THE 2015 POPFILTER TV CHALLENGE:

MARCH MADNESS

CSI: CYBER

VS

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH

Follow the tournament here!

It can’t be a shock as to which of these two shows will be moving on. I could try and be coy about it throughout this article, trying to feed you a ‘fair and balanced until the very end’ façade, but come on. Come. On. #Comethefuckon. Reading the battle above you knew who would be moving on. Even if this was your first time on YourPopFilter, and had no idea how biased against CSI properties we are, or how biased for Will Forte/Kristin Schaal/Lord+Miller properties we are. You’d know. The Last Man on Earth is moving on in the bracket. No duh. Now let’s talk about why.

     CSI: CYBER is another notch in the belt of the CSI: Universe, an ever-growing but never-changing world filled with awful dialogue, shallow plotlines, barley two-dimensional characters, and slumming actors (who are spending screen time with people who fell into acting seemingly by accident. What does CYBER do that the other CSI shows don’t? Well, it doesn’t pin its hackneyed ragtag team of law enforcers to any one particular city, letting Avery Ryan (Patricia Arquette) et al. run from city to city to city to city to city all in a short 44 minute block. Does this vast expanse of locational options shake things up? Not in the slightest, because the real setting here is the digital space, my friends. Does your blender have a digitized clock on it? Then at some point a cyber terrorist (or ‘black hat hacker’) will use it to BLEND YOUR VERY HANDS OFF. Because that’s how connected and scary the digi-world is. This show comes off like a senior citizen heard the phrase “the internet of things” and gave themselves a heart attack thinking of all the worst (insane) possible scenarios that could occur.

Beware the Blender

Actually, the forced hand blending would be way more entertaining than the international interweb baby kidnapping/selling ring is. I don’t want to get into detail and explain why everything that happened in this convoluted networked kidnapping is impossible and ludicrous, but let’s just say it all depends on using junkies (who are tracked with GPS) to kidnap babies after weeks of learning the babies habits. An actual thing that was said on this show, “They obviously have been watching to learn the baby’s habits.” While we’re on the topic, let’s discuss more of the witty repartee strewn throughout this show. Part of the “serialized” portion of this show is assimilating newcomer Brody Nelson (Shad Moss, formerly BowWow, formerly Lil BowWow) into the FBI hackgroup. He’s a former black hat hacker who’s joining the white hats instead of going to prison (or something like that). See Patricia Arquette was attacked by a hacker in 80s (or “back at the beginning of the internet”), which caused her to lose her psychology practice, and even lead to the death of one of her patients. Get it? You shouldn’t, because it’s fucking dumb! Now she runs around the country catching hackers and turning them into a force for good, all the while hunting the original hacker. BowWow is one of those turned hackers, but boy oh boy does he have a chip on his shoulder. When fat, nerdy hacker condescends to speak to him, BowWow replies, “Chubby, I’m not your braces. Keep your name outchyo mouth”. These hackers know how to burn one another! He also explains his situation to cute/punk girl hacker by telling her he wants to, “Hack for good, prove my worth.”

The arrows are red with your blood

I could break down how dumb this dialogue is for each and every character, but that sounds awful. Okay one more. When searching for the junkie kidnappers, Agent Avery Ryan (classic FBI name generator), states, “Evolutionary survival skills will instinctively take them to higher ground.” And that’s when the show gets interesting! Because you thought you were watching CSI: CYBER, but you’ve in fact been watching CSI: C.Y.B.E.R., which is a detective show about a robot passing off as human tracking down humans committing electronic crimes. This also explains the shaky zoom in/zoom out that occurs throughout the show, as well as the the random CGI to show flashbacks/computers, and especially the nonstop dubstep-light. It’s all because Avery Ryan is a robot!

Season Finale Spoilers

I’m convinced Patrcia Arquetee signed off on this show because she thought Linklater was never going to fucking finish editing Boyhood, let alone that she’d win an Oscar for it. That’s the only thing that makes any sense. But instead of elevating the trash heap with her acting, she sinks to its level withouth ever fully seeming comfortable with it. SO everything she says comes out wooden, and as previously mentioned, robotically. The one doing the elevating here is The Dawson, who has recently decided he should get good acting. (Check out Power/Rangers). Van Der Beek knows the exact level of camp and seriousness to bring to a role, and does so in this show as requisite ex-soldier on the team. His character is such an uber-cop that when a car (with a baby in it) crashes into water (implausibly) it’s evident he’ll be diving into the lake after it, even though we didn’t even know he was chasing said car. That’s the kind of show CSI: C.Y.B.E.R. is.

The Last Man on Earth is an inventive, original, and funny sitcom that’s not afraid to get hopeless in it’s initial few minutes. If you enjoy watching something that stars two unique, charming individuals that’s steered by two other unique, charming individuals–check it out. Does it have some rocky gender stuff to work out? Certainly. Does Kristin Schaal elevate what could be a cookie-cutter sitcom nag wife to something hilarious and better? You fucking know it. Forte and Schaal’s characters will grow into true foils for each other, reflecting all of the good and bad within the other. Just give it some time. As I said in the beginning, The Last Man on Earth moves on in the bracket!

-Mike Gravagno

NEXT: AMERICAN CRIME vs. DIG