‘Avenue 5’ sees Zach Woods’ Matt Spencer as incompetent ‘a-hole’ of a customer relations head who doesn’t help
HBO's upcoming show 'Avenue 5' stars Hugh Laurie, Zach Woods, Rebecca Front, Suzy Nakamura, and Josh Gad in lead roles. The show set far into the future and in space, is about how a massive system malfunction has thrown an interplanetary cruise ship off the course of Earth.
The vessel is now expected to take years to return back to Earth, but the spaceship has resources that will only last a month considering the population on the ship. Woods' character Matt Spencer plays an important role in convincing people on the ship that everything is fine when nothing is really.
He is the "the head of customer relations" according to the show's synopsis and when the malfunction occurs, he "tries his best to calm frayed nerves on board". However, his response doesn't satisfy one of the passengers.
The "persistent passenger Karen Kelly (Rebecca Front) discovers the crew may know more than they’re letting on." From the synopses of the following episodes, it is also clear Matt does everything to keep his customers happy.
He also ends up counseling a couple onboard who are undergoing difficulties in their marriage. However, when his services begin to slack, the ship's captain Ryan Clark decides to use a passenger to mediate between the ship's crew and other passengers.
For someone who advertised the Avenue 5 spaceship as if it was his own, this change in customer relations must affect him. How this influences and why he slacks off amid a huge uproar on the space ship is something we will have to wait and watch when the episodes air weekly.
In the trailer of the show, we also see that Matt, as a customer relations head, doesn't help the situation but makes it worse with his confusing advice. For instance, when one of the passengers asks him if they should be worried, Matt says, "If you want to be".
This, of course, increases the panic among customers while dealing with a massive malfunction. There is also a scene that clearly shows Matt is an "a-hole" who is not helping.
He seems frazzled by not just full-blown panic but also the way the owner of Avenue 5 -- Herman Judd -- distances himself from the malfunction by saying none of the day to day functions of the ship are related to him. It is also clear from the trailer that at least three passengers have died because of the malfunction.
At the Winter TCA Tour 2020, creator Armando Iannucci said, "I wanted it to deliberately not be futuristic...I wanted to concentrate on the human element underneath it all." This is something that we can look forward to in the show.
'Avenue 5' will air on HBO on Sundays at 10 p.m. ET.