'Avenue 5' Episode 3: Looks like the HBO show is going to turn into a chilling horror-comedy
The horror! The horror of it all, really, when you actually stop to take in the human disaster that the off-trajectory 'Avenue 5' ship typifies. Recently, Josh Gad, who plays the egocentric idiot billionaire entrepreneur Herman Judd, in an interview compared the show to the "third act of the Titanic" disaster and a "comedic Breaking Bad". He might not be far off in his evaluation.
Showrunner Armando Iannucci seems to play up the horror elements of the show as much as its comedic elements. Like the corpses orbiting the ship that scare the customer in the spa room who is mummified in gold wraps just like the corpses. The corpses also derail a standup comedian's routine on the ship, the laughs dying down as the coffin is spotted. Even the changed breakfast menu points subtly to the fact that food is slowly running out on the ship and 'Plan B' of tasteless but nutritious and filling fungi will be deployed soon enough. And just to hit the point home, the housekeeping staff, fed up with the entitlement of the passengers in face of disaster, is becoming significantly less deferential and leaving anus-shaped towel arrangements to express their ire.
Rome or the 'Avenue 5' equivalent is burning and its Nero-like occupants are doing their own versions of playing the fiddle, from fighting among themselves to complaining about breakfast to pissing off the housekeeping crew. Much of the horror on the show seems to satirize our present push towards automation with the few people around serving in a more hospitality-oriented and aesthetic capacity, than in any real, functional way. The people, in short, are "ornamental" rather than useful.
In Episode 3, the big reveal is when Hugh Laurie's character, Captain Ryan Clark, realizes that the crew he has been so proud of and who he exchanges "Fly Safe, Fly True" call with, is actually a bunch of actors like him. The actual, not-so-good-looking, engineers are hidden under the deck platform doing the bit of maintenance and "back end" work, as Billie puts in. Everything on the shiny ship's deck is a lie.
Ryan Clark is already in a bit of tizzy about handling the passengers, even roping in Karen Kelly to do his dirty work of talking to the passengers. But when he figures out the truth about his crew, he has only one thought. To stop Judd from knowing, who will only make the situation worse.
Turns out Judd, because of another one of his stellar brainwaves, had asked the crew to be good-looking. But "good engineers" and "beautiful people" are Venn diagrams that don't intersect, so HR went with looks over qualifications.
Judd plays the Silicon billionaire man-child stereotype of someone who struck it big because of one good idea about touristic space travel but has failed in every other way, especially in terms of decision-making and leadership.
What we have, ladies and gentleman, is a 'nearly' self-automated ship, which performs just fine when there are no bugs. But from the "gravity-flip" glitch onwards, it is becoming exceedingly clear that all bets are off. It is like a gargantuan beast with no one at the controls.
Cyrus, the failed genius, while doing his "six months tops" trajectory calculations for the journey back to Earth, did not account for the 500 "lottery winners" weight on the ship. This, essentially, ruins his calculations and now the ship will take 3 years 6 months. He suggests getting rid of the extra 500 people so that his previous calculations can pan out and Captain Ryan Clark, in a fit of pique, calls him a "psychopath". He is not wrong.
'Avenue 5' airs on HBO on Sundays at 10 pm ET.