Original and fearless, it answers the question “What would happen if we mixed Terminator with Pineapple Express?”
Future Man is, without a doubt, the greatest janitor-centered time travel comedy of 2017. The concept is straightforward: Josh Futterman, a custodial worker at a biolab, lives with his parents and spends his free time playing Biotic Wars under the moniker Future Man. When he beats the game (the first person to do so), he discovers that it’s actually a recruitment/training simulation. Two future warriors straight out of an 80s B-movie materialize in his bedroom and tell him the Biotic Wars are real and he’s humanity’s savior.
Here it is: https://www.hulu.com/grid/future-man. It’s unfortunately only available with a Hulu account, but you need to be watching A Handmaid’s Tale anyway, so it shouldn’t be that painful.
The show takes a little time to get off the ground. The first couple of episodes are rough because it’s so clearly wish fulfillment — the loser with a dead-end job gets to hang out with Time Marines. As it becomes more and more clear that any easy tropes Future Man uses are there to be subverted, the narrative becomes more interesting. By episode 5, the rightness of the war against the Biotics is called into question, and what was a goofy, fun sci-fi romp becomes a goofy, fun, sci-fi romp filled with moral ambiguity and existential doubt. It’s an amazing turn — one minute you’re laughing at Rogenesque (Seth is a producer) dick jokes, and the next you’re asking what reality is. The skeleton of this show is a time-travel comedy, but it’s fleshed out with writing that trusts the audience, true character development, and really careful attention to plot.
Entertainment is the defining feature of each episode — every one is laugh-out-loud funny. This ranges from dumb, crude jokes (the instant the soldiers materialize in Josh’s bedroom, he’s masturbating) to extremely complex and rewarding long-arc humor — grizzled warrior Wolf discovers a hidden talent for cuisine and spends the rest of the show conflicted between his persona as a Michelin-level talent and a man who can rip someone’s head off with his bare hands.
Future Man actually shows how deeply crippling it is to grow up in a world where the only choice is to become a super soldier or die
The attention to character is a big part of what gives the show real substance. Tiger and Wolf are parodies of 80s action heroes, and they absolutely are everything you’d expect as a result: trained killers, strong, direct, and unversed in 21st century niceties. Unlike the 80s movies that inspired these two, Future Man actually shows how deeply crippling it is to grow up in a world where the only choice is become a super soldier or die. At one point, Josh attempts to kiss Tiger, and she almost throws up. She asks why he would want to put “ratholes” together (“What else would you call the hole you stuff rats into?”), revealing the deep intimacy issues created in a kill-or-be-killed world. In addition to a realistic portrayal of the dark side of being a badass future soldier, the show shepherds each of the leading characters through personal development. Josh becomes more dedicated, more confident, and more able to work towards his goals. Tiger becomes more willing to express emotions, and Wolf (in what is possibly the best episode of the series) moves from being an unquestioning grunt into pursuing personal fulfillment to the hilt. It’s a goofy comedy, but its serious attention to true human emotion keeps it from being only that.
[E]ach change they make in the past has unpredictable, upsetting, and permanent results
The time travel in Future Man is the most painstaking exploration of the concept to make it to any type of screen in the last few years. The central conflict involves going back in time to assassinate the inventor of the super serum that creates the genocidal Biotics. The show is mainly a catalogue of how the multiple attempts and failures of the main trio shred the timeline more and more irreparably. Actions have consequences, and that is such an important quality of good narrative. For example, the most disappointing thing about Doctor Who’s decline in the post-Tennant years is its creeping but inexorable movement away from time travel having rules. In Doctor Who, if something is broken beyond repair, the Doctor can literally just scream I’M THE DOCTOR, completely ignore all rules of internal narrative consistency, and change everything to suit him. The writers make no reference to previously unbreakable rules, to commonly accepted time travel tropes, or even a decent explanation of exactly what it is the Doctor is doing. The absolute lack of consequences has transformed Doctor Who from a show written with kids in mind to a kids’ show. Future Man is on the other end of the spectrum — each change they make in the past has unpredictable, upsetting, and permanent results (the funniest and most trivial of which is Josh accidentally making his parents name him “Joosh”). The explanations for how time travel works don’t necessarily make sense because time travel itself doesn’t make sense, but the writers never insult the audience with hand-waving — they stick to their internally-consistent guns and explore consequences rationally.
While the show doesn’t get its feet under it until about episode four, it is impressive once it gets going. The writers chose what they wanted this show to be with no consideration for who would want to follow, no focus-group simplification — they just went for it, and the resulting joy of creation translates into a palpable energy in every scene. The contrast at the center of the show is constantly stimulating — it’s very much a goofy bro sci-fi show, but it explores its morals and characters with the utmost seriousness. Even if this show had no other saving graces, the montage where Wolf falls in love with the 80s is, by itself, worth the Hulu subscription.
Andrew Findlay Writes 