tek's rating: ¾

Major Lazer, on FXX
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streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; Hulu; Vudu

This is the second show in the ADHD block to originate on FXX, when the block moved from FOX. It had a sneak peek in October 2014, before its official premiere in April 2015. Episodes are about 11 minutes long. The show is sort of based on the electronic music group Major Lazer, which I guess provides the show's music. But I don't really know anything about the group.

Anyway, it's set, like, thousands of years in the future, or something. In Jamaica. It's supposedly some kind of dystopia, and Jamaica is run by the evil President Whitewall. But he and his forces and probably any other unrelated evil forces are opposed by a hero named Major Lazer. One of his arms is a laser gun, so that's cool. And he's generally a pretty badass Rastafarian, or whatever. I think he's from the past (or what we might call the present), but I don't really know much about him or anything about the world of the future, or whatever. But Major Lazer spends most of his time tending bar at a club called Dance Hallogram. He has a teenage sidekick named Penny, who is the rebellious daughter of President Whitewall, and so far it seems to me like the show is more about her than it is about Major Lazer himself. There's also a Chinese-Jamaican kid called BLKMRKT (pronounced "black market"), who is like a genius inventor, or whatever, and he sometimes assists Major Lazer and Penny in their fight against evil. (I feel like there's any number of child prodigy characters of whom he might remind me. The only one that comes to mind is Bryce from Max Headroom, but I can't help feeling there's a more apt comparison that is eluding me. Which really pisses me off.) And there's an old Rasta named Old Rasta, who tends bar or whatever. I don't really know anything about him. And probably lots of other characters, but those are the main ones I've seen so far. Anyway... as much as this is modeled on 80s action cartoons, it actually seems to be more about music (as you would expect) and parties and drugs and whatnot. It's weird and trippy and redonkulous and fun.


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