I have mentioned sometime ago in one of my posts about this Netflix series. It was a comedy series that I had fun watching it since a while back. OK I will just go straight to the series now.
Brief Story Line
An overweight teenager named Patty Bladell (Debby Ryan - The Suit Life on Deck, Jessie TV series etc) had been enduring torrid times at school being fat-shamed and bullied by her school friends, in particular Dixie Sinclair (Irene Choi). However, when an accident somehow made her become thin, Patty decided to get back on the people who made fun of her. Patty would get the help from her best friend Nonnie (Kimmie Shields). She lived with her single mother Angie (comedian Sarah Colonna) who had Patty since teenager and thus was not the ideal mother and they both have a strained relationship.
Meanwhile Bob Armstrong (Dallas Roberts - The Good Wife, Unforgettable TV series etc) was a lawyer whose reputation was ruined by an incident during a teen beauty pageant. He lived harmoniously with his loving wife Coralee (Alyssa Milano - Who's the Boss?, Charmed TV series etc) but did not have close relationship with their son Brick (Michael Provost). Bob had always been jealous of District Attorney Bob Barnard (Christopher Gorham - Ugly Betty, Covert Affairs TV series etc) whose lives looked perfect with his lovely wife and their daughter Magnolia (Erinn Westbrook - Awkward TV series etc), the winner of various beauty pageants.
When Bob Armstrong's life crisscrossed with Patty, they both formed an unlikely partnership to try winning the local teen beauty pageant and achieve their own goals. So what would happen to these two? Find them all in this just for fun comedy drama series.
End of Brief Story Line
Well the first few episodes of this series was totally awesome. I had lots of fun watching it and even had numerous laughing out loud moments seeing at so many crazy unpredictable amusing situations Patty was in or Bob Armstrong experienced. The recipe for disaster was quite apparent when Bob somehow decided to make Patty his own little project while at the same time Patty had a huge crush on the much older Bob, the person she considered as her savior.
The dark comedy was really entertaining for me and I thought it was quite refreshing to watch this kind of comedy from Netflix (usually their series were serious & heavy). But as the story progressed, particularly after episode 8, suddenly the following episodes felt much more serious with challenging problems. Even though the comedy was still there, but I could not help to feel the light fun that I enjoyed earlier were slowly decreasing.
What I liked about the series was actually the comedic situation and the not-taking-things-too-seriously tone, so when it changed a little bit drastically, I was personally feeling that it was not the right move. Good thing though that the season finale, even if it also had serious matter, but ended with a bang, making me feel very enthusiastic for the second season supposedly shown this month.
Now I get that the critics were not too happy with this series because it did not provide the heart warming feel you would have in a drama show, or the seriousness of fat shaming problem in society. But I chose to think that it was supposed to be a comedy with dark humor and thus it should not be seen as a serious show or movie like Dumplin' (now that's one drama that most people thought was beautiful). And I honestly thought there were some seriousness in this series too which made it a bit confusing whether the showrunner wanted this to be a pure black comedy series or a drama series. There were pretty broad issues that were shown in the series, like the drugs use, LGBTQ, self confidence, mother daughter relationship and few others.
I also liked the series because of the wonderful performances from the 2 main leads, i.e Debby Ryan as Patty and my favorite Dallas Roberts as Bob Armstrong. These two really made my day when they were at "their best". The rest of the supporting cast (which were quite a lot) were pretty good as well, like the obnoxious Dixie or the kind hearted Nonnie and so on. But the one that was quite impressive to me was Dixie's mother (Arden Myrin) who would join as the regular cast in season 2. Some well known guest stars also appeared in first season like Beverly D'Angelo, William Baldwin, Jon Lovitz to name a few.
There were also some nice music during the series. First season had 12 episodes which had mostly around 40+ minutes duration except for episodes 4 & 5 which was > 50 minutes long. There were no foul language used in here and aside from few violent scenes in a couple of episodes, it certainly did not have the feel of series only for adults. Oh if you are not uncomfortable with LGBTQ scenes, then be ready cause there were few of those here.
Overall this was a pretty entertaining series. Even though it ended up being a bit serious in the last few episodes, but I still quite enjoyed it, especially with that ending which definitely made me curious of what would happen next in second season. The series was categorized as comedy drama which I thought was the correct genre, therefore I think it would not be completely correct to view this as a super serious drama show and should not be trashed just because it did not live up to their expectations. So if you are looking for some fun (dark comedy kind of fun), then this one could be an option. But if you prefer a more serious take on this topic, better watch Dumplin' instead. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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