Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Teenage Euthanasia’ on HBO Max, An Adult Toon With Wacky Zingers And A Morbid Streak – Decider

In April 2021, WarnerMedia brought the Adult Swim development team under the HBO Max umbrella, which minted a new streaming home for catalog titles from the adult animation innovator as well as such new blood as Teenage Euthanasia, chronicling the adventures of an undead mother and her extended family in a twisted cartoon Florida of the future. Euthanasia was co-created by writer Alissa Nutting, whose 2017 novel Made for Love was recently adapted into a series at HBO Max.

Opening Shot: An establishing shot of the Tender Endings funeral home reveals a rambling victorian surrounded by overgrown foliage and mutated pink flamingos. The town of Fort Gator, Floridas water tower rises in the background.

The Gist: In the absurdist nearby future of Teenage Euthanasia, contemporary societys drift toward schlock consumerism homogeny, a gunned-up citizenry, and the acceptance of an algorithmic, artificially intelligent data layer inserted into our everyday lives are all tweaked, amplified and manifesting as feedback on how it started and where its going. Add to that a mortal grey area that allows for the casual reanimation of wayward single mother Trophy Fantasy (Maria Bamford) at the hands of her funeral home-owning mother Baba (Bebe Neuwirth), and its not surprising that in the first episode of this Adult Swim import, entitled First Date With the Second Coming, Trophys teenaged daughter Euthanasia (Jo Firestone), better known as Annie, crushes hard on new boy in school Kenton (Harvey Guillen, Guillermo from What We Do in the Shadows) who swears he just transferred in after a collision with a sand truck sent his virgin ass to heaven.

Trophy is as salacious and sex-starved as she is suspicious and determined to raise her daughter right, even if that means administering the proper means of adolescent seduction. So while shes happy that Annie has a first date, she also casts doubt on Kentons glimpse of the firmament. Trophy chaperones Annie at Babas urging, and her mother drives Uncle Pete (Tim Robinson of I Think You Should Leave) to the mall so he can buy a new shirt. Sadly, there are no Dan Flashes there. But Pete does visit Lids..But For Shirts. America! where a hologram Uncle Sam sizes him up as a rube. Pete is also targeted as an incel by a bored, trigger-happy mall cop.

On Annies date, she and Kenton engage in a version of Seven Minutes in Heaven that rings with double, triple, and triple-X entendres before Trophy challenges her fellow member of the recently dead to an afterlife revisit. Trophy thinks little of the Great Beyond; Kenton, meanwhile, not only believes that God is a woman, he knows Her personally, and Shes played with typical breezy exuberance by Loretta Devine. Even still, in the Teenage Euthanasia universe, knowing God isnt the same thing as knowing how to get your rocks off.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In Teenage Euthanasia, establishing the nihilistic malaise its characters call reality is part of the whole bit, and thats certainly something the inhabitants of the Rick and Morty multiverse would understand. There are also vestiges of the surrealism and serrated edge sarcasm of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, the departed Adult Swim series thats said to be returning in the form of a feature film to be streamed on HBO Max.

Our Take: With the unmistakable talent of the inimitable Maria Bamford out front and an all-star central cast that includes Jo Firestone of Joe Pera Talks With You, ITYSL creator and star Tim Robinson, and the legend Bebe Neuwirth, Teenage Euthanasia has its voice acting game on lock from the start. But throw in supporting turns from the likes of David Cross, H. Jon Benjamin (Archer, Bobs Burgers), Aidy Bryant, Taryn Manning, and Ilana Glazer of Broad City, and Kristen Schaal Schaal voices one of the sentient beetles who live in Trophys crotch and its a guarantee that Euthanasia will back up its rank, delightfully preposterous premise with some truly inspired performances. The theater of the bizarre in which Adult Swim programming so often operates is open for business once again, with the prospect of death and banged-up resurrection acting as a societal meme for the inhabitants of Fort Gator, and Teenage Euthanasia promises even more chortling inequities to be levied upon its characters. In the first ep, an interactive bedroom mirror sells Annie cosmetic snake oil via its eavesdropping algorithm, and theres a terrific side gag involving a product called Nesters Cheese Nebulizer, which is an inhaler that delivers Nester cheese straight to the dome! In other words, the bastardized version of our own world that Euthanasia builds is as fun to ingest as the interactions of its characters.

Sex and Skin: Nothing overt, beyond some loudmouth talk about teen peen, handjobs and tongue kissing.

Parting Shot: Stay tuned to episodes of Teenage Euthanasia all the way through the credit roll. This time around, we join Kenton inside the Pearly Gates, where God finishes up a game of pickup basketball with Nipsey Hustle and Luke Perry before putting him on a date with Anna Nicole Smith. Im pretty eager to finally have sex, Kenton tells God, since I died a virgin. But God says he was supposed to get sex out of his system on earth, because Up here, pants never come off, and no one has genitals. Its heaven!

Sleeper Star: Tim Robinson has mastered the unleashing of a blood-boilingly hilarious manic scream, and he has a few opportunities to do just that while Uncle Pete wanders the mall in search of a new shirt/security blanket.

Most Pilot-y Line: A boy asked me out! exclaims Annie. Trophy, ready to chaperone, asks where theyre headed. Behind the bleachers? Dog track? Dialysis center? Annie groans. No offense, but Id rather go alone. I really like him, and you can never act appropriately.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Teenage Euthanasia ticks up the yuks-a-minute ratio with loads of world-building absurdities to match the weird wrinkles in the daily lives of its characters, some living and some only kind of that.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

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Stream It Or Skip It: 'Teenage Euthanasia' on HBO Max, An Adult Toon With Wacky Zingers And A Morbid Streak - Decider