Final Space

Adult Swim | TBS | Release Date: February 26, 2018

8.6	USER SCORE Universal acclaim based on 87 Ratings

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phuckoJun 1, 2021

Final Space is a heavily-marketed, finely tuned, ready-made franchise; unashamedly pointed at the modern male nerd with an under-developed sense of wit, and a disposable income to spend on Funko figurines.

Some argument could be made aboutFinal Space is a heavily-marketed, finely tuned, ready-made franchise; unashamedly pointed at the modern male nerd with an under-developed sense of wit, and a disposable income to spend on Funko figurines.

Some argument could be made about the visual quality of the show - and, like all shows that spend the entirety of their budget on visual effects, Final Space can be graphically spectacularly with a great fluidity of animation. Props to the suffering animators, as always. However, the praise stops there.

This show is less courageous than Rick & Morty. It's less heartfelt than Futurama. It's less salient than the Venture Brothers, and less sly than any of the classics of Adult Swim. And, it's less intelligent and less humourous than all of these, and most other significant animated series in its category; making no honest effort to leave its comfortable place among the swathes of new-style adult cartoon that have been vomited forth from media machines to shamelessly capitalize on the success of Rick & Morty. What it IS, however, is yet another poorly-written, needlessly energetic, overly-assured adult series that has stumbled through the literary process to end up with just enough base appeal to linger on for two tedious, aimless, over-promoted seasons. It fumbles every joke and sequence with a childish naivety.
You can almost hear the chittering of the marketing executives behind the scene, trying to engineer a show to be as mild and paletable to the modern mainstream audience as possible.

And that’s another thing; there isn’t a single original thought wasted on this series. It is truly stale to the core, and everything about it screams out “Worn-out trope” or “Heavily-abused Hollywood standard”, or “Plea for the lingering appeal of the adorkable.”. It is the living definition of derivative.

This is true for the characters: From the innocuous doofus of a white male protagonist; to his obligatory love interest, the dark-skinned, no-nonsense, affirmative-action-woman; the shippable anthropomorphs to capture the lucrative furry market; the needless, globular mascot; and the rest of them, I’ve already forgotten. The characters seem like they're designed purely for their market appeal; which is a slimy practice to any serious writer.

It’s also true for the stories: the senseless procession of scenes to fulfil some flighty, hole-shot plotline, in order to simulate the sensation of narrative motion; as if the show had any reason for going wherever it purports to be going. It reaches gracelessly and cluelessly toward emotional appeal, and only barely falls short of outright begging the audience for emotional attachment.

In fact, let me push it a step further: Final Space is the perfect example for why you, as a writer, shouldn’t endlessly regurgitate the things you see in other TV shows and movies. It clearly underlines the cancer of self-referential humour, low-effort parody, and inexperienced, echo-chamber scriptwriting that is killing modern entertainment, and has whittled the nuance of language and meaning down to a series of meaningless idioms and ingrained quips.

This cheap, lazy mindset is the direct enemy of the fresh and original; and in Final Space, it’s as visible as a large, squealing media beast falling backwards off a ricketty bandwagon.

Maybe I'm being a little cruel, or exaggerating the flaws of Final Space. There are certainly worse series by far; but few of them are so heavily promoted or baselessly praised (Apart from maybe Bojack Horseman - a more aware but equally rehashed shriek of attention from SoCal's insular creative circlejerk).

There is a certain earnesty to the people that fall in love with bad shows like this - a starry-eyed gushing of praise and assurances of perfection, and a stunning blindness to any shortcomings. If you're even fainly familiar with this kind of emotional commitment, you'll see it generously lathered throughout the other public reviews - and any assumptions you might make about the desperate, over-exertive nerdcore humour, and generic, uninspired plotlines of Final Space will probably be correct. This show definitely appeals to the culturally devoid and artistically blind.

To these people, I suggest you take a deeper dive into adult animation than what you'll find on the splash screen of Netflix. You may think that Final Space is a champion of ireverent adult animation - but in reality, it's a well-funded but exceedingly mediocre scrapbook of its contemporaries. It sits as a sieve on the surface of adult animation; catching anybody that scorns the effort needed to find the true gems.

And to the people that wrote this show: Go read a **** book sometime.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

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gurzicertoOct 21, 2019

Season 2 revisits that eternal question: is Olan Rogers worse at voice acting or writing?

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

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zedrofekkiOct 21, 2019

If you watched Rick & Morty and thought "Me need dumber show," this is it. For all its careful animation, every joke lands with a thud and every character speaks like a fellow kids meme.

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

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gar_of_fieldApr 4, 2020

Immensely disappointing. It is a cliché anime and lacks all the humour, subtility and emotions of the first season. Only remains stupid jokes, unlikeable caracters and plot holes. The old caracters lost all charm and dimension and the newImmensely disappointing. It is a cliché anime and lacks all the humour, subtility and emotions of the first season. Only remains stupid jokes, unlikeable caracters and plot holes. The old caracters lost all charm and dimension and the new ones are from some 14 y/o e-girl's roleplay. This **** isn't canon, Final Space ended with Gary's death.… Expand

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

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yiven35836Oct 30, 2019

Imagine an unfunny, emotionally unintelligent, poorly-adjusted kid in middle school. That kid is the personification of Final Space.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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nilafo2213Nov 5, 2019

The writing is consistently lackluster when it isn't abominably lazy. This is the most tragic type of series - you can tell an immense amount of work went in, and little (if any) thought. Also the protagonist's voice is astonishingly gratingThe writing is consistently lackluster when it isn't abominably lazy. This is the most tragic type of series - you can tell an immense amount of work went in, and little (if any) thought. Also the protagonist's voice is astonishingly grating and poorly-performed. I've never longed for **** voice acting before, but **** voice acting would have been a monumental step up.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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HisLordshipJan 19, 2020

I made the mistake of watching both seasons as they came out. Season 1 started vaguely interesting and quickly collapsed. Season 2 started badly and got worse. Dull, disjointed, and full of the weirdest and most pointless tropes. It's as if aI made the mistake of watching both seasons as they came out. Season 1 started vaguely interesting and quickly collapsed. Season 2 started badly and got worse. Dull, disjointed, and full of the weirdest and most pointless tropes. It's as if a ten year old has been given the opportunity to make a show based on their notions of what's cool as they've scribbled them down in an exercise book. It's as if Guardians of the Galaxy had a baby with American Dad (not even Family Guy) and then neither of them bothered to raise it... The plotting is thin, the characters are utterly uninteresting and one dimensional ("Oooh, he's a cat who does ninja stuff"), the whole thing feels hyperactive, and I can't help but feel as if there's a whole other show I've missed that would help me get what feel like in-jokes.

It's a waste of what is a superb cast. I suspect the entire thing has actually been put together by a Markov Chain generator that's been fed only on memes.

Avoid.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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