I’m pretty sure the writer, directors, and producers of Avenue 5 aren’t psychic. They’re probably just as surprised as anyone that their show, which was conceived in 2017 and premiered on January 19th, 2020 (HBO), is the perfect media mirror for pandemic America.
[Spoilers follow–most are revealed in the first episode. Since it’s a black comedy, you knowing a few things in advance shouldn’t spoil the enjoyment.]
Avenue 5 is a starship/cruise ship. In this future, NASA exists, but passengers have embarked on an eight-month journey on a private enterprise venture. Josh Gadd plays Herman Judd, owner of Judd Galaxy and a not-so-thinly-veiled parody of Trump. (He’s an idiot, he worships himself, he thinks all decorating should be gold, etc.)
The thirty second commercial for his cruise can be seen here, to give you an idea.
Unluckily for him, and perhaps even more unfortunately for his passengers, he’s aboard this ship when they get thrown off course. They quickly learn it’s going to take three and a half years to get home (not that they have enough supplies for that).
Can Captain Jordan Hatwal (Hugh Laurie) save them?
Absolutely not, and not because he’s an incompetent captain in the way that Judd is an incompetent businessman.
Hatwal is an actor, playing a captain, complete with toupee and fake accent. His job is to inspire confidence, which would be relatively easy if the ship were sailing smoothly. It’s much harder when reality and Judd’s antics work against him.
It was eerie to watch this last year, with the pandemic in full swing. When classes first went online in March, and we were all supposed to stay home, we thought it might be for a few weeks. Soon after, as we started to see the numbers, we realized that the end of isolation wasn’t in sight. I lost sleep thinking about everything I needed to prepare for my son in case I got sick, in case my damaged asthmatic lungs succumbed to the virus.
To say I empathized with the ship’s passengers is an understatement. There I was, in seclusion with my son, worried about dwindling supplies and dwindling sanity, watching confused and terrified and isolated people who didn’t know when or if they would make it.
Did that make the show any less funny? Nope. I love this show–it’s hilarious. The cast is amazing. My favorites are Zach Woods, as the nihilistic Head of Consumer Relations, and Himesh Patel, as the ship’s beleaguered stand-up comic.
My students are working on a time capsule assignment this term–if they had to pick one piece of media to put into a time capsule, what would it be? What captures us?
Here’s why Avenue 5 would go into mine.
- The obvious comparison between the plight of the passengers and the plight of the world in the pandemic.
- Judd as Trump, for the same reason. Take this Judd quote: “You know how you make things happen? You find someone who’ll say it can happen, and then you make them say it. That’s how they built the pyramids.” You can picture Trump saying that, right?
- Because the characters have problems connecting with their friends and families back home, and because they can’t physically be with them and because of the lag. Watching Judd get frustrated when there’s a lag with his team back on Earth will be familiar to anyone who had to learn Zoom really fast and had to work with people who aren’t fast learners.
- There’s a Karen. A literal Karen. Her name is Karen Kelly, in fact, which is funny in my house because of a particularly troublesome neighbor named Kelly. Is Karen Kelly everything a Karen meme promises? Yes. And more.
- There’s mansplaining. And people who call it out.
- Staff who actually know what they’re doing are constantly undermined by their asinine bosses, much as Dr. Fauci and all of the other scientists were undermined by Trump and the GOP.
- The characters struggle, and relationships fall apart under the strain, as happened in quarantine.
- Women of color have their work and victories appropriated by white men.
- There’s classism.
- There’s scapegoating.
- Some of the passengers begin to think the ship’s tragedy is a hoax. Rather than listen to the (admittedly problematic) leaders, they decide they’re actually on Earth, on a prank show. Much as Boris Johnson went to a hospital and touched infected patients without using PPE to show he wasn’t “afraid” of Covid (and then got Covid and ended up in the ICU), some passengers try to prove their conspiracy theory by going out of the airlock. And they die.
Armando Iannucci‘s satire of human nature under stress is spot on.
