More people need to watch this hilarious true

Don’t Google ‘who made the dicks’ unless you want to ruin the finale of Netflix’s sleeper hit from 2017 called american vandal.

But if you can’t imagine a world in which you would have submit this search query, you clearly haven’t had the pleasure of getting to know the mocu series. In my experience, not enough people have done this, and that’s a shame.

This might be the show’s thorny premise – American Vandal’s unofficial diary line is “Serial, but with dick jokes.” Maybe most people, myself excluded, won’t say, “You got me for dick jokes.” But this is where I adopt the whiny voice that suits someone who loves toilet humor as much as I do: You just have to try. Truuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu me!

If you like serial or dick jokes, I can almost guarantee you’ll love American Vandal, created by Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda of CollegeHumor. And if you’re lucky enough to enjoy both (and, honestly, who among us?…), this early-cancelled mystery series deserves a spot on your Netflix “My List”.

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Set in the not-quite-historic Year of Our Lord 2015, American Vandal is an incisive, deadpan send-off of the true-crime genre, which has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance in the same pop cultural era. In 2014 we had the podcast Serialof course, then HBO and Netflix delivered The Jinx and make a murderer, respectively, in a short time. (Cult classic The staircase was also dredged from the depths of 2004 with new episodes around this time, to meet the audience’s insatiable demand for scrutiny and narrativization of probative minutiae.)

But American Vandal distinguishes itself from the true underworld of crime by being…not true. Hulu has since participated in this fictional true-crime beat with Only murders in the buildinga comedy starring Selena Gomez who joins a growing tradition mockumentaries, parodies, satires and parodies of the genre pioneered by American Vandal. So if you’ve binged Only Murders and haven’t seen American Vandal yet, you’ve got some catching up to do.

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Set in a nondescript West Coast high school, American Vandal is, in the world of the show, filmed by sophomore Peter Maldonado (Tyler Alvarez), an aspiring documentary filmmaker, and Sam Ecklund (Griffin Gluck), his best friend. Their school, Hanover High, is reeling from a heinous crime: someone spray-painted dicks on 27 cars in the teachers’ parking lot, and the teachers are demanding justice. A witness to the crime, Alex Trimboli, with a sweaty brow, points the finger at school burnout Dylan Maxwell (Jimmy Tatro). And everyone is happy to blame it on Dylan. Everyone except Peter and Sam.

Dylan has a good motive, a bad alibi, and a well-documented proclivity for dick doodles. But with a little digging, it becomes clear that not everything adds up. On the one hand, Alex Trimboli is a notorious liar. (Is he really get a handjob from the hottest girl in school, or did she just text her “hey” with two Ys?) And another: there was no hairball included in the spray painted graffiti. Dylan’s dick pics always include hair in a ball.

The series is populated with the kind of hyperparticular archetypes not seen since the sexually active group geeks of Mean Girls. Hanover High’s use of social media is relentless, but the show does not condone screen time. In fact, the majority of clues added to Peter and Sam’s cross corkboard come from the digital detritus of Snapchat, Twitch, Instagram, and texting, and audiences come to appreciate the unbelievable glut of taped Snaps taken the night of “Nana’s party.” .”

“Who made the dicks? becomes American Vandal’s”Who shot JR?(And it’s always “dicks,” never penises, schlongs, or even ding-a-lings.) In the show’s second season, the central question turns to “Who is Burglar Turd?” ” funny like season 1. The only difference is that starting in season 2, you’re no longer surprised at how funny it can be when such an unscrupulous subject gets the scholarly treatment. It’s funny because it’s stupid.

What I like most about American Vandal is its ability to evolve. It would be easy enough for a studio executive or a big data bot to come up with the premise “Serial meet dick jokes” and assume that the scripts will write themselves. But my hunch is that even the most talented spinners can’t carry an eight-episode arc on the backs of dicks alone. Instead, American Vandal is a Trojan horse (tee-hee), luring you with candy on your dick, then serving up a wholesome, herbal indictment of our sinister interest in real crimes that traumatize real people. .

Before the show reaches its polemical finale, however, it indulges in the very whims it eventually eviscerates, meaning it becomes a genuinely engrossing mystery show. So maybe you don’t like toilet humor, but you must like the idea of ​​having your cake and eating it too. In its own way, American Vandal is like a nicotine patch, delivering a safe dose of your craving to blunt future damage. It’s all the indulgence of the true crime experience without the guilt of treating someone’s death like must-watch TV. Besides, it’s funny.

American Vandal’s truly compelling central mystery hits all the right true-crime beats: alibis examined and lied to; red herring; CGI reproductions of purported dockside handicrafts; a dick-drawing time test to see if Alex Trimboli’s alleged timeline is even workable. The first season even has its own nisha call — Kiefer Sutherland’s voicemail — and there’s a a thriving second-screen experience awaits on Reddit and in theoretical spoiler-laden roundups if you’re the rabbit hole type.

Unfortunately, it looks like American Vandal Season 3 is a hopeless dream at this point. Although the initial headlines around Netflix’s ousting sounded promising (‘American Vandal’ canceled on Netflix, will be purchased elsewhere“, for example), Perrault and Yacenda have since pivoted their taunt to the world of esports, with Paramount Plus Mockumentary Players. That said, in an interview with the New York Post in June, the comedy duo hinted at a future third seasonsaying they “absolutely have a third story we’d love to tell, given the right opportunity.”

Maybe, just maybe, if enough people take my advice and give the show a chance, the streaming gods will reward us with another season.

Who made the dicks, indeed. Give the show 15 minutes and you’ll have to know that too.