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The Premise

Fred Armisen is/was Oscar Hoffman, and he died skiing into a tree like Sonny Bono. Maya Rudolph is/was June Hoffman, and she died choking on a nut on an airplane kind of sort of but not really like Mama Cass. These two were married for 12 years. Oscar was always happy, but June had started to get slightly restless and bored after many years of the same routine. June spent a year alive after Oscar died and, after quite a few months of grieving, she finally started picking herself up and moving on. After she died, she “woke up” in a boring neighborhood where Oscar had been living his afterlife (afterliving?) for the past year. He is thrilled to have her back. June is happy too, but conflicted. The two get back into their boring routine.

Sitting like this will rush all the blood to your dead genitals.

A brash kid named Mark (Noah Robbins) has been there since the ’70s, and has had a very loose — very loose — friendship with Oscar since he showed up. A rebellious woman named Kase (Catherine Keener) shows up to the mysterious neighborhood of the dead a few months after June. Soon enough, Kase’s attitude toward living her afterlife like she doesn’t give a shit inspires June to assert herself about her true feelings about her situation, and about Oscar.

My Half-Baked Thoughts

This was a nice little eight-episode chunk of story. Very light, nothing particularly profound or thought-provoking even when it tried to be. There was more potential to flesh out the supernatural aspect of the afterlife, but they only touched upon this briefly, such as when Kase repeatedly tried to destroy the same piece of furniture or when they can all hang out at the bottom of the sea. The series was less focused on the mystery of the afterlife and more focused on June’s disengagement with her marriage and her finding the courage to break out of her cloistered shell, which I was fine with. It was a very slow burn for June to go from trying to make the best of the situation to actively pushing against it. And good for her! That Kase is just the rascal she needed!

The cool thing about being dead is that you can travel to the bottom of the Marina’s Trench without worrying about those weird fish with the headlamps.

Fred Armisen is hard to take in large doses, so my only gripe with Forever is that there was a little, uh… too much of him. That’s an unfair assessment, because the whole point of his character was to be tiresome. If my wife had this constant wide-eyed optimism, I’d be heading for the hills too, tout suite! But he’s also the most exhausting part of Portlandia, so I’m used to his antics and various annoying dispositions. He’s good at it, that’s for sure. I think he’s funny, really I do! I just don’t like to see him all the time.

The existential dread that would come from being stuck in a place forever without any real direction is felt by June, and not by Oscar. They don’t really dwell on this too much since I think they wanted to make a palatable show without too much negativity and philosophical scariness. Kase makes a good point that they’re all dead and no one should be held back by anything anymore, which is a good lesson for life anyway. That’s the whole point of the show: to live life to the fullest because you’ll be dead someday. And if you happen to be dead someday and stuck somewhere, then try living life to the fullest anyway! It’s hard to do, though, because there’s stuff like capitalism that gets in the way of true happiness. Capitalism and stress and money. And if you’re single and lonely, that doesn’t help much either. And if you’re missing a limb or two, then good fucking luck.

Welcome to the neighborhood. Would you like to hear the message of the Good News?

I can’t help but think that this isn’t the show I wanted it to be. The plot meandered in a big way, and that one side episode with the realtors that was meant to be poignant and meaningful was, while interesting, not as poignant and meaningful as it was supposed to be. Perhaps they built too much of it up to an ending that was more sad than anything else, especially the point it was trying to make (that it’s never too late to start a new life with your affair partner!) I spent the first two episodes a little bit lost as to what the driving force of the plot was going to be until it looked like it was going to be a show about June picking up her life without Oscar. I was expecting a double story of alive June and dead Oscar getting used to their unfortunate situations and never really ending up together. I think I would’ve preferred that instead of a show about an underwhelming afterlife. And maybe that was the double meaning: that the audience’s involvement felt just as underwhelming as the dead people’s situation. Don’t get me wrong, though, I totally binged through this show. I thought Forever was just the right amount of episodes and I don’t need another season. Would’ve been nice to see the direction that the show could have possibly gone in, but based on what I watched it would be just as likely that I would prefer some other direction instead.

Fact: The kid there is like the wise old man of the story. Does he know the meaning of life? Watch to find out! (no)

Of note, I was a big fan of Noah Robbins’ performance as ’70s teenager Mark, even though he was about 28 years old at the time. Nevertheless, I like that he was a constant bitch toward Oscar — well-deserved — and betrayed a bit of genuine kindness at the end by reciprocating a hug when Oscar decided to leave the neighborhood to find June. Also, there was that one young kid who was supposedly in the neighborhood the longest. Did Mark call him a douchebag in suspenders? I cracked up!

Worth the Watch?

Yes, you’re looking at eight episodes of a funny, interesting, and low-key show that won’t take much time to get through at all and presents some interesting ideas about love, life, existential dread, seizing the day, and making the most out of a slightly shitty situation.

If you’re looking for something similar and more enjoyable, though, I recommend The Good Place and Upload as alternate options. But suck it up, man, it’s only eight episodes. You’ll probably like it.

And have some fucking FUN once in a while. Life is short!