“Who drew the d*cks?”
This was the great existential question that American Vandal's first season posed to the viewer. Shot in a mockumentary format that spoofs the recent spate of true-crime shows (think Making A Murderer), American Vandal was a breath of fresh air. No more did we have to break our heads over whether O J Simpson actually committed a murder; here, two students just shot a documentary trying to figure out which of their fellow students vandalised their teachers' cars by painting d*cks on them.
Now, season two of American Vandal, which premiered on Netflix on 14 September, does not have anything like the aforementioned 'dick-ensian' question (It was low-hanging fruit, okay?) in its arsenal.
The two students in question, Peter Maldonado (Tyler Alvarez) and Sam Ecklund (Griffin Gluck) are back and this time they’re filming their senior-year project.
They land up at a private Catholic school, one of the most affluent ones in the country, where an anonymous online entity known as ‘The Turd Burglar’ has caused many students to sh*t their pants, literally and publicly, in an event that is dubbed ‘The Brownout’.
If that combination of words sounds ridiculous to you, it is.
But just as Peter and Sam without any fuss take the situation seriously (after all, who likes to sh*t their pants publicly and have that uploaded on Instagram?), the show's creators, Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda, similarly, use different true-crime tropes earnestly to great effect.
Multiple suspects with possible motives? Check.
Photos of suspects on a board connected with string, constantly changing? Check.
A potential witness using a hidden lapel microphone? Check.
Repeated scenes of the original crime, in this case, I repeat, people sh*tting in public? Check.
(Caution: Do not watch this season while eating, especially while gulping down chocolate swirl ice cream.)
American Vandal is a show that is not afraid to be “immature” in its bid to get laughs.
Two of the characters that elicit the most laughs this season are a teacher and a janitor. While the former has ludicrous comparison points for her idols—at one point she says Kurt Vonnegut is the Kanye West of satirical postmodern literature—the latter, well, is hot, and one of the funniest straight man characters in any television series this year.
And yes, the d*cks and sh*t are funny, but it also works as a genuine mystery. It is not revealed till the last few minutes of the penultimate episode who The Turd Burglar is, and even then, the last episode throws a spanner in the works.
Yet, the laughs and the mystery are the masks American Vandal wears as it provides a window into today's youth. The characters are borne out of college-movie tropes: the jock; the coach; the pretty one; the religious one; the weirdo; the boy who enjoys theatre, but the show is smart enough that they never feel like stereotypes.
For many of these teenagers and adults, the happenings have consequences; the outcome of The Brownout could mean anything from an expulsion to losing their job or from losing bright future career prospects to a dip in their popularity.
For basketball whiz DeMarcus Tillman (Melvin Gregg) and his sidekick, Lou (DeRon Horton), the former's prospective future NBA career is on the line. Ms. Wexler (Barbara Deering), the student body dean, is concerned that rich people are pulling their kids (and their donations) from the school. Jenna Hawthorne (Kiah Stern), on the other hand, may just want revenge on the school because the students laughed at her expense some time ago.
Everyone has something to lose, everyone has their own insecurities to deal with, and American Vandal in this second season leans into that aspect much more than it did in its first.
It acknowledges that youth nowadays encounter much more pressure than youth from previous generations. Youth in the present deal with their counterparts in school or college along with the added responsibility of having to look good on social media. The show also looks at the isolation and the sadness that youth contend with when ridiculed because their social media game is not on point.
Jenna Hawthorne, for instance, allegedly wants revenge because when she uploaded a photo with Kendall Jenner, with the caption indicating that Jenner was her best friend, she was ridiculed as soon as others found out she, in reality, waited five hours for the photo in a crowded mall.
When Kevin McClain (Travis Tope) is assumed to be the main suspect in the first episode, the motive behind the crime is that he has hardly any friends and is normally known as the weird one in the school's social circle, presumed to be bullied. Kevin constantly has fruits thrown at him and he strikes back at the fruits as if he's the human incarnation of the game Fruit Ninja, all while he's being recorded for others' social media views and likes.
One wouldn’t think a show this preposterous could become a meditation on the way the young live. But comedy has always been an effective way of looking at the human condition.
On American Vandal, that tight line was successfully crossed in the first season itself, if only briefly. The achievement there, however, emboldened the show to pull it off on a larger scale in this season (slight spoilers ahead till the end of this paragraph), with the cause of The Brownout linked to the need for social validation. This is compounded even further in the final couple episodes, which look at alienation, online bullying, blackmailing, depression, catfishing and the extent to which we can go just for a little love.
And you thought this was a show about d*cks and poop.
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