Ty Watches "Miracle Workers"
/The new show "Miracle Workers" on TBS premiered last night. I just finished watching it, and I have to say, it ruled.
For those that don't know, the show is about God and the angels that work for him. That is the simple premise of the show at least. According to the "coming this season" at the end of the episode, there are going to be plenty more story lines. That aside, as I said, the premiere was excellent. It was magical. It was funny and absurd and goofy in all the right ways.
God is played by Steve Buscemi, and this has the potential to be one of his best. He is disillusioned. The world is going to hell around him, and he just seems fed up. He is over it. At points in the premiere you see him chugging beers, calling his lazy Susan the best thing that he has ever owned, he's watching TV just waiting to hear someone call him out and thank him. He is over it all. He wears sweats and sleeps pretty much all day long. His assistant, Sanjay(Karan Soni), clearly loves his job, but you can see the cracks starting to form. He is there to do whatever is asked of him, but the ideas coming from God now seem insignificant and, quite frankly, stupid. At one point, when God is pitching him a restaurant idea, you can see him and his anger starting to boil over. That being said, he is still by God's side when he decides that he is going to blow up Earth. I have a good feeling his story is only going to grow and grow throughout the season.
We also meet a few angels during the episode. Angela Kinsey plays what seems to be a human resource manager, and she is great. She is callous, but also caring. The main 2 angels we meet in the episode are Eliza(Geraldine Viswanathan) and Craig(Daniel Radcliffe). Eliza is an opened minded, go getting type of person. She wants to change the world, and asks for a new job. She wants to be moved from the dirt department, where she literally just messes with dirt, and Kinsey decides that she should be sent to the Prayers Answered department. She is pumped by this news. She now really feels that she can, and will, make a difference. When she finally gets to her new department, she finds that it isn't all it seems, and she only has one other co worker, Craig. Craig is good at his job, and likes what he does. He only answers small prayers, like helping people find lost keys and gloves because that is fulfilling to him. He has been doing this job for centuries, and he has gotten good at it. But, he is also in a rut, not going after big prayers, just the small ones. He just doesn't realize the rut. He has no friends, he has never had a cheeseburger, he doesn't know what a happy hour is and he barely goes outside. He and Eliza form a fast friendship, and when they make a bet with God that they can answer an impossible prayer, you can see that they genuinely enjoy one another's company. I love when shows take this route with religion. I myself am not a religious person, so when someone makes jokes about the afterlife, and really embellishes it, I am on board.
As I said before, Buscemi is so perfectly cast for this role. He is tremendous. But so are Soni, Viswananthan and Radcliffe. They really add a great deal of comedy to the show. I found myself laughing out loud watching the episode. I am so excited to see where it goes from here. Simon Rich, who also wrote for "SNL", "Inside Out" and the very, very underrated "Man Seeking Woman" has what seems to be, at least in my opinion, a great show with loads and loads of potential.
I cannot recommend "Miracle Workers" enough. It is awesome, and I assume it will continue to be.
Ty
Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. He, like his idol Homer Simpson, practices his own kind of religion. Just the other day he took the day off for the Feast of Maximum Occupancy.
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