RIP to the actual goat
Besides the incredibly superficial Shakespeare allusions, there is little which distinguishes this from a simple re-run of The Thick of It's rhythms and philosophy. Much like The Thick of It, it uses labyrinthine dialogue to trick the audience into believing there is substantive intelligence on-screen when there, by and large, is none. Its conceit that the particular neuroses of its cast justifies the overwritten script is only a minor concession when these characters are often interminably dull.
So, if it does not function as drama, does it function as satire? With the exception of one sublime chamber piece, the answer is an emphatic 'no'. The basic material which the show works with is certainly nothing new - we can look to Renoir's The Rules of the Game, Stroheim's Foolish Wives or Lampedusa's The Leopard as infinitely more sophisticated satirical-dramatic works on bourgeois elite subjects. Despite all the talk in the series of a 'new media landscape' which is set to destroy the aged Roy dynasty, nothing about this new reality is explored with any degree of insight beyond its novelty.
Season two episode, Panic Room, represents the rare occasion when the show's writers have their finger on the pulse and are able to encapsulate both the bristling intensity and inherent absurdity of the very real political divisions which underscore contemporary civil life.
A terrible shame that Rectify is a rare series with a genuine moral sensibility in its text, yet its form and aesthetic is about as sophisticated as an amateur student film.
I will simply point you towards Jacques Cheminade's presentation, 'Squid Game and Other Things to Come' for my thoughts on this
Whilst often mired in its signalling towards far-right Chan culture, those sketches which are not concerned with this infantile pandering tap into the culture in a way scarcely few series or films have been able to over the past decade. If we compare MDE to their most obvious influence, TIm Heidecker, we can see how their comedic sensibility is far more relevant and contemporary than that of Heidecker, whose recycling of comedic scenarios which were outdated 10 years ago (On Cinema's parody of film criticism was old and tired at the time) demonstrates MDE's comparatively insightful sociological observations. The famous Cop Killer sketch stands as a definitive document of the crushed dreams and aspirations of post-industrial America, and why the American revolutionary impulse is so often expressed through indiscriminate violence.
Morris attempts to synthesise a trademark British 'nonsensical' sketch schema with a hyper-modern grotesque, yet neither works individually or in conjunction with one another. Rather than unveiling a turn-of-the-century horror that had been glossed over by Blairite managerialism, it simply acts as yet another means for a British comic writer to suck themselves off.
This review may as well act as a placeholder for the vast majority of British comedy, but we often mistake sanctimony and dull punchlines for 'sophisticated' humour. Comedy does not exist for us Brits to critically examine individual psychologies, institutions (even if it may trick you into thinking it is) or dare I say it, to actually make you laugh. Instead it is an exercise in exceptionalism which we impose upon our own people, and in recent times, export to the rest of the world as a kind of post-colonial 'gift' to the world's unwashed. Never mind the fact that the Americans long surpassed our feeble notion of comedy (who in their right mind would suggest Chaplin or even Keaton were overshadowed by the unfathomable comedic genius of Stan Laurel?). It should come as a surprise to no one on the planet that Palin has devoted his post-Python career to Empire apologia disguised as somnambulist travel TV nor should Cleese's pretensions of being a genuinely maverick and 'offensive' figure rather than the melting old bat he actually is. This legacy is simply an extension of the essential nature of British comedy. I will gladly take a number of Sandler's films over the so-called 'monoliths of British comedy'
Ignore any and all claims of 'satire' or 'incisive psychological analysis'. Much like his Western counterpart, David Lynch, Anno uses esoterica solely as a means of misleading uneducated viewers into believing that Evangelion bares any relation to historical world culture. If symbology is to be employed in an artwork, it must substantively relate to that which it signifies and it must also expand upon the signified content. It must dialogically - and more importantly, dialectically - relate to that which is signified. Anno's haphazard use of this kind of symbology instead amounts to a 'private' language which both feigns substance and reinforces the depressive-narcissism Anno seeks to aestheticise. As a result, Anno has created a flock of lonely young men who perceive art as a means of seeking comfort in their own misery. You would do far better to read The Bible or Civilisation and Its Discontents than devote any of your time to this.
It is certainly among the most socially destructive artworks of the past 30-40 years.
