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Maya Malbon

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Aug 2, 2024, 10:34:01 AM8/2/24

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At one point, Hurwitz talked about embracing the unique nature of Netflix's all-at-once release strategy by designing a season that could be watched in any order, with certain jokes making more or less sense at different points in the season depending on how you chose to watch it. Eventually, though, he emerged from the editing room to admit that it hadn't worked out the way he intended, and that viewers should please watch the episodes in the proscribed order.(*)

(*) He also pleaded with people to not watch them all in a day, out of fear they would tire of the characters and the style of humor after a few hours. Netflix is still pretty new to the original content business, and this seemed the first case where the desires of Netflix executives won out over the desires of a creator, who clearly would much rather the release have been spaced out so no one would even be tempted to marathon at first.

Nowhere is the tonal shift more obvious than whenever Michael is around. It's not that Michael is appreciably more narcissistic or oblivious than he was in the FOX days, but that he seems much more awful when he's not being judged alongside Gob or Lindsay. Michael is the only character in every episode, and his estrangement from George-Michael is meant to provide an emotional through-line for the season. But the sentimentality of the original series was, like the rest of it, a very delicate balancing act, and when Michael seems like a bigger jerk (even if his behavior isn't that much worse), it throws off that balance. And watching his parents and siblings struggle to learn anything about themselves without Michael around is usually fake pathos, because the show doesn't want the rest of the Bluths to grow up.

In place of that structure, Hurwitz has conceived the entire season as a big puzzle. You'll hear, for instance, George-Michael and his roommate discussing a top-secret bit of software they're working on, but you won't find out exactly what it does for several episodes. And that ultimately feels like more of an intellectual game than it does a wellspring of humor. It can be gratifying to find out who was kicking Lindsay's seat on a flight to India, but it's not an especially funny payoff.

And in several cases (I'll identify them when we get to the bullet points), there's no explanation at all. So either Hurwitz somehow didn't have time for those resolutions, despite the padding present throughout the season, or he's holding out explanations for this hypothetical movie he wants to make.

* Buster helping Lucille smoke was originally not going to make the final cut, and was shown to critics in January as a deleted scene. We all understandably fell out of our metaphorical chairs watching it, and I was glad Hurwitz put it back in. Just an amazing piece of physical comedy, and one that works because the relationship between those two characters is so well-established that it needs no additional context. (When we were shown it, in fact, it didn't yet have the narration explaining why she couldn't go out to the balcony herself; it was just that funny on its own.)

* Speaking of Lucille 2, her fate is obviously the big mystery being held out for the alleged follow-up, but there were several other unclosed loops, including two different crucifix gags involving Gob: who sabotaged his resurrection trick, and how did the giant cross wind up in the limo? Given the structure of the season, that felt odd.

* The idea of Kristen Wiig and Seth Rogen playing Lucille and George Sr. in flashbacks might have been funny, but they were never given anything to do, and it also broke with the show's pre-established pattern of having Jessica Walter and Tambor do it. Max Winkler (Henry's son) at least had some good jokes to deliver as the young Barry Zuckerkorn.

* Also not given enough funny material, especially given her amount of screen time: Isla Fisher as Rebel Alley. Hurwitz is usually very good at taking strong comic actors (or even mediocre ones like Baio) and giving them funny things to play, but other than her PSAs, Rebel was a fairly straightforward love interest for Michael and George-Michael.

* The episodes were still being completed pretty close to the Memorial Day weekend release, which is how they were able to include a relatively current reference like Maeby citing the most famous phrase (the one involving punting) of the sorority letter in her profane Opie acceptance speech.

* The Netflix experience was pretty smooth on Sunday and Monday during the daytime when I had a chance to watch episodes, but starting Monday night (when more people had returned from holiday travel), I began getting error messages a lot of the time.

Watching A Family Affair really got me thinking about what it means to be a Netflix movie. The streaming giant has released many daring projects, including some of my favorite films of the past few years, but those don't end up defining the brand. They ask for all of our attention, and even benefit from the close rewatches that streaming makes easy. A Netflix movie, as it's culturally understood, is much less demanding. It accepts, or perhaps embraces, that the audience's eyes won't always be on the screen.

That's largely because, at least in my experience, it gets the comedy part of its premise right. Zara (Joey King) works for movie star Chris Cole (Zac Efron) as his personal assistant, an infamously challenging job in the ego-driven Hollywood ecosystem. She's an aspiring producer and took the role on the promise of industry training, but after two years, she's still mostly running his errands, managing his breakups, and dealing with his petty tantrums. When the film begins, she's near her breaking point.

King and Efron are the best pairing in A Family Affair. They give their characters a personal connection bubbling beneath their turbulent professional relationship that makes them feel like siblings (except with Zara playing the elder sister to her infantilized-by-fame boss), which turns their arguing into bickering. The script is clearly invested in sending up this kind of Hollywood personality, and Efron is locked in, selling every joke at his own character's expense.

Meanwhile, Zara's mother, Brooke (Nicole Kidman), is at a turning point of her own. An accomplished author, she's starting to try and write personally again, with the once-overwhelming death of Zara's father now years behind them. Leila (Kathy Bates), her editor and also her mother-in-law, is encouraging Brooke to start dating again, too. Kidman and Bates, next in line for best duo, get most of those expository scenes required to keep the passive viewers engaged, but they breeze along on the strength of their star power.

These storylines collide when Chris meets Brooke by chance, having come looking for Zara when she wasn't home. They realize how little they know about each other and get to talking, discover they have more to talk about than they expected, and one thing leads to another. This is, naturally, a hell Zara could not have imagined for herself. The three actors intermingle to form A Family Affair's rom-com energy, with Kidman a grounded presence swept up in romance, King leaning into comedic exaggeration, and Efron bouncing between the two poles.

It's not exactly a great sign when a rom-com's romantic leads are at best its #3 actor pairing, but it speaks to a stark divide in what A Family Affair does and doesn't do well. Their first scene (which is also the one most played for laughs) is by far their best, but as much as we understand why their characters are drawn to one another, Kidman and Efron lack that critical spark that keeps us invested in the push-and-pull of their relationship.

Its strengths, however, kept it afloat for me. The benefit of this three-headed structure is that when I wasn't so invested in Chris and Brooke, I still cared about how their fling would affect their relationships with Zara. And, as the title suggests, the film is smart enough not to suddenly ignore those character dynamics when the new couple emerges. If A Family Affair has a larger point, it's about the value of seeing others beyond the roles they occupy in your life, and of letting yourself be more than the roles you play, even if willingly.

So, while it has its weak spots, A Family Affair holds together well enough to entertain. In doing so, however, it also suffers from the hamstringing of visual storytelling that comes with this kind of Netflix movie. Much like in the classic approach to TV, the camera exists to see, not to speak. There can be additive visual moments (such as a good sight gag involving an absurdly heavy door), but if you're trying to keep an inattentive audience engaged, the movie can't hinge on something you have to watch to catch.

This is, undoubtedly, limiting. It can also sometimes translate into a sort of bland aesthetic, as if attention to the image beyond its most basic function no longer has value. It got me thinking about how Nancy Meyers almost made a Netflix movie, and how this film seems to try and mine the same vein as her work, but without her knack for opulent design. Its absence is notable, for this active viewer at least.

What it means to be a Netflix movie is likely changing. The streamer hired a new head of their film division this year, and with him, the era of industry-beating volume and sometimes exorbitant budgets is reportedly coming to an end. But the emphasis on passive viewing won't be going away anytime soon. So, I hope executives learn from what works about A Family Affair, and realize that even if the visual language of filmmaking must be secondary, the image must still be cared for.

Someone at Netflix, it seems, gave Mulaney a pile of money, a studio set, a great booker and six nights during the "Netflix is a Joke!" comedy festival to fill his guest roster and do whatever the heck he wanted. And he wanted to be even more eccentric than he usually is. Dressed in a variety of not-very-stylish suits and with beloved character actor Richard Kind shouting from a lectern behind him, Mulaney doesn't so much host the series as conduct an orchestra of oddities, from Jerry Seinfeld snapping at a coyote conservationist to Jon Stewart being scared out of his mind by a delivery robot to Sarah Silverman debating the merits of exorcisms.