No Tomorrow: Season One (All Episodes)

December 1, 2016 12:59 PM - Season 1 (Full Season)

Evie, a risk-averse quality-control assessor who falls for free-spirited thrill seeker Xavier only to find out he lives his life that way because he believes the apocalypse is coming.
posted by DirtyOldTown (10 comments total)

I added this to my queue this by mistake, thinking it was something else entirely. When I saw how cheesy the promotional pics were, I nearly skipped it without even watching. I'm glad I didn't. It's a little twee and a little self-consciously quirky, yeah, but it's also weird, with some refreshingly different side characters, and a total willingness to let Xavier's "carpe diem because the apocalypse is coming!" schtick be both liberating and intensely stupid and irritating.

If video stores were still a thing, this would end up on the same shelf as Better Off Ted.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:03 PM on December 1, 2016

Sometimes the show has flashes of being a little more acidic and snappy that it mostly achieves. There's a scene with Evie and a woman professor discussing science and then the waiter comes and serves them a cocktail called a Bechdel, right before Evie starts yapping about Xavier.

I laughed.
posted by Squeak Attack at 1:45 PM on December 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

I've been watching this despite it being pretty far outside the typical show I'm interested in. It's cute, fun, sappy but very uneven. The biggest problem it suffers is that most episodes feel like they should have run a half hour but were stretched too thin. The first three weeks I found myself looking at the clock at 930 thinking the episode was over. I'm not sure if this has gotten better over the past couple of weeks - since about episode 6 - or if I've just grown accustomed to it.

But I have to disagree strongly with DirtyOldTown about the refreshingly different side characters! While I love Evie and Xavier, I hate nearly every other character and continue to ask myself why they are even in the show.

The boss is a total cartoon character. Every time she's on screen it jolts me out of the show. It's completely unbelievable that she would be in any sort of management position. And she's not even a good cartoon, she's just annoying.

Hank and Kareema are tolerable when playing off Evie, but they have yet to earn story lines of their own. Hank waltzing around the American Ninja Warrior course in the warehouse, or having a spy meetup with his online girlfriend... no.

Evie's parents are completely intolerable, especially the dad.

Then there's her ex-boyfriend. I love the actor, I even like his character, but he has no place in the show. 90% of the scenes he is in are completely unrelated to anything else going on. (And I mean that literally!)

Some of these characters might work if this were presented as an ensemble show. But it's not, it's an Evie+Xavier romcom and every plot with the other characters detracts from that.

If I cared a little bit more I'd make a /r/smyths/ style edit of No Tomorrow without all of the side character plots. It'd be a perfect half hour and a much better show, imo.

The only side characters that work for me are Evie's sister and Xavier's cousin. Her sister is grounded, a great foil for the craziness that Xavier and Evie get up to, and a good confidante for Evie. Xavier's cousin was a bit cartoonish, but at least he was fun and funny. And he was there to show just how far Xavier was willing to go.

The show has done a great job with continuity. There are continual callbacks and every sign that the season is an ongoing story. I'm genuinely curious how they resolve the end of the world plot. (Although it's looking like we aren't getting a season 2. I'd LOVE if they had the guts to actually end the world.)

There are typically several moments each episode that make me laugh out loud because they throw in a clever joke of the sort that you rarely see on network TV. For example, the beginning of episode 8 Xavier asked something like "so when am I going to see you? Tomorrow?" and then the opening credits roll starting with "No Tomorrow."
posted by 2ht at 2:06 PM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

I like Hank and Kareema. They have not spent a ton of time with them yet, but every minute they do give them, they just dig in as weirder and weirder. The show actually has a pretty good track record where whenever they do give someone a second, they're weird.

I completely agree that it would work better as a half hour show, though. And that it would be better as an ensemble.

As for the leads, I like the way the show isn't afraid to show that sometimes Xavier's thing makes him a delightful force for change and happiness and other times makes him an insufferable fool.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:11 PM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

This show is definitely cartoon-ish, but that mostly works for its better jokes.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:11 PM on December 1, 2016

100% agreement that the episodes should be 1/2 hour. Then there would be less meandering and less time spent with mostly useless characters like the parents.

I haven't caught up on the episodes aired yet but I have gone back and forth on enjoying the two work friends. I did like the little plot where Hank met his internet girlfriend and they decided they didn't have in-person chemistry, but I didn't enjoy Kareema's plot in the last episode I watched where she met her brother's fiancee.
posted by Squeak Attack at 2:48 PM on December 1, 2016

For example, the beginning of episode 8 Xavier asked something like "so when am I going to see you? Tomorrow?" and then the opening credits roll starting with "No Tomorrow."

Don't forget "No To Marrow."

I really like this show and I'm sad it won't have a tomorrow. (Though knowing they're gonna get canceled, heck with it, I kinda do hope the show ends the world just for shits and giggles.) I actually think most of the side characters work because they, like Evie, are interested in embracing life and trying new things. Timothy is dull in general, but he's branching out and getting hidden depths, so that's okay. Kareema and her proposal, DAMN girl. I think Deirdre is terrible and could not for the life of me figure out why she was going for Hank, but DAMN if the show didn't somehow make this work. Likewise Xavier has to walk a fine line between being a Manic Pixie Dream Boy and a crazy person and Joshua Sasse is clearly the man for the job.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:53 PM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

I actually think most of the side characters work because they, like Evie, are interested in embracing life and trying new things.

Which might have been okay (for me) if they presented it as Xavier influencing all of their lives, inspiring them to break out of the ordinary. That would have been a great way to tie the whole show together. But aside from the occasional run in that hasn't been the case. Instead we basically have Xavier + Evie, and then other crazy stuff happens.

It took me far longer than it should have to realize that Xavier was Galavant!
posted by 2ht at 6:39 AM on December 2, 2016

So, the last episode....damn, they're going with "Xavier is right." How very Cabin in the Woods of them, in a sense.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:19 PM on January 11, 2017

I'm not sure what to make of the last episode. It wasn't what I was expecting, that's for sure.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:03 AM on January 18, 2017