Marvel's M.O.D.O.K. TV Review

Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. TV Review

May 17th 2021, 3:00pm

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Plot: In Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K., the megalomaniacal supervillain M.O.D.O.K. (Patton Oswalt) has long pursued his dream of one day conquering the world. But after years of setbacks and failures fighting the Earth’s mightiest heroes, M.O.D.O.K. has run his evil organization A.I.M. into the ground. Ousted as A.I.M.’s leader, while also dealing with his crumbling marriage and family life, the Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing is set to confront his greatest challenge yet!

Review: While every small screen offering produced outside of Marvel Studios has been canceled or met with a lukewarm reception, one final series is making an effort to build an audience outside of Disney+. With the MCU two series deep on the streaming services with Loki and What If? coming very soon, Hulu is premiering their own Marvel property that is definitely not a part of the PG-13 fare that is Kevin Feige's bread and butter. Marvel's M.O.D.O.K. is definitely not the animated superhero fare you are accustomed to seeing on Cartoon Network, but Adult Swim fans will instantly recognize and appreciate the direct inspiration of Robot Chicken on this crass yet heartfelt comic book sitcom.

Created by Jordan Blum and Patton Oswalt, M.O.D.O.K. reimagines Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's supervillain as a stereotypical suburban husband and father along the lines of Family Guy's Peter Griffin or Homer Simpson. The twist here is that while M.O.D.O.K. may tussle with heroes like Iron Man by day, at home his wife Jodie (Lucifer's Aimee Garcia) is an up-and-coming influencer, and his kids Lou (Ben Schwartz) and Melissa (Melissa Fumero) differ from him greatly. M.O.D.O.K.'s single-minded focus on world domination puts his relationship into a tailspin and forces him to concoct plans that involve time travel and other crazy plots that blend his home and work life in crazy ways.

In the workplace, M.O.D.O.K. must deal with his nemesis Monica Rappaccini (Wendy McLendon-Covey), henchman Gary (Sam Richardson), and new owner of A.I.M. Austin Van Der Sleet (SNL's Beck Bennett) whose approach to leadership differs drastically. Unlike the random skits of Robot Chicken, M.O.D.O.K. follows a serialized narrative over the ten-episode first season. There are very few non sequitur jokes as in Seth Green's long-running series but the animation style, vulgarity, and extreme violence are consistent with that show. Oswalt, who co-wrote the first episode alongside Jordan Blum, shows a deep love for Marvel Comics and includes characters both famous and infamous including Wonder Man (Nathan Fillion), Poundcakes (Whoopi Goldberg), The Leader (Bill Hader) and even Fing Fang Foom.

While not connected to the MCU, M.O.D.O.K. does have free reign to spoof, mock, and reference the breadth of Marvel Comics' massive universe. Patton Oswalt is spot-on as M.O.D.O.K. who is not the brilliant villain from the written page. In many ways, this M.O.D.O.K. reminded me of Gru in the Despicable Me films: he is clearly trying to be evil and his plans are those of any criminal mastermind, but deep down he is just a guy trying to keep his family together. Each episode centers on the tried and true sitcom formula of a personal problem and a work problem converging with a lesson being learned in the end. It is predictable from a structural standpoint, but that is where the subversive comedy elevates things.

The challenge for this series is taking the style and tone of Robot Chicken and expanding it from minutes to half an hour. Robot Chicken crams so many jokes into each episode because some last for less than thirty seconds before shifting to another. That rapid-fire format allows for even weaker skits to be sandwiched between hilarious ones, leaving the viewer with minimal time to recover. M.O.D.O.K. works far better than I would have expected because the writing is so strong. Oswalt and Blum lead a writing staff that clearly had a season-long arc established first before adding jokes into each episode which helps the story feel cohesive. They then sprinkled some random humor into each episode, which is heavily reliant on late 1990s pop music, along with some mid-level profanity and cartoon violence. Veteran Robot Chicken directors Eric Towner and Alex Kramer keep things moving at a steady pace which makes this series one of the more consistently funny comedies in a long time.

Marvel's M.O.D.O.K. carries with it Kevin Feige's seal of approval and has already garnered a second season pick-up which means we have at least twenty episodes of bizarrely hilarious comic book animation headed our way. Patton Oswalt and Jason Blum show here that there is a lot of room for material in the Marvel Comics world that differs from the MCU and I hope that Marvel Studios recognizes that and enlists them for a project within the official cinematic universe. Until that happens, Marvel's M.O.D.O.K. is a hilariously crass reinvention of a supervillain as an everyman and anti-hero.

Marvel's M.O.D.O.K. premieres May 21st on Hulu.