WesternAnimation Boring Fauxlosophic "Shaggy Dog" Story with incredibly unsympathetic protagonist
This show consists of 2 distinct parts: audio, which is taken almost entirely from a real-life podcast, and video which depicts wacky adventures in a virtual multiverse. And these parts don't mesh well. At all. Worse, there's barely any effort to integrate them, to the point where a magic fish with a robot body describes himself as a white man and the main character is called by the wrong name more than once. I suppose the sheer incongruity of characters rambling about unrelated topics while they traverse strange apocalyptic worlds can be amusing, but at its core it's just a cheap gimmick that gets stale quickly.
Now, let's look at each part separately. I suppose the podcast part could be interesting, if you're into that, but Contemplate Our Navels ramblings is NOT what I wanted from a show about traveling into weird and wacky worlds! Moreover, since Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic, it's genuinely confusing and hard to understand at times, so the audio quickly becomes just background noise.
The video part and the Framing Device of Clancy's life on the Ribbon is frankly much more interesting, but it has its problems too. It's hard to get invested when almost every episode is a "Shaggy Dog" Story where the world we see will be destroyed. And why is every world dead or dying? Why, through the sheer negligence of our protagonist, of course! See, the technology he uses needs regular maintenance, which he fails to do, despite the computer trying to warn him about it multiple times.
Make no mistake: even if the worlds we see are virtual simulations (or something? it's really unclear), we have seen Clancy take objects into the real world out of them. Even living beings, like his dog. The characters we see are fully sentient and sapient, and they are all dying or dead because Clancy can't be assed to spend a minute to read FAQ!
Later we get introduced to Clancy's neighbor, who acts as a Foil to him. We're supposed to see him as evil for using this technology for profit and abusing the inhabitants of his simulations, but he honestly comes across as A Lighter Shade of Black, because at least he's pragmatic enough to properly maintain his tech. Clancy let every virtual world and its inhabitants die (and caused a localized catastrophe in the real world, killing several people there too) through sheer negligence. And also condemned Captain Bryce who had tried to help him to a Fate Worse than Death. And at no point had he ever shown a shred of guilt or remorse for it. Honestly, he's not a protagonist worth rooting for.
0/10, will not watch again.
WesternAnimation Poorly Advertised
The Midnight Gospel is a psychedelic animated cartoon series about a magenta coloured vlogger who visits strange new Worlds via an illegal virtual reality machine. Except it isn't really about that at all, and one of the big disservices to this show is how poor a job a lot of summaries and previews do, explaining what this is all actually is to potential viewers.
What this show actually is is a podcast with an animated framing device added to it. The podcast consists of Duncan Trussell interviewing various people of interest; social commentators, comedians, former death row inmates, and his own mother. Each episode and interview discusses a particular topic, such as recreational drug use or deathcare, in a loose and extemporaneous manner. Whilst they chat, the host and interviewer are represented on screen by cartoon characters stuck within a virtual reality world. If you get at all bored or confused by the interview topic, you can instead focus on the cartoon characters, who are often fighting through some horrible and deadly apocalypse.
Gospel might disappoint a lot of its potential audience from the get go, with Adventure Time fans dipping in to what they expected would be another surreal comedy adventure and discovering its actually nothing of the sort. I suspect the show is probably also disappointed for those stoners hoping to have something mellow and brightly coloured to have on in the background whilst they get utterly munted. The show (or rather, the discussions within) demands a little more attention than such people might be able to afford.
I'm not used to reviewing podcasts, but I found this one to be reasonably entertaining and insightful. I ended up learning far more about what I could be doing with dead family members, which is a surprise. If you go in with reasonable expectations, and a patience for podcasts, then you will have a decent time of it.
WesternAnimation Life and death
Going in with high expectations of an extremely trippy and surreal animated collaboration between Duncan Trussell and Pendleton Ward, I sat down to watch The Midnight Gospel as a personal recommendation. Upon watching the first episode, I realised in real time that the entire show was built off Duncan Trussell's podcast, something not explained at all in the show's marketing, and it gave me a truly visceral reaction of confusion and disappointment. Really? After all the hype, it's a glorified animated podcast? That's what we're doing? However, with firm encouragement from my friend, I persevered, and while I didn't enjoy everything that came after, the experience of watching the show is unique. Going in with an open mind, you'll find it to be challenging, thought-provoking, even enlightening in places. Each of Trussell's interviewees is given a uniquely animated microcosm to help illustrate and explore their ideas and perspectives through Ward's complex metaphorical visuals. Undoubtedly, Ward's animation talents are the real show-stealers, and the way his cartoons interplay and synergise with the conversations is breathtaking at the best of times. Some episodes may rely too much on his typical style of cutesy visuals, but for the most part, the marriage of dialogue and animation works well.
Something that catches everyone off-guard about this show is the fact that the show makes little effort to integrate the setting of the cartoon and the context of the conversations in any logical, concordant sense. While there is this elaborate framing device of Trussell's character, Clancy, diving into advanced digitally-simulated worlds at the end of their timelines, the show trusts the viewer to understand that this is all a smokescreen. Clancy is just a cipher for Duncan. Behind all the colourful, bizarre Mix-and-Match Critters are real humans with real perspectives on life, death, and whatever comes in between. There is no delusion that the animations are reflecting any sort of reality even within the fictional setting of the show, they are simply there to provide thematic pomp to whatever is being discussed.
The issue with The Midnight Gospel is that, because it's so inextricably tied to Trussell's podcast and the audio from it, all the flaws inherent to that source material become an albatross round this show's neck. Trussell himself is not always the most engaging host, and his interactions with his guests often lack any form of conflict — he seems to blindly accept any and all ideas that get thrown at him, almost never interrogating some of the more outlandish drivel his opposites may come out with. When it would be more dignified to admit ignorance, his claims of understanding are not always the most convincing. Although admirable in his open-mindedness, Trussell's easy-going style of podcast hosting doesn't always make for good television. The first episode is perhaps the worst in how it devolves into a stereotypical stoner conversation without substance, and frankly sets a terrible first impression for the rest of the show. Since the show is fairly episodic, I'd actually recommend just skipping the pilot entirely and going straight for the better, meatier, more existentially profound stories that follow.
The guests themselves are a mixed bag. I dislike how authoritatively many of them speak on certain subjects that they aren't the most informed about (Damien Echols definitely springs to mind) and I much prefer the less know-it-ally guests who provide insightful questions to chew on rather than definitive answers to choke on. Without spoiling anything, the final episode — ever, since the show has surprisingly not been renewed for a second season — is a beautifully intimate and intensely morbid emotional gut-punch that will make you question life. For better or worse, I now follow in my mate's footsteps to give The Midnight Gospel a hearty recommend to anyone willing to listen.