Dick drawings and poop jokes are frequently seen as childish, immature, and the lowest form of humor. Yet, in an ironic twist, Netflix’s most intelligent comedy, and possibly their best series all around, is centered entirely on poop and dick jokes. But American Vandal is hardly immature – it’s a layered, suspenseful, incredibly addictive comedy that turns jokes about defecation and genitals into an art form. And, in its recently released second season, the show only gets more intelligent, and reaches levels of complexity that few other series, comedy or drama, can hope to achieve.
The first season of American Vandal was one of Netflix’s best-kept secrets. A mockumentary about two AV nerds who are trying to find out #WhoDrewTheDicks on all the cars in the faculty parking lot, the series affectionately spoofed Serial and Making a Murderer, as the “filmmakers” try to clear the name of a class clown who’s wrongfully accused. Season two adds a meta-layer to the series, as protagonists Peter (Tyler Alvarez) and Sam (Griffin Gluck) wonder how they can top their first season. The answer: The Brownout, a prank involving a laxative-spiked gallon of lemonade, and the chaos that followed after half the student body of a prestigious Catholic school in Seattle drank from it during lunch. Kevin McClain, a nerdy kid who is frequently the subject of jokes amongst the student body, signs a confession, but something doesn’t add up… and Peter and Sam are on the case.
On its most basic level, American Vandal is a very funny comedy – one that’s filled with major gags and little punch lines that land a few seconds after they’re executed. This is not always a subtle series – in fact, the second season’s opening moments focus on a montage of Snapchat videos showing the “victims” of the Brownout as they race to the bathroom, playing out in the most comically disgusting way possible. But the series also relies on little one-liners that are delivered with such a straight face that they don’t even feel like jokes. But these laughs are only part of the reason American Vandal works as a series.
For one, the series is a brilliant deconstruction of jokes. American Vandal is obsessed with figuring out why jokes are funny, and why certain immature styles of humor are so broadly appealing, making us chuckle whether we admit it or not. The first season emphasized this with detailed discussion about the “proper” way to draw a penis, and season two up the ante with so many different, increasingly complex versions of poop jokes. As viewers wait to see what the season’s mysterious antagonist, The Turd Burglar, will do next, the show turns pranks involving poop into what feels like crude Saw traps, which the characters discuss with the utmost seriousness. By approaching the material with such intelligence, we forget just how immature these comedic beats really are.
But American Vandal is also a genuinely brilliant mystery, with cliffhanger endings that are bound to make viewers binge the next episode immediately. Characters are complicated, twists are consistently satisfying, and the final two episodes of season two are genuinely suspenseful. But, in both seasons, creators Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda have fun with the complexity of the cases at the center of their mockumentary. Audiences are rewarded for paying attention as clues are hidden in plain sight, encouraging students to consider every claim made by the suspects, and question even the most seemingly innocent characters. The mystery is also clearly planned out with extreme precision: every bit of information is important, and throwaway lines (including some jokes) become key parts of the story multiple episodes later. While a comedy, this mystery rivals the most prestigious of dramas in terms of intelligence.
The best part of American Vandal, however, is the way it stealthily transforms into a compelling character study, and a look at what it’s like to be a teenager in the age of social media. The second season plays like an unofficial companion piece to this summer’s indie darling Eighth Grade in the way it shows how social media serves as an extension of high school for most teens: they are constantly being judged by their peers for the persona they curate online, and can also feel even more isolated after they leave class.
At its core, its sophomore season thoroughly examines two students: the aforementioned Kevin, played brilliantly by Travis Tope, and DeMarcus Tillman, played by UnReal’s Melvin Gregg. These two kids couldn’t be more different – Kevin is the school’s “weird” kid, popular amongst his peers but for all the wrong reasons: his quirks make him easy to laugh at. DeMarcus, meanwhile, stands out as the school’s star athlete – and one of the school’s only students of color, who comes from a poor neighborhood. These characters are so beautifully developed, with more layers being revealed with every episode. By the end of the season, we completely sympathize with them both, even after spending multiple episodes laughing at them. Tope is a gifted performer, offering a nuanced, hilarious performance, but, most notably, delivering a monologue about wanting to lose his virginity that starts as a joke but ends up piercingly sad by the time it ends. Gregg, meanwhile, knows exactly how to build his character even as he’s making jokes. His body language is so finely tuned and realistic, that he doesn’t feel like a character at all. In a way, he’s the most believable part of this fake documentary.
There is a reason American Vandal took home a Peabody last year – an accomplishment few series can brag about, let alone one where the poop emoji and ball hair play significant roles in its story. The writing on this show is on a level that few shows are operating at, telling hilarious jokes but also building a high school that feels uncomfortably real, and then populating it with complicated characters that will undoubtedly remind viewers of their own academic days. That the show is also a compelling mystery, and features one of the most uniformly strong ensembles on television, feels like icing on the cake. Season one was perfect and, somehow, the writers did the impossible: write a sequel that improves upon its predecessor. This is a season of television that simply can’t be missed.
Overall rating: 10 out of 10.
