(courtesy & (c) Netflix)
It goes without saying (but here is this reviewer saying it anyway because writing demands it, dammit) that sitcoms are funny; after all, they didn’t put the “comedy” in “situation comedy” for nothing.
They make us laugh, the good one uproariously, in a world where there’s often very little to laugh about.
But the really good ones, the one with a reason to exist beyond well-telegraphed punchlines, are both funny and meaningful, possessing a thoughtfulness every bit as vibrantly entertaining as their more jocular moments.
And while you might not classify Unstable season two as a classic of the genre, it is right u there with the very good ones because it manages to be both hilariously oddball and thoughtfully incisive as a billionaire father and son do their best, and not always well, to coexist in the same hothouse space.
Ellis Dragon (Rob Lowe) is a biotech billionaire with a gift for headline-grabbing scientific discoveries, and, rather unfortunately for his Chief Financial Office and chief wrangler, Anna (Sian Clifford), a penchant for rather off-the-wall, idiosyncratic stunts, the kind that garner attention but which diminish the science more than just a little bit.
Hoping to even out Ellis’s more out-there tendencies, Anna brings Ellis’s estranged son Jackson (John Owen Lowe, Rob’s son IRL), a budding scientist and flute tutor, back into the Dragon fold – the company carries the surname, reflecting, of course the founder’s fairly unhealthy dose of narcissism – in season one, which sort of works, and actually real doesn’t.
They clash as they always have, and while Ellis genuinely seems to love his son, his approach is always Ellis-centric, which is great for burnishing the tech billionaire’s ego but not so good for being in the running for dad of the year.
In season two, which comes after Ellis has grabbed attention for a whole host of very wrong and fiery automobile reasons, Anna is trying to right the ship and get the good ship Dragon back on an even keel (well, as even as it can manage with its founder who doesn’t understand that the world doesn’t actually march solely to the beach of his very self-interested drum).
But with his very oddball and grubbily self-aggrandising therapist, Leslie (Fred Armisen) whispering all kinds of strange ideas in his ear – he’s appointed by the Board to help Ellis be a better CEO and ends up in a weirdly dysfunctional professional relationship with him instead – and people like Jackson’s childhood friend, Dragon employee and Ellis-worshipper Malcolm (Aaron Branch) telling him what he wants to hear, our favourite very rich tech bro continues to beat a path of destruction through industry, friendship, professional connections and family.
And therein lies all the humour and, surprisingly, quite a bit of thoughtful introspection.
The chief driver of all the goofy comedy is not, as you might expect Ellis who does get some very juicy, utterly un-self aware lines that belie his totally self-involvement that excludes, mostly at least, any perspective beside his own, but Anna who, when the corporate world of Dragon is going resolutely mad around her, archly says what we’re all thinking.
Ellis, and thanks to this all-consuming presence, just about everyone around him, has to go along with all the chaos but while Anna has no choice but to be his chief enabler in order to keep the company ticking along, she’s also the one to comes out and tells it to Ellis like it is.
Not that Ellis pays any attention at all; at one point in this series, Ellis is very down and convinced he is on the dark, sliding road to oblivion and irrelevance; attempting to puncture his sense of rigorously consistent self-importance – even when he’s down, he’s consumed by himself to hilarious degrees that come very close to verging on just plain comically sad – she tries to portray the death threats he’s received, which comes from a very surprising and yet not surprising source at all, as proof he is the one at the top of his game.
But with fellow tech wunderkind, and also Ellis addict, Peter (Lamorne Morris), now in the Dragon fold, courtesy of a very financially dubious and emotionally suspect play by Ellis to keep Jackson firmly in his orbit, and Anna’s volatile stepdaughter Georgia (Iris Apatow) causing dark nights of the soul for him in wolly different ways, Ellis isn’t buying any of it this time around.
Still, Anna persists because someone has to until, at one point, she doesn’t and it looks like Ellis may yet be turned around on his now-non CEO ear, leading to an hilarious, typically self-important announcement that validates Ellis’s entrenches sense that the world revolves around him, but which absolutely no resemblance to reality.
It’s these frequent blasts of ego-driven surreality that keep Unstable ticking merrily and hilariously along, and there’s no greater proof of how effective they are as an engine of comedy that when Jackson decides to strike out on his own and get a job with Peter’s tech start-up Magma, and to date someone of his own choosing, and Ellis pulls him right back in in some fairly extravagant ways.
It’s all very, very funny, but also, and here’s where Unstable is a cut above the sitcom rabble, very emotionally illuminating, because while we’re laughing at the way Ellis can’t stop trying to control Jackson because his ego depends on the world revolving without cessation around him, it’s also very dark, very unhealthy behaviour and in various episodes, most notably, episode seven of the series, “Ron Tabasco”, leads to some very in-depth, heart-to-heart conversations which may not last in effectiveness as long as Jackson would like them too but which also mean that the underlying unhealthiness of the father-son relationship at the heart of the show does at least get addressed in some meaningful ways.
While the second season is a little unsure about what to do with stalwart ensemble characters like scientists and best buddies Ruby and Luna (Emma Pilar Ferreira and Rachel March respectively), and stumbles a little with the introduction of Georgia, Unstable is, by and large, as funny and meaningful as its opening season, full of bizarrely silly character moments, inspired corporate lunacy, witty lines and a strong sense that while blood may be thicker than water, it remains messy all the same and a rich source of angst, grief and a towering start-up full of laughs.
Unstable streams on Netflix.