There are a lot of animated series on Netflix. I would say there are too many. In many ways I feel like Netflix, as far as their original programming is concerned, is aiming for quantity over quality. I never really thought about it a great deal until I found out that my favorite animated series of all time, Rick and Morty was going to leave the platform permanently on the 12th of August.
So when Farzar appeared on the list as a new science-fiction oriented comedy animated series I thought that maybe Netflix had hired a bunch of talented writers in order to try to fill that void. I don't think that there is such a thing as a replacement for Rick and Morty but I don't mind when people try and honestly, I wish someone could succeed.
Farzar did not even come close to succeeding.
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I would imagine that most people can't make it through a single episode of this crap but I made it through 3 because I recall how many years ago Rick and Morty didn't appeal to me after one episode (the Pilot) and I ended up ignoring it for YEARS just because the pilot wasn't anywhere near as good as the rest of the episodes. I missed out on an epic show for a very long time and even trash-talked it because I didn't give it enough time.
I think that if you've watched 3 episodes of a series and at that point haven't found a single redeeming quality about it, it is safe to say that it probably isn't going to get any better.
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There was a time just a few days ago where this was significantly lower rated than it is now and there is already talk about Netflix organizing a "review rush" to pump the scores back up with fake bot reviews. All of these sites are easily manipulated with fake accounts so in that regard RT, IMDB, and basically any other review site can't be trusted until it has been around for a while. I tend to take the results with a grain of salt because there have been a lot of movements on all of these sites to either make a good show look bad or vice versa.
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Just a quick rundown of what, as far as I can tell, Farzar is about: Farzar is the name of the planet that the show takes place on. "Renzo" pictured above is the planet's hero who is credited with saving the people from the evil forces of an alien invasion of some sort. He takes the throne and rules the planet but at the expense of being married to a much older queen and their relationship is meant to be the center of a bunch of gross and unfunny jokes that seem as though they were written by a bunch of 13-year old's. The bad and horribly written jokes don't stop there though.
Virtually all dialogue is intentionally gross as are the visual representations and this is exhibited no better in the way that Renzo's useless son at the age of 30 wants his birthright to be a part of military leadership. His newly created division is called S.H.A.T. and I can't really relate to the type of person that would find this even remotely funny.
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It's quite evident in the opening episodes that the creators are searching for an identity and it appears as though they are just making this all up as they go along, poorly. The characters are disjointed and don't really have much of an identity. I still can't figure out who the main characters are meant to be because we jump back and forth as far as focus is concerned so much that you quickly lose all interest in trying to figure this out. At one point the characters break the 4th wall and actually ask "are we trying to be more Futurama or Rick and Morty?"
Well, I can say without any doubt that if you were aiming to be like either one of those, you failed miserably.
Should I watch it?
Only to see how unbelievably bad it is and to make over/under bets about how long it actually lasts before they pull the plug. This show relies almost entirely on cringe in order to be a show at all and while that works a bit in other shows, including Rick and Morty and others, those shows use it sparingly. Cringe is all that they do on Farzar and it gets old really fast. How many times can people make fart or poo references before you are going to ask yourself "what the hell am i watching?"
I've seen some bad animated series on Netflix and I think that basically all of their originals are very sub-par. Farzar is another level of bad though and I can't remember the last time I was this disappointed by something that was somewhat highly-anticipated.
It's bad, It's really really bad. Need more proof? Check out the Reddit thread that talks about it in great detail.
That's unfortunate. After the cancellation of Resident Evil, things are not going well for Lance Reddick. He's getting done dirty IMHO. He deserves better. The guy has a lot of talent and a huge line of successful parts. He's gotta be saying at this point, "I'm done with Netflix."
There's always the possibility that I am wrong of course. I just know that if I watch more than a few episodes of something and not only do I not laugh but instead roll my eyes at their attempts at humor, that I don't feel as though there is anything special going on there.
Resident Evil was pretty terrible though.. so many plot holes in that one.
It looks generic asf. Like IA generated.
I don't think that animation needs to be stellar in order for an animated series to be good. This is mostly bad because of terrible writing and attempts at "shock humor" that totally miss the mark... whatever that mark was meant to be.