tek's rating: ½

Moonbeam City, on Comedy Central
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The show is set in a sort of retro-futuristic world that is heavily inspired by the 1980s. (The character designs are inspired by the cover art on Duran Duran's album Rio, and the premise of the show is basically a spoof of Miami Vice.) The show has also been compared specifically to Archer and generally to Adult Swim shows, in tone and comedic sensibility. I totally get that. There are probably lots of other things it could be compared to, but anyway... it's just an absurd, redonkulous show.

The main character is a police detective named Dazzle Novak (voiced by Rob Lowe), who is incredibly self-centered and arrogant, but not actually very good at his job. He constantly gets on the nerves of police chief Pizzaz Miller (Elizabeth Banks). And he has a fierce rivalry with the city's number two cop, Rad Cunningham (Will Forte). Also there's a cop named Chrysalis Tate (Kate Mara), who I guess has basically been treated like a secretary up to this point, and wants to be allowed to do real police work (which kind of puts me in mind of Charmain Tully on Aquarius). So she starts working with Dazzle, but more as an assistant than a partner. So of course she's frustrated by his failure to take the job seriously, and his constantly being distracted by other things. Somehow this usually leads to his accidentally beating the bad guys he's supposed to be after. But along the way, any number of innocent people may die, and none of the cops particularly seem to care. And... episode plots are often totally bizarre and unpredictable, and may actually have very little to do with police work.

Anyway, for several episodes, I found the show mildly amusing. Each week, I'd think to myself maybe I shouldn't bother watching anymore, because the show is kind of dumb. But for whatever reason, I continued watching the series, and found myself enjoying the post-modern absurdism more than I expected to, as the season progressed. By the end of the first season, I had come to think the show was actually pretty good. So I hope there'll be another season... but if there's not, I won't be too disappointed. Oh, and btw, the show has released a soundtrack. It's not something I'm really interested in, but it kind of makes me happy knowing that it exists.


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