Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Marvel’s Hit-Monkey was a strange beast (no pun intended) when it debuted on Hulu two-and-a-half years ago. It wasn’t a part of the MCU, and it was certainly more violent and curse-filled than anything made in Marvel TV’s post-Netflix era. But what was really weird about it wasn’t the fact that it was about a snow monkey that was good with firearms. It was weird because it didn’t know whether it wanted to be a comedic action show or a deep drama filled with mysticism and politics. The show’s second season sets a more consistent tone.
MARVEL’S HIT-MONKEY SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: “Four Months Ago…” We see the spirit of Bryce McHenry (Jason Sudeikis) disappearing in front of Haruka (Ally Maki) and Hit-Monkey (Fred Tatasciore). He’s celebrating and giving Hit-Monkey advice now that he’ll be on his own.
The Gist: Bryce isn’t celebrating long when he finds himself in Hell, suspended naked by wires, some of which are hooked into his butthole. When he tells the Devil (Keith David) that he did the right thing eventually, the Devil informs him that you can’t run from your bad deeds. He convinces the devil that he needs to go back to get Hit-Monkey to keep killing the “filet mignon of shitbags all day long” to send to Hell. Somehow he convinces the Devil that’s the only reason, not that he wants to reunite with his estranged daughter Iris (Cristin Milioti).
In the present day, Hit-Monkey and Bryce’s spirit are killing bad guys throughout New York. Hit-Monkey is depressed, lamenting the fact that Akiko Yokohama (Olivia Munn), the niece of Japanese prime minister Shinji Yokohama (George Takei) has gone missing.
They’ve made enough money to establish themselves, and Bryce thinks it’s time to go to Eunice Jones (Leslie Jones), aka “The Handler”, who used to be Bryce’s agent. Eunice knows Hit-Monkey’s reputation, and then talks shit about Bryce, until Bryce starts pouring out her expensive liquor, indicating that he’s there in spirit. When she realizes he’s there, she apologizes for getting him killed, and brings Hit-Monkey on as a client.
They return to Bryce’s “minimalist” (i.e. stark and sad) apartment, which Eunice now owns, and find Haruka there. She came to New York with Bonsai Master’s sword when a group of assassins took out her police precinct back in Tokyo on the lookout for it. She thinks they’ll be after Hit-Monkey’s sword, too. But when they go to a guy Bryce knows to have it appraised, the guy warns Haruka not to take it out of its scabbard, else she’ll “get lost” in it. She soon finds out what that means when a giant cat comes after her.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Even more than during it’s first season, Hit-Monkey is starting to sound and look more and more like Archer.
Our Take: In its first season Hit-Monkey needed to solidify its story in order to make Bryce’s chatty oversharing make sense, and to make him a character that both we and the monkey would want to be around. As we found out more about his life, and his estranged daughter, some of his more narcissistic tendencies became more understandable. This is how we enter the second season, and the show makes a whole lot more sense because of it.
Creators Will Speck and Josh Gordon and their writers have struck a better balance between the funny moments, the gratuitous violence, and the actual development that their characters experience. There are still some forced pop-culture references, like when Hit-Monkey climbs up the side of a skyscraper instead of shooting the doorman; ghostly Bryce says their “Tom Crusing it” by climbing. But, for the most part, the jokes make sense for the characters making them.
As we said, Bryce is no longer just jokey for jokey’s sake, which helps make his character more realistic. His desire to meet up with Iris is going to drive his motivations this season, especially when he eventually gets a body to work with, all the while knowing that the Devil could have him back on those tenterhooks at anytime.
Leslie Jones adds to the show’s comedic confidence as Eunice, and we’re looking forward to hearing Milioti’s take on Iris. But what we really want to see is Hit-Monkey become more independent from Bryce, and Bryce move away from the more violent Ted Lasso clone that he was when the series started.
Sex and Skin: Talk of sex, mostly from Bryce, but that’s about it. The show is violent as hell, though.
Parting Shot: As the police examine the slaughtered cat — now regular size — a mysterious being with glowing eyes and a huge staff in its hand looks on.
Sleeper Star: Leslie Jones makes any show she’s in better, but when Eunice says that she believes in the Knicks, that’s when we were sold on her as a character.
Most Pilot-y Line: Ghost Bryce hears Eunice talk about the Knicks and he yells after her, “They haven’t been good since ’93!” Does he realize they went to the NBA Finals in 1994 and 1999?
Our Call: STREAM IT. The second season of Marvel’s Hit-Monkey is better than the first, simply because the show’s creators figured out how to make it funny and deepen the show’s characters at the same time.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
