Love, Death, & Robots - Review

Whenever I heard anything about this show, it was always about how David Fincher was connected to it. It became the main reason I was interested in and ultimately finished the whole season. I would implore you to watch, not because a name is attached to it, but because it stands on its own merit. Love, Death, & Robots, brought to you by the studio making the Sonic the Hedgehog movie, is an anthology show. It has 18 episodes, all of which have a run time under 20 minutes; thus making it very easy to binge the whole thing. 

This is my first time watching an anthology show which really added to my experience. The best thing about the show though was how short each episode was. Short episodes allowed for each story to be told quickly and cut out most of the fat. Even if you didn't particularly like the current story being told, you could wait it out. The show never got stale in presentation either since it kept changing aesthetics. Other than one episode being live-action, each story had an animation style that fit. There would be seemingly hand-drawn animation to full-on CG. The art styles were plentiful which kept the momentum of the show moving.

Everything wasn't great though, the show suffered from a thematic problem. Anthology shows like Channel Zero or American Horror Story center around the theme of horror, its the aspect that connects all of the episodes together. Even Black Mirror is known for something, its not just a collection of different stories, each show has a thematic throughline. Love, Death, & Robots decided that it would be centered around "wouldn't this be cool". All of the episodes are little more than fleshed out writing prompts from the subreddit of the same name, that's what it felt like anyway. The show feels like little shorts someone put together as a demo reel, all of varying quality. 

There isn't too much to dissect about the show. You either like the episodes' premises or not. There are no secrets hidden that require more thought about them, everything stays surface level. It's not that every show needs to be a thoughtful experience, but it feels like you are sprinting through the season due to each episode's length. I particularly like episodes 2 and 6, the former having the picture for this review.

​Rating: Give it a Chance