Reviews

Lonely people developing one-sided relationships with pop-idols, who are very openly interested in their money. When you stop to think about it, it's both sad and disgusting. That could work as a serious psychological drama about addiction, or an over-the-top surreal parody. But we got a light-hearted comedy, that tries to display this in a positive light, like it's a good thing to be in a fake relationship based on money.

Some of the jokes were funny, and the characters had plenty likeable moments when they weren't acting like vultures profiting off of emotionally damaged people, so it's not all bad. Just the overall message despicable.

Visually beautiful, slow and a bit melancholic series, that really should have been called "The Ancient Magus' Apprentice". The "Bride" part of the show is addressed very scarcely, doesn't make sense, and could be completely cut out by a skilled editor. Same goes for the random slapstick "comedy" scenes, that aren't funny, and are ruining otherwise serious tone of the series. Together with few instances of really awkward and unnecessary dialog, these flaws manage break your immersion in like every single episode.

I must say the first 4 episodes were mostly great, even thou a little bit rushed. The hero of the story overcame some obstacles both external and internal, learned something, and it mostly made sense and was interesting and thought provoking. The action was bad, but it was sparse so it didn't ruin the enjoyment much, the focus was on the characters.

But after that, the show descended into nonsensical adventure/comedy. Previously established limitations of the protagonist were gone. Most of the moral ambiguity gone too. And apart from rehearsing some of the elements from first 4 episodes, nothing really catch my attention. Just a generic "defeat the evil and save the world" story with an overpowered self-insert protagonist.

If you could only watch the experiments, that would be great. But the experiments are obstructed by aimless tangents, cringy commentary and other, boring experiments. All just to pad the runtime.

Way too often, the show tries to be funny at the expense of it's character. Or tries to be emotional when it didn't deserved it. Some of the action scenes were also really bad.

But it still kept the strengths of the original series. It just cheapened them with forced drama, tasteless comedy and nonsensical action.

I didn't expect to like a show, where a teenager is being edgy and awkward for an hour, but "Words, Words, Words" just makes this work.

It is the first part of the Bo Burnham stand-up trilogy, followed by "what." (2013) and "Make Happy" (2016). The show is not what you would call classic stand-up, it relies heavily on music and props to support it's jokes, but compared to Bo Burnham's later specials, it has this raw and unrefined feel to it. So if you expect higher production value, you may prefer "what." and "Make Happy", but if you are ok with just a guy, on a stage, being funny, then "Words, Words, Words" may be the show for you.