After watching the first three episode of Mr. Corman, the new AppleTV+ series created by and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, I was ready to write up a complete pan of the series. I hated it and couldn’t find anything remotely redeemable in the show. But, having watched the seven additional episodes of the first season, I found myself becoming more interesting in what Gordon-Levitt and his writing staff were doing – although I still don’t quite understand the larger point of the series and just what we are supposed to feel about Gordon-Levitt’s character of Josh Corman.
Josh is, essentially, an apathetic Millennial with a serious anxiety disorder than he can neither afford to get help for nor seems to want to get help for – a washed out musician who now teaches 5th grade at an inner-city Los Angeles public school, whose failures define how he sees himself and who always has an excuse or someone to blame for his inability to get over the hump and achieve what he wants out of life. He shares an apartment with his roommate Victor (Arturo Castro, far and away the best part of the series), a driver for UPS who has a precocious tween daughter who reluctantly visits him sporadically (although he’s a pretty great dad). Debra Winger plays Josh’s mom, Shannon Woodward his older and more successful sister, Juno Temple is his ex-girlfriend, and Hugo Weaving shows up as his absent father. Every time the show focuses on those that inhabit Josh’s life and less on him and his own thoughts and actions, the show works fairly well. That isn’t a slight on Gordon-Levitt’s acting ability – he’s still a very fine actor – but more of a slight toward the issues in the character of Josh.
After ten episodes of watching Josh navigate his life, I still don’t understand if we’re meant to be rooting for him to find focus and motivation to try to attain his lofty goals, or if we’re supposed to write him off as a wasted talent. I have a sneaking suspicion it’s the former – but the series gives us very little reason to want Josh to succeed. It’s not that he’s unlikeable (although he certainly comes off as self-absorbed and unable to accept his own shortcomings and try to change), but there’s just so little characterization provided for him beyond his basic character sketch. Conversely, all of the show’s supporting characters are much more fleshed out, and I could easily see myself watching a series about his mother, or sister, or ex. I would really love a show centered on Victor – and the series’ fourth episode is Victor-centric and one of the best of the season.
So, when Josh is onscreen with one of the supporting players, the show is significantly stronger than when we’re asked to do a deep dive into his psyche. But the downside to that is exactly what you might expect: Mr. Corman is a series that is, ultimately, about Josh. And if you don’t particularly care about Josh – who he falls in love with, whether or not he makes the necessary changes to better his life, etc. – then the show won’t be able to really capture and keep your attention. It certainly won’t make you excited to finish watching all ten episodes and it definitely won’t make you hope for a second season down the line.
As I mentioned, the first three episodes are not fun to watch. Josh, as a character, is unpleasant and his character development in those episodes is thin at the show’s best moments, full of lazy writing and frustrating tropes at its worst. Considering AppleTV+’s release schedule (dropping episodes weekly), I have a hard time imagining that most folks will even want to stick around long enough to get to the show’s more interesting episodes – and more interesting character moments (again, none of which are from Josh and only come from the show’s supporting cast). Production on the season was complicated by the pandemic, and the production moved, mid-season, down to New Zealand to complete filming. And it’s this final stretch of episodes – that include some great guest stars (including Temple and Weaving), as well as some trippy CGI sets and really interesting storytelling tools – which felt the most interesting to me. Gordon-Levitt lets other actors shine and allows Josh to fade into the background for entire stretches of episodes and the show is all the better for it. But then he’ll emerge back to the forefront and we’ll once again be asked to sympathize with him – or at least empathize with him – and it becomes a real challenge to stay invested in a series that doesn’t appear all that invested in motivating its leading character to grown and change in a discernible way.
Mr. Corman’s first two episodes will be released on AppleTV+ on Friday, August 6. A new episode will be released each Friday following. There are ten episodes in the season and all ten were provided for review.
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