Lazarus

Episode 5

I could start this review with some dry foreshadowing about how I was just so convinced after last week's stellar outing that Lazarus was going to deliver the goods yet again…but I think we all know that would be a lie. Anyone that's been around the anime block enough times can spot an inconsistent and overstuffed mess of a passion project when they see one, and I don't think there could have been a less surprising result than “The newest episode of Lazarus is not very good, actually.” I'll tell you what I didn't expect. 'Pretty Vacant' didn't just disappoint me; it's the first episode of Lazarus to tick me off.

It is perfectly fine to take your science-fiction thriller premise and use it as a Trojan horse for an anthology series that exists mostly to explore interesting thematic concepts and show off cool action sequences. To do that, though, you need to commit to your approach. You either don't care about the overarching plot of your story and dedicate all of your energy to making each standalone episode an interesting adventure in its own right, or you do care about the narrative threads enough to make the step-by-step process of the adventure into something coherent and satisfying. In the case of Lazarus, it's not so much a case of trying to have one's cake while eating it as it is tossing the cake straight into the air while trying to decide what to do with it, even as it all falls apart and splatters to the ground in the process. The show can't decide what it wants to focus on and excel in, and thus it can't rely upon to succeed at much of anything on a week-to-week basis. If we're really lucky, we might still end up with a certified banger like we got with “Don't Stop the Dance.” If we're not, we get whatever the hell “Pretty Vacant” is trying to accomplish.

In my last review, I called out the formula for these missions of the week being stymied by how they always seem to end with Team Lazarus going through a big to-do only to come up with a single meaningful clue to the next step in their hunt for Skinner. This week, though, Lazarus doesn't even bother with that minuscule crumb of plot advancement. Instead, the gang gets wrapped up in a giant conspiracy to announce a completely made-up cure for Hapna that is meant to fool every single reputable politician and researcher on Planet Earth only to be shown up by a wacky hacker named freaking “Popcorn Wizard” of all things who screams “HAAAAAARDCORE” every five seconds. It is not even clear that this incredibly annoying and random new character is linked to Skinner in any way. She shouts her insipid catch-phrase over and over while driving around in her ridiculous mobile hacker unit, and our heroes accomplish absolutely nothing. Unless, that is, you count “potentially inciting worldwide mass panic over a potential cure for the apocalyptic murder-drug” as an accomplishment.

The reason this nonsensical time-waster of an episode makes me so annoyed is that it puts me in the position of being the guy who keeps nitpicking the lazy script and dubious plot holes that Lazarus insists on flaunting every week. Normally, I'd be the first person to shout “Who the hell cares?” about such details if the show was entertaining enough, but Lazarus keeps shoving its inconsistencies and shortcuts in our faces at every opportunity. The whole first third of the episode was impossible for me to enjoy at face value, for instance. I knew that Axel just waltzing right in and kicking the crap out of those guards at Delta Pharmaceutical was just another exercise in “Axel Doing Cool Shit Like It Ain't Even a Thing,” but all I could do was rant to my wife about how absurd it was that the world's foremost medical lab that has direct ties to the most dangerous man on the planet would have a mere four random security guards who all wait to get onto the elevator with the dude who is trying to break into their office, and for what? Just so the show can recreate the cool elevator fight scenes from movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Ip Man 3

We've already gone over how superfluous Lazarus' (admittedly cool and badass) action scenes often are, but this is just silly. So is the rest of this episode, though, so maybe that's just the one example of being genuinely consistent that Lazarus can lay claim to. The only real benefit to the show's unreliability is that it means that next week's adventure might be an improvement over this. We can only hope.

Rating:

Lazarus is currently streaming on Max and Hulu on Sundays.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.