The Comedy Central series was a merciless satire that blended outrageous gags with an oddly humane cynicism.
Failure is almost a lost fact of television culture.
Streaming services dont release numbers, except when they brag about metrics you cant trust.
‘Corporate’.Credit: Comedy Central
Once there were cancellations.
Or maybe its all a big lie, creative accounting to pad everyones resume.
Failure is not a helpful narrative.
The people who cover the show hello!
must convince readers (and editors) that this thing theyre writing about deserves the coverage.
Did we lose something, though, when TV conversation edged into fervent boosterism?
Maybe the Bluths just arent worth saving.
Maybe were not that likable.
That sitcom was a wondrous failure full of unlikeable people.
The fans rallied, Netflix made more seasons, and those seasons were just awful.
So get one thing straight:Corporate, an excellent show ending Wednesday onComedy Central, is a failure.
Its first two seasons averaged a few hundred thousand viewers in its original time slot.
Comedy Central ordered a shortened final season, only six episodes long.
(David Simon has been hearing the words shortened final season from HBO since 2007.)
The failure was noble.Corporatehas always been good and was frequently awesome.
Their lives are bland, farcical, and horrific.
Jakes a pessimist whose cynicism is pleasantly zen.
Their CEO, Christian (Lance Reddick), is an executive megashark seeking easy money on global hardship.
Shes an oddly serene presence, but things are often calm in the eye of a hurricane.
Corporateis a hyperbolic satire, with plots that express clear-cut ideas about various -isms.
Season 1s best episode, Trademarq, features a Banksy-in-all-but-name mystery artist known for his chic activist vandalism.
It turns out this cultural renegade is his own corporation, with a board of directors.
That disenchantment is theCorporatenutshell.
Even the anti-capitalists are capitalists.
The prison is a prison; the escape is also a prison.
you’re able to spot the same instincts in Society Tomorrow, another season 1 standout.
Jake is the only person who doesnt watch the series.
Im not really a sci-fi fantasy binge-watch brainwashed-by-pop-culture key in of person, he explains.
What hes arguing, really, is that medium is the message.
I know this sounds like brilliant material for a mediocre thinkpiece, andCorporatehas made fun of thinkpieces, too.
You may be getting the sense this isnt for everybody the ratings prove that!
I assume people reading a TV review dont want to hear that, either.
At one point, Matts unwillingness to end his emails with an exclamatory Thanks!
To quote theSociety Tomorrowfans: Its not just the storytelling, but also the cinematography!
The cubicle rows, executive suites, and boardrooms all look vaguely haunted.
nudging him towards oblivion.
Corporatecould leave the office becauseCorporatenever really left the office.
In the series estimation, all life is an extension of heavily mediated, constantly surveilled workplace drudgery.
Everywhere is a cubicle.
Everyone begs you for a five-star rating.
National mourning is a consumer product.
Kids are addicted to streaming cartoons created by an algorithmic higher intelligence.
Weisman found something halfway noble and gentle in his acerbic loner.
He was like a researcher curious to see how much worse things would get.
Not to be, alas.
Even so,Corporates bleak sensibility vanquished any chance of a big audience.
It wasnt just white guys feeling depressed about high-paying jobs, but it wasntnotthat.
Did some executives get the joke a little too well?
Supreme positivity was a sinCorporateoften denigrated.
So lets do the show justice by explicating its faults.
Hampton Deville could feel too vaguely defined, a do-everything globo-company with an HQ in a generic metropolitan Anytown.
Christian was a full-fledged demon, played by Reddick with a slithery exuberance.
But the sheer ludicrosity of the CEOs magical-realist existence (he keeps a sword in his office!)
made him a lovable horrible boss, which is one of the worst lies television teaches you.
And the series finale is just okay, not one last high point.
It lands on a note of genuine apocalypse, which every previous episode renders unnecessary.
You had to laugh atCorporate, painful as it was.
We werent all watching it, but well keep living through it.
