'Me' Review: Try, Try, and Try Again
The sci-fi coming-of-age series premieres today on Apple TV+.
Now Streaming: Ben, still in the throes of adjusting to a blended family at the age of 12, discovers that he is a shape-shifter. Bummer! Or is it?
Created by Barry L. Levy, the series premieres today, with all 10 episodes dropping at once. Apple TV+ has favored the binge-watching theory before with their shows that are aimed at kids and families, as opposed to their series aimed at adults, which typically debut with two or three episodes, and then play out over a period of weeks.
Release scheduling aside -- and it makes perfect sense for a show aimed at kids to debut during the summer and all at once -- the show is not a mystery, even though it is structured as one. Instead, it feels like a straightforward narrative -- that might have made for a good, straightforward movie -- has been broken up into fragmented puzzle pieces, solely for the purposes of fitting into ten episodes of a narrative series.
What makes it difficult to follow is that each episode begins with a teaser, but we have no idea when or where in the narrative the event is taking place, so it frustrates rather than teases. I know that children are smarter and more intuitive than adults, but that was my experience in trying to watch the show and be fair to its very earnest, very worthy messaging.
To further complicate things, Ben is a shapeshifter, which means that, as the episodes progress, we are never quite sure who is who. And that is complicated by the introduction of an antagonist who is also a shapeshifter, someone who also has multiple superpowers, and who is also angry and driven by a desire to hurt people.
Not necessarily to kill them, though, because this is a show that's meant for children, so they should know that the villain only means to hurt people and then laugh at their pain. Except that he does kill someone, and that's the lynchpin of the series. (Sorry if that's a spoiler, but this is a series that's meant to be binged.)
Amanda Reid stands out in the cast as Carter Kennedy, whose identity and purpose is clouded for the first few episodes. (And I won't spoil that.) Everyone else does their best.
Like a Disney Channel production, with professional yet a somewhat lower-budget look and feel, Me is not a terrible series, but I'm afraid it didn't hit the mark for me, and therefore I can't recommend it for adults. [Apple TV+]