I'll start with an admission: "Best" is a category, and a fluid term. It's also a term I've used here before about a different TV show. Namely, Steven Universe. But right now, the best show on TV isn't an animated show for kids. It's a mocumentary crime series about teens, for adults. That's right, folks. American Vandal is back.
Season One of American Vandal was a revelation when it aired on Netflix nearly a year ago. A show that made fun of every true crime cliche ever, while at the same time telling a compelling and thrilling story. While we all knew we were watching a comedy, everybody wanted to know the answer to one, incredibly silly sounding question: Who drew the dicks?
The second season of the show exists in a world where season one exists as an internet documentary that went viral and got picked up by Netflix. Yeah, it's meta. Now, the two teen documentarians are asked to try to bring the truth to light about another highschool incident. And this one is kinda crappy.
I mean that literally. While S1 was about drawings of dicks, S2 is about getting a bunch of people to poop their pants. S1's obvious suspect was a young man who was a notorious prankster. S2 featurs a young man who is the opposite: One of the school weirdos, a young man who uploads videos about drinking upscale teas.
In S1, the two documentarians were making a show about their own school. Here, they're famous outsiders in an upscale school, one where everyone is online, and everything that happens is happening online. This is an interesting tradeoff. The show's creators, Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda, got their start in online videos (Perrault in Screen Junkies, Yacenda in College Humor). This world is their world.
But the thing about this show is this: It is very hard to explain why and how it's as great as it is. The devil's in the details. This show is just really well done. If you haven't watched it, you should. If you watched season 1, the only thing you probably want to know is how does season 2 stack up. The answer is: I'm not sure it's quite as brilliant, but it's still really good, and the end will have you reeling.