Adam Ruins Everything: The First Season

January 5, 2016 1:18 PM - Season 1 (Full Season)

Adam starts with why diamond engagement rings are bad and takes us on a journey through charity, sex, hygiene, and finally death.

As discussed over on the Blue, Adam Conover plays that annoying guy you know who is out to "correct" virtually any topic that comes up. But along the way, he falls in love, lets his costars do some educating too, and winds it all up with a surprisingly moving coda about our inevitable demise.

posted by Etrigan (2 comments total)

I loved the whole season but the last episode blew me away. I get that people see "smug guy" and are turned off or don't like the actual facts as presented but I don't know. Most of the stuff he says is stuff I already agree with so I guess I'm more likely to accept the other stuff, until proven otherwise. Mostly I'm entertained by the writing and the characters; I find Adam and all the characters just really like-able.

The last episode in particular was just great though, how while going through Adam's schtick it acknowledged that it is just a schtick like anything else and we're all just scared humans doing our best. I really like self-aware stuff like that, it feels very modern.
posted by bleep at 3:06 PM on January 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Here's a challenge: I want you to believe what I'm about to tell you. Not just hear it, not just understand it, but believe it. It's a fact that you already know to be true, but have never been able to fully accept. And it's this: You are going to die. You -- the person listening to me right now -- are going to die. It's difficult even to imagine, isn't it. Take a moment and try to picture what it's like to not exist. You can't do it. You're imagining darkness, black. But there will be no black. There will be no color, because there will be no you to perceive it. And your mind recoils from that idea. It's simply unable to conceive of its own nonexistence, and so, it concludes that it's impossible. That you'll live forever. But you won't. All things end; all motion slows; all heat becomes cold. Life is an eddy in that current of entropy, a brief chemical reaction that lights up the darkness and then, its fuel spent, dissipates back to nothing. Just like you will. Your body is a marvelous and intricate machine built out of millions of interconnected fragile systems, and as you age, it begins to slowly but surely deteriorate and break down. When one fails, a doctor may be able to repair it, but at some point, there will be too many interlocking failures to proceed, and like a cascade of dominoes, your joints, your eyes, your heart, your lungs, your memory, your entire body will fail. It will happen. And while it's difficult to hear this truth, it is essential that you accept it, because every second that goes by in which you don't is a second of your precious and finite life that you risk wasting. So I'm going to say it once more and this time, try as hard as you can to believe me. You -- yes, you -- will die. And there is nothing you can do to stop it. ... How's that?

What the [bleep].

What?

Yeah, that's a lot for a first date.

Yeah. Maybe I shouldn't open with it.

Fucking genius. And the episode gets even better from there, and it was all earned by the season before it. Just fantastic.
posted by Etrigan at 6:27 AM on January 6, 2016 [5 favorites]