I cannot recall watching a more frustrating show than the first season of Umbrella Academy. A superhero show masquerading as character drama, the new Netflix show manages to make molehills out of mountains and is a true mess.
Before I fully dig into what made this an excruciating watch, lets talk about a couple good thing shall we. I really loved Allison and the history of her powers. Unlike the other siblings, she wrestles with the ramifications of using her power and what it’s done to her life. Normally watching a superhero shy away from their power is boring but Emily Raver-Lampman does masterful character work, even though she’s saddled with a mess of a storyline (STOP TRYING TO SHOW US ADOPTED SIBLINGS HAVING FEELINGS FOR EACH OTHER). I have never heard of Robert Sheehan before this series but I will absolutely be present for whatever his next project is based on the strength of his performance as Klaus. As the self medicating brother who can see dead people, Sheehan is truly a revelation. He goes big in every moment, but makes it so fascinating that you really feel for the guy.
Speaking of Klaus, for all the work Sheehan did, it was still annoying that his character’s relationship with a man named Dave, that he meets when he goes back in time to the Vietnam war (chile…), occurs with maybe 5 minutes of screen time. We spent more time with Number Five and the mannequin he’s fallen in love with than we do with the one non-heterosexual human relationship on the show. I am not a fan of manufacturing draam for a situation you’re not going to pay off.
This might be Umbrella Academy’s fatal flaw, the manufacturing of things rather than letting them feel natural. It is one thing to showcase a disfunctional family, but this show finds the flimsiest ways to keep these characters from banding together to do something. Everyone is frustratingly selfish, even when presented with information that should make them work together. Two time-travelling assassins break into your home and fuck you up? Maybe that’s the time to tell one sister she’s a liability and then have everyone else go their separate ways. What kind of mess? And it’s a shame because watching these siblings bounce off each other is actually quite fun, even if they are brutal to each other.
The character that is most mistreated by the narrative is Vanya, the “ordinary” child of the group. Now, this is not to say that Ellen Page’s performance wasn’t good, in fact Vanya works sometimes in spite of the foolery because of her strengths as an actress. But she cannot save this character. Vanya is very much dealing with years of repressed memories and as we come to find out during the series, repressed powers. She discovers this during a whirlwind relationship with a man name Leonard. Leonard is where the problems start because Vanya’s love for him drags the character way down. Astute viewers could tell right away he was bad news but it annoyed me to no end that Vanya could be so blinded by the obvious ways in which he was manipulating her. To make matters worse, in episode 8, when presented with the crazy amount of evidence that her man isn’t a good dude, instead turns on her sister for helping to repress her powers when they were 4. FOUR YEARS OLD. So instead of going with her sister she gets mad at what happened and slits Allison’s throat. How in one scene do you have both literal and figurative character assassination? It is baffling that the character would make this choice and it was at this point I had to give up. Umbrella Academy has all the potential of a Slinky, cool for about five minutes and then worthless unless you let it tumble down the stairs.