by Jeff Alan, Contributing Writer
Most new comedy series on Netflix can be hit or miss, and most rarely survive the first season or two. Most are fun enough that you want them to succeed and see the characters grow a bit more, and others just sort of fall flat straight out of the gate and have a hard time making the climb to something greater than its concept. The newest Netflix sitcom, Unstable, is a charming enough show that left me a touch conflicted on where this will go.
The series opens with the main character, Ellis Dragon (Rob Lowe), an already eccentric scientist and genius who has recently lost the love of his life in an accident. After months of taking time off to grieve, he has decided to come back to work and move forward with his scientific projects. However, the transition back does not go as smoothly when Ellis continues to fall back into his own grief and displays sporadically strange behavior.
It is at the request of his right hand woman, Anna (Sian Clifford), that employee Malcolm (Aaron Branch) flies to New York to convince Ellis’ son Jackson (played by Rob Lowe’s real-life son, John Owen Lowe), who is also has a gifted scientific mind, to come back and bring Ellis some solace and help him ease his way back into the company before the board of directors decides to replace Ellis with another CEO. Along the way, Jackson meets two scientists, Luna (Rachel Marsh) and Ruby (Emma Ferreira), who welcome him into their lab to help work on Ellis’ ideas and save the company’s future.
This show has a lot of charm and likable characters in it. Apart from the main two leads in this series, the supporting characters are all very well defined and have their own personalities, which I love. Luna and Ruby have been some of my favorite characters in the series. They have such fun chemistry together as co-worker scientists, and they have a lot of funny interactions. Anna also has a lot of really funny moments, as her struggle to try and keep Ellis on track with his projects often go awry.
I think the best part of the series is watching the real life father son duo play off each other, and see their relationship in the show grow closer and closer. Rob Lowe is definitely channeling some of the same energy he used to play the classic Chris Traeger on Parks and Recreation to portray Ellis, keeping the same sort of optimism and throwing in some witty banter into the mix. And John Owen Lowe plays off him incredibly well as the reluctant, no-nonsense son who has to help pick up the pieces of his fathers broken heart, almost reminiscent of Jason Bateman and his very deadpan deliveries in Arrested Development. The two of them together bring a lot of really great comedic moments and make for a really pleasurable viewing.
While I do enjoy the characters and the story it lays out throughout the first season, I was left wondering if the series will end up getting the attention from the general audience. It has not been marketed well by Netflix, and as of the moment this is being written, it is not even being displayed on the home page. I am worried that this series will be lumped into the same category as most other failed sitcoms that Netflix has produced and be completely overlooked due to its poor exposure to the mainstream audience. But I would be happy to give it a watch in the future, given it gets a Season Two renewal, because the jokes are good, the story is fun, and there’s a charm that is really nice to watch.
Score: 7/10
Unstable is currently streaming on Netflix
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