I had an evening where I was surprisingly free to sit down and watch television with no specific show in mind. I had recently finished several shows that was on my never ending list of things that I want to consider watching, and I didn’t want to delve into any of the series that I’d know would be gigantic commitments, so I sat down with an objective to comb through different platforms and do somewhat of an audit of things that things that I would watch eventually.
When I got to Netflix, Love Death + Robots had the little red label on it indicating new episodes, and my plan to merely refresh the list went out the window and I was diving into the first episode. I’ve been a fan of the series as a whole in general, even though I think the initial momentum had slowed down in ensuing seasons, but considering the one-off nature of all the episodes, redemption is always the next story away.
Unfortunately, after I finished, quickly, all ten of the episodes of season Vol. 4, I was just left with this unsatisfied feeling of ehhhh that’s it? To me, there weren’t any particular standout episodes like there had been in prior volumes, and my general vibe was that the collection as a whole seemed to be pretty devoid of love, way low on the robots, but still had plenty of death. I felt as if, kind of like Black Mirror, the series had gained some notoriety, and it became a property that niche celebrities wanted to associate with, and the series was more than willing to accommodate, even if it came at the expense of the quality that put it on the map in earlier collections.
David Fincher, Tim Miller and even fucking MrBeast were notable contributors to this collection, with Netflix making the conceited effort to let people know about the latter’s appearance in Screaming of the Tyrannosaur. But it seemed to me that this collection banked on people recognizing some of the more notable contributors and watching just for that, but in the end, none of the episodes were really that standout great.
I mean, the final episode that was presented to me, Can’t Stop was literally just a glorified music video; I like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but this was literally just a fucking puppet show on top of Can’t Stop. The song is good, and the video was chill and fun, but in the grand spectrum of things, I watch shit to be told stories and be entertained, not be fed regurgitated content with puppets replacing the actual people.
There’s really not much else to add. The volume as a whole was a holistic letdown in my opinion, but thankfully it wasn’t a tremendous time commitment, so it’s not a situation where I’m upset about the sunk cost of time wasted. If this is the direction that the franchise is headed, I’m under the impression that perhaps they should consider stop where they finished. I know the order of the series isn’t anything concrete, but if they ended with Can’t Stop, they can at least say they closed the book on the series with David Fincher.
Anyway, here’s how I’d rank the episodes; not that it’s really indicative of actual quality, it’s more like ranking the turds in the bowl that are the least to most stinky:
- How Zeke Got Religion (Ep. 8)
- For He Can Creep (Ep. 10)
- The Other Large Thing (Ep. 5)
- 400 Boys (Ep. 4)
- Golgotha (Ep 6)
- Spider Rose (Ep. 3)
- Can’t Stop (Ep. 1)
- Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners (Ep. 9)
- The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur (Ep. 7)
- Close Encounters of the Mini Kind (Ep. 2)
