Cover art by Alexa Alvarado, @creampuffk1d on Instagram
by Frankie Fanelli
The Midnight Gospel is a new adult, animated Netflix original series brought to you by Pendleton Ward, the creator of Adventure Time.
Co-created with comedian (and star of the show) Duncan Trussel, the show centers around a dimension-and-planet-hopping space traveler named Clancy who explores the universe in search of beings to interview for his “spacecast.”
The show is essentially an animated podcast: snippets of Trussel’s podcast The Duncan Trussel Family Hour are layered over colorful, mind-bending, and borderline psychedelic animations that usually have almost nothing to do with the conversation at hand (which in my opinion is the best part). The show is utterly Adventure Time-esque, with a much more adult spin on both the animation and the subject matter, which is likely exciting for fans of Adventure Time who grew up with the show but are now old enough to appreciate something a little different and more mature.
One of the view downsides I encountered throughout the episodes of The Midnight Gospel that I watched was the disconnect between the topics covered in the podcast audio and the animations taking place on screen. Don’t get me wrong: as I said before, I liked the fact that this stylistic choice was made, but I began to find myself struggling to pay attention to both the conversation happening within the podcast and the events taking place on screen. Sometimes the disconnect was so vast between the audio and the visuals that I found myself struggling to follow either.
The animation itself is colorful, surprising, a bit nostalgic, at times gruesomely violent, and absolutely enthralling. I found myself not being able to look away throughout the duration of the episodes I watched. The purpose of Clancy’s “spacecast” is to find new schools of thought, philosophies, and points of view from which to view life. All those that he encounters are just as fascinating for the audience as they seem to be for Clancy, and at times I found myself sinking into complex, introspective thought spirals of my own- in the best possible way.
TV Wasteland 