If someone plugged all of the mid-tier Sundance, quarter-life crisis dramedies of the last decade about people discovering that they may be the problem of their lives into a machine and asked it to stretch all the contained clichés into a TV series, that computer would spit out “Mr. Corman.” Written, directed, produced by, and starring the multi-talented Joseph Gordon-Levitt, this Apple TV+ series (produced by A24) is the tale of a miserable man, and it wants you to be miserable too. Other than a few flashes of life from supporting characters who are largely just trying to do what viewers can’t and get out of the orbit of the self-obsessed lead, it’s a dull chore, a show that fails to find its purpose and direction as much as its title character.
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It’s a really hard sell to ask someone to hang out with a person as generally unlikable as Josh Corman for five hours, but that’s the task of watching “Mr. Corman.” A fifth-grade teacher (in-person to start the season and, of course, like so many, over Zoom by the end), Josh has reached that crossroads when anxiety has overwhelmed his entire existence, but it’s that kind of selfish, privileged anxiety that feels more like wallowing in misery than doing anything productive. Josh is the kind of guy who says the right things about progressive causes but does almost nothing to enact change in his own life, much less the world.
His ex-fiancée Megan (later played by Juno Temple, series-stealing in her brief run) left him after realizing he was an unsupportive prick, and so he now lives with his high school pal Arturo (an effective Arturo Castro, who deserves casting in a show that feels more like it knows what to do with him). A former musician, Corman has had to put a lot of his dreams away, but that compartmentalization has led him to an intense sense of uncertainty about who is now and where his life is going. He is one of those people who knows in his heart that he has a privileged life but can never find satisfaction in his daily existence. And yet he’s also annoyingly unaware about how much his dissatisfaction is entirely his fault.
“Mr. Corman” is the story of a restless soul, someone sent into a tailspin in the first episode when someone in his class brings up how much of life’s success is luck and how is much is talent. He becomes increasingly anxious as he sees people going off to their own lives of simple happiness. Is this all there is? When a possible hook-up tells him, “The only people who become teachers are people who wanted to become something else and gave up,” Josh looks hurt, but knows she’s right about him.
Life continues to spiral over the next few episodes. Everything gets to Josh from superficial anxiety like if he locked his car to existential stuff like climate change. A clanging bell enhances Josh’s anxiety for viewers, and, of course, he has complex relationships with his parents, including a mother (Debra Winger) he doesn’t appreciate and a deadbeat dad (played later in the best episode of the season by Hugo Weaving). Almost none of it feels genuine. It’s the kind of cloying, superficial writing that too rarely digs into its characters, just laying situations at their feet and allowing viewers to wonder why they should care. Everything is overly scripted, and it is so in a way that’s constantly commenting on the state of being a thirtysomething in the 2020s instead of just working from character. Corman and a lot of the people he encounters are mouthpieces, spouting overwritten dialogue that never allows them to become three-dimensional.
As if to compensate for his thin characters, Gordon-Levitt inserts the occasional structural break, including a sequence clearly inspired by “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” and even a musical number. They distract even further from the scenes that actually work, reminding one that this is all pretty shallow stuff. The best material in all ten episodes leans into Gordon-Levitt’s skill set in longer scenes as both a writer and a performer. Unbroken dialogue exchanges between Arturo and Josh early on in the season or the really excellent two-hander between Gordon-Levitt and Weaving late reveal the show that “Mr. Corman” could have been if the production trusted its characters and performers. Stop pushing the tropes. Stop wallowing in misery. Stop forcing the characters into deep conversations about the state of the world and just let them breathe.
The worst example of the show suffocating its characters comes in an “alternate timelines” episode in which various possible lives of Josh Corman unfold, and he’s awful in almost every one of them, even the one where he’s dead. Yes, maybe this is the point—people like Josh Corman like to blame their circumstance instead of looking inside themselves for solutions—but it’s a tough sell to spend time with someone like that for a 90-minute Sundance dramedy. It’s almost impossible for ten episodes of television. And when the arc of “Mr. Corman” gets to COVID, it becomes even tougher to bear, although at least episodes start to give Josh some much-needed perspective.
There are glimpses of what “Mr. Corman” could have been all season. At times, it has the stream-of-conscious playfulness of something like “Atlanta” (another show about young artists trying to make it in an increasingly anxious world that feels like an inspiration here) such as in the fourth episode, one that allows viewers to escape from Josh’s misery and spend some time with his more likable roommate. And the guest stars seem to know what’s asked of them, particularly Temple and Weaving, a pair of performers who get to call Josh Corman out on his shit more often but have now essentially disappeared from his life. Maybe that’s the point? That when someone like Josh is allowed to wallow in his egocentric misery without people who can pull him back to reality that they’re only going to dig themselves into a deeper hole? Everyone knows someone like Josh Corman. But they probably don’t think he deserves his own show. [D+]
“Mr. Corman” debuts on Apple TV+ on August 6.
