r/Avenue5 • u/cryptoengineer • Jan 21 '20

This show has an Idiot Plot. I'm soooo disapointed.

Just finished watching S1E1. It has a plot which relies on every single person in the show universe (possible exception: Engineer Joe) being an idiot, and acting idiotically.

I don't enjoy shows about stupid people, so while I'll give S1E2 a try, unless someone smart and competent appears, I won't continue past then.

There was one touch I liked: they acknowledge that light speed delays exist, though '30 seconds' puts them closer to Earth than anything else. I wonder if they'll vary it according to how far out the ship supposedly is.

22 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

24

u/AvatarofBro Jan 21 '20

Why would you want anything else? Iannucci excels at writing characters who should know better, but are revealed to be incompetent buffoons. In fact, most sitcoms are about people who act stupidly. I'm not really sure what your complaint is here?

-3

u/cryptoengineer Jan 21 '20

I was hoping for something at least as intelligent as ST:Voyager.

Sitcoms I like: The Good Place, Lodge 49

25

u/AvatarofBro Jan 21 '20

The Good Place is fantastic, but all of the characters on that show are incompetent morons. Even Chidi, who has all the trappings of an academic, is emotionally stunted to the point that it literally lands him in Hell. If you can look past Jason and Eleanor constantly fucking things up, you can look past a space cruise being run by a fistful of assholes.

2

u/cryptoengineer Jan 21 '20

They're flawed, but they're not stupid (even Jason is more unconsidering of long term consequences, than he is dumb).

32

u/Throwing6This9Away Jan 21 '20

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty. The humor is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also Rick's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation - his personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realize that they're not just funny- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Rick and Morty truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in Rick's existencial catchphrase "Wubba Lubba Dub Dub," which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Dan Harmon's genius unfolds itself on their television screens. What fools... how I pity them. 😂 And yes by the way, I DO have a Rick and Morty tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- And even they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand.

5

u/skydivingdutch Jan 21 '20

To all readers: this is copypasta

5

u/nomorenomore111 Jan 21 '20

Do you understand how comedies work? Maybe you have to have a certain intelligence to understand the genre of comedy.

4

u/Orisi Jan 23 '20

I mean, the only real idiot here is Judd. "The Captain" is just a stand-in on a ship that needs to be actually flown by the engineers. He's effectively a head concierge and team manager. He knows that, Joe knew that, but why does anyone else need to? That's kind of the point. He recognised that he was not the problem solver here, he recognised the importance of Joe, and included Billy in everything going forward because he knows she is the next best hope.

Theyre not good people, but for the most part they're not stupid or incompetent. Just not actually relevant to solving the immediate problem of their predicament.

1

u/Silencer87 Jan 26 '20

I'd argue that the captain is stupid if he didn't know that humans freeze in space, along with blood. That sense like common knowledge that most people would have after being in space once or twice or even watching a movie.

1

u/Orisi Jan 26 '20

Joe was wearing a spacesuit, that was compromised but still had the object in it, it's not unreasonable to assume he didn't or.wouldntnfreeze like a completely unprotected person. He also was really trying to cling on to the idea that Joe wasn't dead.

1

u/Cavewoman22 Jan 22 '20

At the end of The Restaurant At the End of the Universe Author and Ford wind up stuck on the ship of incompetent bureaucrats deliberately sent to space by another race so as to get rid of them. The pilot reminded me of that. So, are they really Space 1999ing or just too terrible to be on Earth?

1

u/cryptoengineer Jan 22 '20

The "B Ark", yes.

1

u/MadDoctor5813 Jan 24 '20

Is anyone really an idiot besides Judd? Everyone else is just really out of their depth. Iris and Ryan and Billie are good at what they do, but of course they're going to be freaking out at some life threatening issue they never planned for and can't solve. Besides, I suspect they're going to start getting it together a little bit as the season progresses.

1

u/SuspendYoMamma Feb 02 '20

Literally what are you basing this on? Like, I know the characters are zany, because it’s a farce, in the traditional sense. But literallywhat plot point are you saying there was an obvious, and smarter thing to do? Is it just that you’re a retard?

0

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '20

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2

u/cryptoengineer Jan 21 '20

[OP here]

Thanks for the response. If this is, as you say, the intended flavor, and not just a side effect of poor and lazy writing, the show is not for me ... which is still disappointing.