Crazyhead: Season 1: All Episodes

December 20, 2016 10:40 AM - Season 1 (Full Season)

Amy and Raquel attempt to navigate their way through the choppy waters of their early twenties whilst simultaneously kicking the ass of some seriously gnarly demons. What could possibly go wrong? From Misfits creator/writer Howard Overman, and now streaming on Netflix.
posted by DirtyOldTown (11 comments total)

I'm not quite done yet. There's a lot to like here, particularly Susan Wokoma's prickly, brash Raquel. But I keep getting bogged down. While Misfits had a deft ensemble that shared the work and always found time to surprise, this mostly all comes down to Wokoma and Theobold. And they're great, but it doesn't feel like they've been given a ton to work with. About half of the episodes are a Misfits like delight, and the others kind of meander and get bogged down in familiar tropes.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:43 AM on December 20, 2016

I just watched the first episode and loved it. It reminds me of Buffy but with a kind of Alicia Silverstone feel to it. Amy doesn't feel as bleak and sorrowful as Buffy. (I loved Buffy back in the day - thought it had some really hilarious moments).
posted by gt2 at 1:09 PM on December 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I finished the series last night. As a Misfits fan, I liked it. Though I think it suffers from the same problem as Supernatural does with demons though -- once it's established that a person can be cured of demonic possession via exorcism, it makes the good guys less heroic when they just beat up/kill the demon instead. (In Supernatural they established that being possessed traumatizes/brain-fries the host so badly that they probably wouldn't survive an exorcism anyway, and that the only way to kill the demon for keepsies is to do it with the demon-killing-blade while they're in a host. But, still, that was all established later to rationalize a lot of demon-possessed-people slaughter.)

Good casting though. I would probably watch another season if it gets one, but I'm fine with this being a one-off too.
posted by oh yeah! at 6:13 AM on December 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

This was fun! And much better than that time ITV tried to make a Buffy, but the slayer was a guy (whhyyyyy?) and they had the audacity to name the watcher Rupert but then have him played by Philip Glenister (good) doing quite possibly the worst American accent ever heard (bad, very very bad.)

I never finished Misfits - I made it partway through season 2 maybe? Maybe not that far. I just fucking hated Nathan too much.

I thought this was much more fun and brightly colored and watchable.

Do wish they hadn't foreshadowed Harry being sinister quite so hard. It took a lot of the emotional impact out of the scene where Raquel figures out he's betrayed her.
posted by Squeak Attack at 9:28 PM on December 27, 2016

but then have him played by Philip Glenister (good) doing quite possibly the worst American accent ever heard (bad, very very bad.)

I remember that accent. Talk about your horror show.
posted by oh yeah! at 6:01 AM on December 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

This really drags and drags closer as it goes on. I love the concept and I love the leads. But the attempt to have a longer arc did not work in this case. They could have burned through this amount of story in half the episodes.

I'll tune in for next season and hope for better.

But if you're on the fence about this and for some reason you haven't seen Misfits, blow this off and go watch that instead. It's a much better show with nearly the exact same tone, but crackerjack pacing, funnier jokes, more thematic resonance, etc.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:14 AM on January 11, 2017

I'll give Misfits another chance but I have to counter DirtyOldTown's recommendation by saying that Misfits does NOT feature two women as leads, it had a female character who has driving-men-crazy-sexy powers which I found super off-putting, and I don't remember it being as frank about women's sexuality but I certainly didn't stick it out to season 4 or whatever.
posted by Squeak Attack at 10:38 AM on January 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

Misfits doesn't feature two women as leads, no. It has an ensemble of five, two of whom are women, though. While I can see the recoil factor of the driving-people-crazy-with-sex powers, it bears mention that all of the initial five characters had powers that were funhouse mirror extensions/reversals of their backstories: unsociable weirdo who can become invisible; athlete hampered by one life mistake who can go back and try and change single events; marble-mouthed "chav" girl (is that word offensive? I'm American and do not know) who gains the ability to read minds and find out how little everyone really thinks of her, etc. It definitely bears mention that all of the characters in Misfits are assholes, emphatically so, and that their reaction to getting superhero powers is not to learn, grow, or take on responsibility, but simply to become more complicated assholes. It's what makes the show a refreshing twist on the superhero genre, but it also makes it harder to find characters who feel like positive embodiments of... anything... even if they are painfully relatable.

I wouldn't fault anyone for saying the characters on Misfits were less likable. And I wouldn't argue that it's all-the-leads-are-assholes thing doesn't mean the female leads are pieces of work as well and thus it doesn't have some of the cool empowerment angles Crazyhead has.

But Misfits feels much better felt-out from top to bottom, with the genre elements being complex explorations of the characters rather than just setup to get us to the genre stuff. I like Overman's writing, but Misfits feels like him firing on all gears instead of coasting. There's much less dead space and much more thoughtful payoffs.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:54 AM on January 19, 2017

If your main impression of Crazyhead is that you like that it revolves around female leads and has a great attitude about female sexuality, yeah, Misfits will not strike you as an improvement. If your main takeaway is that the tone and sense of humor are great, but you have issues with the derivative nature of the premise and the meandering pacing, Misfits will probably strike as several orders of magnitude better.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:00 AM on January 19, 2017

Some people really gotta have the last word, I guess.
posted by Squeak Attack at 9:43 AM on January 19, 2017

I think I'm two or three episodes in. Wasn't expecting to like it as much as I am, and it's mostly due to the leads. I hope the hijinks continue to be wacky, because it's already so comedic it's hard to take the deaths even a little bit seriously.
posted by asperity at 9:00 AM on April 16, 2018