Fantasmas

Premise: been forced to watch this stuff by a group of friends. Had no idea.

Do not waste your time.

Opening scene somehow promising: "maybe we are getting into Zoolander territory?" I asked myself. You know, full on farce, clear over exaggerated characters who become a caricature of themselves and hysterical dialogues.

Well, the illusion evaporated quickly.

The whole thing is a step below the surreal stories kindergarten kids create when bored.

Our writer-director-protagonist gets into one senseless situation after another (+ pitiable characters who take the spotlight) with the explicit goal of taking himself seriously in the search of an earring and pretending to make the audience laugh (or at least giggle). The egotism is too intense for my brain and I had to (mentally) check out.

Seeing Steve Buscemi made me sad, but I guess the paycheck was alright.

Out of curiosity I had a look at some critic reviews. One pathetic sentence after another meant to elevate what i think are the author nightmares written once he woke up.

High-concept mania; dream logic-fueled sketches ; nihilistic remark ; loose, over-arching narrative ; digressive vignettes ; outsized characters

Must say would love to be a fly on the wall in the producer's room when the marketing folks are discussing the different ways to present this colorful scam to the HBO audience.

Julio Torres never presents a cliche' subject. Go with the flow, and enjoy every delicious moment. Surprises around every single corner awaits. Stories within stories, within stories. He packs each half hour segment like a can of sardines with his enchanting plots. His wardrobe and background settings are done with an artist's vision of both beautiful colors and unique geometric shapes. He may have changed his hair color of choice from blue to orange, but his signature creativity is still woven in the wickedly absurd vignettes. The new characters that he introduces to us like Chester the driver, played by Tomas Matos or Steve Buscemi, as the unforgettable Q, are hysterical! I can't wait for the next episode to come an take me into his magically twisted dreamland of delight.

Having seen "Los Espookys" and "Problemista," I'm a fan of Julio. His offbeat humor, quirkiness, fantastical, surreal elements are woven through all, and "Fantasmas" is so far my favorite.

I love satire, and I'm really enjoying all the commentary on a wide variety of challenges and flaws of modern day society. This is often expressed through a ridiculous, exaggerated situation, which shines a comedic light on how truly dystopia some things are.

Each character is offbeat, and some are straight out of a fever dream.

In order to really enjoy this, you'd have to be along for the ride and not overthink or question a lot of the absurd, nonsensical things that happen, or be wanting a strong storyline structure.

This show feels weird for the sake of being weird, and it will continuously surprise you.

This is a sketch comedy show of how Julio's brain works. It's about his "profession" and how he is not any "one thing" in life. He is an artist that struggles with the question, "so what do you do?".

These sketches go far down a rabbit hole of fleeting ideas, with stunning makeup, costumes, and set design. Sketches range from bizarre sitcoms to reflective narrative moments on what it means to be an artist or creative person in the modern world.

For those who do not know Julio Torres, he is often associated with the term "magical realism". I'm assuming that if he ever wanted to be confined to a genre that would be appropriate.

I felt like I needed to give this a rating even after 2 episodes. From the set design and costumes to the multidimensional characters and stories they tell all within a world that can only make you think of things like Alice in wonderland or any novel by Vonnegut. I don't want to give anything away but the show does have a story that is certainly absurd at first glance but wholly satirical on every detail it presents about certain mundanities in our day to day lives that really are ridiculous when given further consideration.

Excited to see more of that this world is like. Expect to be weirded out at times, but please give it a shot if you're at all interested.