The show is painfully sharp in its portrayal of the way grief is performed on social media and I.R.L. It is similarly brutal in its lampooning of national deformities.
Talk of Mega Millions—a circus on the theme of getting some bread—dominates chatter at the corner store, where it drowns out notice of newspaper headlines about plutocrats and plunder.
The story of Hervé Villechaize’s life—rearranged to maximize its simplicity as both a show-biz roller-coaster ride and an allegory of toxic celebrity—is one of physical difference and social distance.
The network’s decision to reboot two mainstays from the nineteen-eighties has floated in on the Zeitgeist that blew its C.E.O. out the door amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
Formerly an independent street prostitute, now a pornographer, Candy is on a journey that sets the tone for the show’s various threads about striving for stardom and self-determination.
The broadcast seized the roundness of its anniversary year as a special occasion to pump a spritz of nostalgia into the airwaves, but it failed to fully engage with its own history.