Gregg Araki’s ‘Now Apocalypse’ Is The Queer Alien Comedy We Deserve [Review]

In this streaming-enabled era of Peak TV, when nearly every show is impeccably made and overly long, it’s hard to stumble over good, wholesome trash. Even teen TV has leaned into prestige, with artistic, poignant shows like “13 Reasons Why” and “Sex Education” snapping up staggering viewership numbers. If you’re a millennial who, like me, raised yourself on delicious bilge like “Gossip Girl,” “90210,” “Pretty Little Liars,” or “Teen Wolf,” it can be hard to adjust to this squeaky-clean world of budgetless studios and uninhibited creation. So many shows these days are beautiful and meaningful. In shows for young adults, teens and twenty-somethings navigate diverse identities with commendable strength. The gays in these shows are (meaningful, sincere voice) gay. Sexual and romantic relationships are serious undertakings with consequences. These shows are so loaded with true-to-life nuance that it can be impossible to turn your brain off while watching them. They necessitate pondering, contemplation. Giving of fucks.

These shows do important work in today’s media landscape, where representation and realism are more valuable than ever. But Gregg Araki‘s “Now Apocalypse,” thank Cthulhu, is not one such show.

It’s hard to express, in writing, how little “Now Apocalypse” cares about seriousness — or having any message at all, really — but perhaps a plot summary will help. The half-hour comedy, debuting on Starz, follows a cast of self-absorbed Angeleans. Ulysses (Avan Jogia), a stoner and self-described “pretty much gay” “Kinsey 4” who becomes obsessed with lizard aliens after he dreams about (maybe actually encounters?) one raping a man in an abandoned building. Ulysses’s best friend Carly (Kelli Berglund), a cam girl and aspiring actress with a sharp tongue, withstands his rants between failed auditions and attempts to stop hating her boyfriend. Meanwhile, Ulysses’s hilariously sincere straight roommate, Ford (Beau Mirchoff), can’t seem to sell his screenplay or get his forensic cryptozoologist girlfriend, Severine (Roxane Mesquida), to become a one-woman man.

It’s difficult to understate just how weird and campy “Now Apocalypse” is. The opening titles look like high-caliber MS Paint work. The editing and episode pacing vacillate wildly between genius and jarring. The alien-lizard costumes are just a step above sports mascot buffoonery. Increasingly bizarre plot points are held together by (often problematic) sex scenes. And I haven’t had this much fun watching a TV show in a long, long time.

It takes balls to make a show that leans into its shagginess the way “Now Apocalypse” does, and only a New Queer Cinema god like Gregg Araki and a sexual anthropologist like “Slutever” creator Karley Sciortino (who co-wrote every episode) could pull it off at this scale. The show’s cast, whose filmographies all sport teen soaps, are a joy to watch as they revel in the surrounding weirdness. Jogia and Berglund are particularly winning as Ulysses and Carly — it’s impossible to watch a scene where the two pair up without laughing out loud, especially when they get into the un-PC nitty gritty of modern sexual identity discourse. Berglund herself is the show’s indisputable star, her dry and sexually candid performance reminiscent of Brie Larson in “United States of Tara.” “I’m a millennial,” she deadpans in a memorable Episode 3 exchange. “Sexual fluidity is kind of a requirement.”

Do I love the show’s cavalier approach to sex work and kink? No. Am I completely unfazed by its (so far) sole lesbian character, a flash-in-the-pan predator who unironically believes that “consent is for pussies?” No. But in a media world of, as Ulysses says, “stupid superheroes and YA bullshit,” “Now Apocalypse” is refreshingly insincere. It’s so unapologetic in its messiness that, when it asks you to turn your brain off, you can’t help but oblige. For twenty-three glorious minutes, Kelli Berglund’s high-femme costumes and Avan Jogia’s will-they-won’t-they romance with “Teen Wolf” star Tyler Posey are more than enough to sustain you. If “Now Apocalypse” here to usher in a new era of trash TV, I’m ready to board its mothership. [A]