The Crew, Season One (2021) TV Series Review

 A Good Option To Watch In The Dark Times

The Crew is a Netflix special designed to cheer you up in your quarantine caves. The movie follows a group of friends working for a NASCAR racing team. Sounds pretty cool right? Well at least I thought so, before watching it. A group of friends saying funny things, check; race cars and other cool stuff, check. This show was a must watch for me. (Ok so I like race cars, sue me). Anyways, in this review, I will offer you my take on the very first season of the show, which in now streaming on Netflix. So, let's get on with it.

The Crew follows the adventures of our lovely group of friends Kevin, Beth, Chuck, Jake, Catherine and Amir. Catherine here is the CEO of the team, Kevin is the crew chief, Jake is the driver, Beth is the head  office, and the other 2 work on the car. The show follows our group on their daily routine of being an unsuccesful NASCAR team, while offering a variety of jokes, some offensive, some pretty funny, really. Of course, we might say with all the Ivy League grad vs lifelong experience clash it seems pretty much like a worn out cliche, but personally, I believe the show got to be authentic with it. lLet's start with pros. First of all, I liked the characters quite a lot really. Even though most of them are just a statue role in a cliche, or at least look like one, I felt the connection between myself and the characters with no problem. The characters are not pushing you to like them, they feel genuinely close to viewer. They are not stuck in an endless loop of workshop comics, they don't just repeat everyday jokes over and over. Even though the laughing tracks are my biggest concern about the show, I didn't feel an urge to laugh, at least for the most part. The first season, in my opinion, was actually funny enough and I laughed enough, so the effects didn't bother me that much really. 

The episodes are 25 to 30 minutes long. Still though, none of them, except for the first one, felt like a drag for me. 20 minutes episodes would be a much safer route, since Netflix viewers are pretty strict about their comedy, they want to laugh, and they want it to be short, you see, they want something they can binge watch. When I started watching and saw the 30 mins runtime on episodes, I thought it just wouldn't work because of that. Still though, The Crew surprised me there as well. Even though I believe they should've been shorter still, the episodes don't bore you out, and I still managed to laugh, I still binge watched it in a day. So yes, the runtime works for it. The writing sounds solid. Well, the team behind it is experienced already. The creator Jeff Lowell, known for Two And A Half Men has a name we got used to see behind colorful and powerful projects. I quite liked most the scenes, while I didn't like some of them. But in the end, I was hyped to know the characters more, hyped to see what they're up to. So that's also a check for the writers. Character developments are not the best there is, but still consistent, so I will go ahead and put that in the pros as well. 

I hate the laugh tracks, and I hate sitcoms for using it all the time. I couldn't like a lot of shows I actually would've loved just because of these things. The Crew also uses them, and they're loud, and they're frequent, which makes this one of the cons in my list. Yet, I didn't hate it. The show seemed sincere enough, so I just blanked them out in my mind, and I was fine. Still though, I would love to see the second season without some noises telling me where to laugh, so yeah there's that. I also didn't like the limited scenery. Even though it's a workplace comedy, I would still like to see some other sets, not just the 2. I would at least like to see different rooms of the office, not just the garage, which is also the lounge, for some reason, and the gym/sauna, which is right next door. And at last my "thing", the lighting. The scenes are not dark, but sauna scenes, some of the gym scenes, and trailer scenes were not really examples of good lighting. The garage scenes were pretty nice looking, but I would love to say that for the whole show. So, that goes into the cons with the others above.

In the end, The Crew has both pros and cons. The show lacks a gentler touch, and needs something more to be the next big thing in comedy. Still, in it's first season, The Crew shows enough effort to get there, and that should be recognized. The show is at least funny, and at least not dragging, so I don't agree with the general opinion of the critics, and I'm going to say it's a good show and you should watch it. Again, not the best show, but a pretty good show you could pass time with. We will be following the show and will bring you the news from The Crew. See you in the season 2.

Cinemortals Rating : 7/10

Reviewed By : Batuhan