'Avenue 5' Episode 4 is a literal 'sh*t storm' and the only person who can stop it is the Captain
'Avenue 5' lets us in on another tiny secret. He is broke or is close to broke. Captain Ryan Clarke, on the other hand, is busy learning about wet suites and how human feces is the only thing that protects people from getting cancer caused by radiation in space. We are sure that this wet suite is going to somehow turn into a problem from all the stress that has been made about it and turns out, our guess is right. It is also fascinating how the show ends up having a moment that makes you 'facepalm' every five minutes.
I mean how original is it to portray a huge corporate not take any responsibility for their action and instead paint themself as a victim? There may be dead bodies revolving around the spacecraft, but people inside are hardly bothered by the human remains that are being torn down into parts. This, also, doesn't take priority over the living beings inside the spacecraft, who are going bonkers over how much longer they have to stay cooped up in space.
We also have Ryan finally meet the engineers who do operate on the spacecraft and all of them have a get-to-know-each-other session where engineers confess that they had been betting on how long Ryan would last.
The captain (fake) who is supposed to stay away from alcohol is now being plowed with one drink after another. In addition to learning that the crew on the bridge is just a group of actors who do not know a thing about space travel, Ryan and Billie now have to deal with the actors not being taught enough to converse with passengers. Even their names are not real. And at this opportune time, Karen is at Herman Judd's suite for a cocktail party and she puts a terrible idea into Judd's head. One that is a sure shot headache for the real crew of the spaceship to deal with. A photograph of passengers posing together at the bridge of the spaceship.
At this point, we understand that 'Avenue 5' is a comedy that hopes to use a string of erroneous decisions to elicit laughs, but fails terribly because it is tiring to watch a gifted cast go through the motions of being in a comedy that is just not funny. We might sound the same as Ryan, who is complaining about every detail and is a "whine bag" as Karen puts it, but one must point out the atrocious attempt at comedy for what it is.
The show is in the middle of a literal sh*t storm (figuratively too, considering how the show itself is one hot mess). You see, the wetsuit that is filled with human feces has ruptured because it was not vented, and there is a huge amount of it that is being thrown into space just as a snapshot of passengers is being planned on the bridge.
It is so absurd that the captain is being asked to go out in a suit to fix the shi*hole. Billie knows that Ryan cannot differentiate between a valve that needs fixing and one that doesn't. Yet, she sends him out and tells him multiple times that all he has to do is find her on the communication link. From the number of times she stressed that bit of information, we can guess the problem that will crop up in the next episode. That and the fact that the last time a human was out of the spacecraft fixing something, he returned dead.
'Avenue 5' airs on HBO on Sundays at 10 pm ET.