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Critic Reviews
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Even as Shrill hits its stride by the end of the third episode, it never quite reaches the hilarity levels of concurrent comedies such as PEN15 or Big Mouth, which mine the absurd and meta for laughs. But those quibbles feel beside the point, and increasingly less noticeable the more you invest in Annie’s journey, which is more complicated, rollicky and emotional – that is to say, more human – than a straightforward sitcom.
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This is Shrill‘s greatest triumph: it establishes a fat-positive gaze that humanizes rather than humiliates. But its greatest failure, one that works against that radicalism, is its insistence on connecting Annie’s every struggle to her weight.
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Saturday Night Live's marvelous Aidy Bryant brings warmth and a zen grace to a role that's still a work in progress after only six episodes. [18-31 Mar 2019, p.13]
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You don't get any sense of Annie's gift as a writer here, an issue that magnifies as the six-episode season progresses. Shrill is intended to be a superhero origin story--except we have no sense of what makes her particularly powerful yet.
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A rom-com should, by its very nature, be fun and light without sinking too deep into heavy material; a rom-com can tell a satisfying story in just 90 tight minutes. And it’s easier to build a rom-com around a partially formed character than it is to build a TV show around one—because a rom-com seeks only a happy ending.
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It’s neither better nor worse than much of its ilk and it’s rescued from oblivion by Bryant’s talent for toggling between the show’s sparkly sense of pride and its wounded moments of outrage.
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The result is that Shrill is not shrill, but it’s often blah and boring.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 28 out of 46
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Mixed: 3 out of 46
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Negative: 15 out of 46
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May 8, 2019
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Mar 27, 2019
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Mar 18, 2019