Close Enough Review: 100% No Stress Day

"How long 'til this hits?"

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(7/10/20 Note: "100% No Stress Day," despite being the first episode to be publicly shown of Close Enough, is not the first episode of the proper series, but instead the sixth. While that affects some of my assessments quite a bit, I still stand by my criticisms even if the context needs to be re-adjusted.)

Close Enough has been a show that's fascinated me at every step of its arduous development period. Unveiled in 2017 as a cornerstone of an animation block envisioned by TBS, it was a casualty of unfortunate circumstance; one of its partner shows, developed by Louis C.K., was scrapped for obvious reasons, and Olan Rogers' Final Space was the only show fortunate enough to make it out of the woodwork... until now, three years later on a service that wasn't even announced at the time, and with episodes cut down to half of their initial length. Throughout that interminable grace period, I ultimately formed the opinion of, "I don't even care if this show is going to be good or bad. I just want to see what it even is." And now that I have (the pilot premiered early at Annecy)... how was it?

(NOTE: In light of the fact that this episode has not been formally released, this review will operate under the assumption that you haven't seen the show. As such, there will be no major plot spoilers, but discussion of the show's general direction and the episode's plotting.)

On the plus side, no mistake can be made: this is a J.G. Quintel show, and that alone carries it a long way. Many of Regular Show's most crucial staff members have returned—including Minty Lewis, Calvin Wong, and Owen Dennis (now of Infinity Train fame)—and the distinct art style has been retained to loving effect. Truly, Close Enough is a more untethered version of Regular Show, no longer needing to mask getting high under transparent but creative implications and having the liberty to throw in as many utterances of "bitch" and "shit" as it wants... but that it's untethered isn't necessarily a better thing.

There are some notable distinctions within the conception of Close Enough. Quintel, in a recent interview, touted that the show would be focused on exploring the point in young adulthood where your life goes from doing whatever you want to learning to take care of other people in your life, and while this episode is very much built around that idea intrinsically, the framework feels tenuous and decentralized in favor of its weirdness. Pilots are almost always gonna be wonky by their very nature, though to the show's credit, it puts a very defiant step forward.

Unfortunately, being something of the spiritual successor to Regular Show, it's also difficult not to compare "100% No Stress Day" to that show's first episode, "The Power." The latter is an episode so firmly etched into pop culture that, to some degree, it might seem unfair to base any opinions on this pilot off of that, but I do think that "The Power" demonstrates, to some degree, the shortcomings of this particular episode.

Our cast of characters at the moment can certainly be slotted into positions within the show, but it's unclear where their potential lay. Whereas Regular Show practically created its own non-existent archetypes—a lollipop-headed, otherworldly fop, or an aggressive jag-off powered by jokes about his mom—that miraculously worked and made the show feel one-of-a-kind, Close Enough toys with the simplest possible character types, at least this early on in the game.

Josh is a slackish So-Cal bro who does what he can to provide for his wife and daughter; Emily is a young mother stressed beyond words and struggling to cope with it; Alex is a man-child susceptible to getting himself into deep shit; and Bridgette is a perky, stoner millennial. (Josh and Emily's daughter, Candice, merely feels along for the ride, and giddy to be part of the mayhem.) There's an enjoyable enough chemistry among them, especially in the pairings we see in this episode, but if it's any indication, I struggled to parse how I could even go about describing them.

Luckily, the episode skates along indebted to, as I previously mentioned, the surreal nuances inevitable to anything Quintel touches. While Josh and Alex are very straightforward characters, they're given a banquet of material to react off of in the form of vengeful clown strippers and ferocious ham thieves. Everything about their slice of "100% No Stress Day" in general is what gives me confidence that Close Enough, as a show, can get there. It simply struggles to explore the show's central conceit while simultaneously navigating how to handle the lessened restrictions of being an adult cartoon, and that aggregates its occasional blemishes.

Consequentially, Emily and Bridgette's sub-plot doesn't manage to get over at all, really, a consequence of how aimless it feels. With the other two dealing with a sprawling, external conflict, Emily's is strictly internal, finding her a victim of a really bad high amidst an outburst of stress. While that parlays into some appreciably trippy imagery, the arc as a whole feels frustratingly underdeveloped and ultimately passive, putting Emily on standby until she's needed to resolve the final act. Perhaps this is where we can see the consequences of the episode's runtime being axed the most.

There's enough surprises throughout the episode to keep it moving forward at an enjoyable rate (including some... particularly inspired but graphic visual gags), but it still feels like there's a lot to be tapped into here. I feel like, going into Close Enough, I was anticipating something akin to "Regular Show after dark," filtering that show's cerebral weirdness and eccentricities through the lens of young adulthood, and while there are whiffs that satisfy that itch, this is still a show very much trying to feel itself out. Whether or not that will become a part of its identity, or whether or not it wants to be something more, is yet to be seen, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops, and I'm ready to be impressed.

FINAL GRADE: B.

Close Enough premieres on HBO Max on July 9th, 2020.

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For full coverage of Final Space, Close Enough's partner from the TBS animation block, CLICK HERE.