Streets, it’s simplistic animation design that hearkens back to daytime cartoons of the 1960s needed the technical strength to pull off alternate universes that were featured in such episodes as “Nursery Rhyme Land” or “The Ballad of Autumn Gold”.

I’m also happy as hell to report that Chubbie is definitely not THE star of the series. Hot Streets works best as an ensemble cast that needs more time to flesh out because, today, there’s a LOT crammed into 12 minutes and it can get messy in terms of plot structure. But, Jen (voiced by Chelsea Kane) is undoubtedly the breakout star. Not because of any cliched notions of feministic grandiose that has been plaguing perceptions from the millennial press, no, it’s because she is definitely not a “background” character working among male characters and is most certainly as important to the show as any other character. Like a four-part harmony, this show works best when half the cast takes on an “A-plot” and the other half takes on a “B-plot” and then there’s a copasetic ending where the two halves meet for an epic climax. The sophistication of this format certainly comes to form as the show progresses and the characters successfully established as the season wears on. THESE are the attributes of a strong writer’s room, one that certainly has the capabilities to come up with 22-minute long episodes.

Hot Streets helps Adult Swim kick off 2018 with the same sort of passion to intellectual properties it had in 2017, and they didn’t need the ham-filled SEO tactics utilized by others to try and beg for “millennial” dollars. Instead, Hot Streets features the gusto to deliver a hell of a season that’s well-deserving of a second.