I know this must have happened to you many-a-times. You find an incredible show, you binge watch all episodes, you fall in love with the show more and more with each passing episode only to see it get cancelled at some point. This happened to me plenty of times and it always hurt. And, to add more to this hurting, comes Review TV show.
Andy Daly’s Review is one of its kind. It may be a remake of an Australian series, but it was still a breath of fresh air. This mockumentary primarily focused on Forrest MacNeil and his problematic dedication to his work. He just has one work, to review life experiences and he does this work with his whole heart. No matter how much the reviews affect his personal life or put his life in danger, if Forest MacNeil gets a review assignment, he will leave no stone unturned to do it.
For starters, I can understand why Review was cancelled. First of all, it might not be everyone’s cup of tea. The show is very ridiculous and a bit exaggerated, which in fact takes the humour up a notch. Secondly, not many people know about it. Even if they hear about it, Review comes out as a weird show to them. Plus, Forrest MacNeil is a peculiar character and not everyone can understand his antics. So, Review is not widely known among binge-watchers, but that’s what makes this show even more special. It’s an underrated gem which must get the recognition it deserves.
Andy Daly’s Review follows an episodic formula where each episode contains 3 or 2 reviews but with an overarching plot that affects Forrest’s personal life. This show would’ve lost its charm if the episodes were self-contained and not linked with each other. Like in Season 1 Episode 3, the divorce was just merely a review but it affected Forrest so much that the course of his life was forever changed. This was bound to happen as Forrest MacNeil is an interesting yet twisted character who puts his work above anyone else. He has this notion that he was put on this Earth just to review life experiences which have the capabilities to make human life better. And thanks to his producer, Grant, this thought never seems to leave his mind.
Review compromises of just 22 episodes, but the assiduous Forrest MacNeil (Andy Daly) managed to squeeze 55 reviews in them. You got to love such a passionate person. Review is one of those shows which you can rewatch countless of times, all thanks to its hilarious episodes. But as I said earlier, Review might not be everyone’s cup of tea but it is definitely that cup of tea for me which I would like to drink daily and daily but still wouldn’t get bored of it. And I think, if you’re reading this article, then you are also like me who just had the time of their life with this show.
So, today let’s try to rank and review the funniest reviews from Review TV show.
1. Pancakes; Divorce; Pancakes (Season 1 Episode 3)
You wouldn’t think that a show would take such a turn with just three episodes in, but that’s Review for you. The divorce review in particular changed the entire course of Forrest’s life and showed his questionable work ethic. I always see Review as a satirical show and this is satire at its best. I have seen quite a few people in real life who put their work/job above anything else, and Forrest is the perfect example of this.
This guy believes in his work so much that he is ready to divorce and get separated from the love of his life, so that a random dude can know what’s it like to get a divorce? What makes this episode even funnier are the two side reviews focused on the single thing - Eating Pancakes. First, he gets asked to review the life experience of eating 15 pancakes, which he finds utterly unpleasant and awards it half a star. But after going through his divorce, after finding excruciating sadness in his life, when he is awaiting his next review task which he loves so much, he gets to review not 15 pancakes, but to eat 30 pancakes. Double the pancake, double the fun, eh? And this profound experience of eating 30 pancakes got 5 out of 5 stars from our life reviewer, Forrest MacNeil.
“Perhaps I simply understood, from the darkest corner of my soul, that these pancakes couldn’t kill me because I was already dead.”
2. Magic 8-Ball (Season 2 Episode 8)
Making correct decisions is a crucial part of our daily lives and when you let a children’s toy, Magic 8-Ball, do this job for you, then it will indeed complicate your life but will surely give you one of your best/favourite episodes of Review. This episode was just hysterical. The placement of the ball in a fanny attached to Forrest’s waist and him shaking it while making himself look absurdly ridiculous was no doubt the highlight of this episode.
After vetoing his first ever review where he was supposed to review the life experience of murdering someone, Forrest decided to accept and go on an adventure with the Magic 8-Ball, but everything he gets involved in makes his life much harder. The 8-Ball messes his relationship with Suzanne even more, gets him to stay at a murder scene where he shouldn’t have been in the first place and makes him look like a weirdo every time he uses it.
3. Being Pranked (Season 3 Episode 3)
It definitely hurts when your favourite show comes to an end, but that hurting feels a bit less when the final episode is exceptionally good. This particular review was the last one from the string of some amazing satirical reviews laced around three seasons and what a way to end such an excellent show.
Throughout all 3 seasons of Reviews, Forrest has been brought to the brink of death quite frequently, but this episode finds him playing with life and death with every freaking review. First, it was cryogenics and then it was lighting. But the final nail in the coffin was his show inside the show, Review, getting cancelled.
Forrest lost everything he loves in this episode. He had a chance to reclaim these things, he could have gone back to his wife & his kid, things could have been better for him, but his love & dedication for his show did exactly what they have been doing, mess up his life.
After choosing his show over the love of his life, Forrest gets to review what it’s like to be pranked. But little did he know that this will be his last ever endeavour. In an insane denial state, Forrest correlates his show being cancelled to the rest of the world pranking him in a very masterful way. Is this grief of losing his show or is this really Forrest’s mental capacity? I guess we will never find out.
4. Believing a Conspiracy (Season 2 Episode 10)
What if the Monster Energy drink is satanic and slowly turns you into a devil? What if Walt Disney cryogenically froze himself & Disney company created the movie Frozen to cover this up, so when people search “Disney Frozen”, the movie comes up instead of the actual ingenious event?
These are some weird conspiracy theories which are really hard to believe but in this review our hero, Forrest MacNeil, gets asked to believe in one such conspiracy theory and boy, does he give his 100% to it. This was supposed to be a self-realisation review for Forrest but as usual he just turned a blind eye to this development.
Forrest attended a lecture by a controversial author who ascribed all the word’s tragedies to a shadowy underground network. Forrest’s intelligent brain couldn’t fathom this absurdity so it created its own conspiracy theory that his producer Grant and his co-workers are trying to kill him by asking him to do dangerous reviews. You see, even the simplest reviews tend to become life-threatening for Forrest, but this happens due to his own stupidity & carelessness. But Forrest being a human, always tries to find an easy explanation for all his miseries and chooses to blame them on others, neglecting his own actions.
My favourite line of this episode comes from Jessica St. Clair’s Suzanne when she says to Forrest, “You signed on to an insane television show, and then you constantly put that show above your needs and the people that you love. I’m just not seeing this evil plan. The only person that you need to be afraid of is yourself.” Damn Suzanne! You didn’t have to drop such a huge truth bomb to my boy.
5. Quitting a Job (Season 1 Episode 9)
Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend once sang (in the song Run) that “we mostly work to live, until we live to work”. As deep as it might sound, some people actually hate their work. And what would you do if your job or boss isn’t giving you that much needed kick? You obviously quit it, and Clark at Topco Industries wanted Forrest to do the same and review the experience of quitting a job.
But you see, Forrest just has one job - to review life experiences but he can’t quit it because his producer, Grant, wouldn’t let it happen and also, he wouldn’t be able to issue his review of quitting if he actually decides to quit his one & only job. So, in order to issue his review, he took a customer-service job at a local business but instantly quit it after giving a hilarious speech which was passed on to him by his assistant who really hates her boss.
But that didn’t feel quite fulfilling to him. So, he took another job at a coffee serving stand at a building and he just went all in. He loved his new job, his co-workers felt like a family to him which he was craving since his divorce, and he also renovated the entire shop. But everything came to an end when his producer, Grant, came to visit him in order to remind him of his real job.
Now, in one of the most hilarious scenes of this show, Forrest uses the same speech which he copied from Lucille, his assistant, on his new loving & caring boss to quit his job but instead, in a way, takes his business down. Forrest had a huge influence on his co-worker Wendell, so when he indeed quit this job, it made Wendell quit too. So now, without its two strongest pillars, this coffee business is bound to go downhill.
6. Falsely Accused (Season 2 Episode 3)
Life in general is filled with bizarre twists & turns and something similar happened to Forrest in this review. For being falsely accused, one needs accusers and Forrest gave this task to his genius intern, Josh, and his girlfriend Tina. Instead of blaming Forrest for stealing avocados from a woman’s tree, they decide to plot a whole conspiracy theory against him and eventually accuse him of arson and attempted murder.
The Forrest who is so workaholic that he divorced his wife for his work, the same Forrest apparently tried to burn down a sorority house at the University of Southern California and is looking at 10-15 years in jail. Under all its absurdity, Review still manages to show that it certainly cares for its characters and gives them development from time to time. Here, it gives the underutilized characters like Josh & Tina time to shine and it works perfectly within the context of this episode.
7. Going to an Orgy (Season 1 Episode 6)
This was a review which was probably more blurred up than my vision when I don’t wear my glasses. Forrest just went through a divorce and so, when he got a review where he can fool around with as many people as he wants, he pulled out all the stops to do this “Totally ball draining” review with so much intense passion and commitment that it turned him into a glorious beast, granted that he needed an attitude adjustment before.
What makes this review even more absurdly funny is the inclusion of Tom, the interventionist who helped Forrest during his review of addiction. Tom was a recovering sex addict who got pulled back into this world of pleasure after getting tempted by Forrest’s first night experience. So, when Forrest visited the orgy mansion again in the next week, it was a no-surprise that Tom would already be jumping bones inside that mansion. You can say whatever you want about Forrest, but he is a man of principles. So, when he saw Tom indulging in funny business, he tried to stop him, which somehow led to a ridiculous face off. And this is a fact of life that you win something and you lose something. That night, Forrest won the orgy competition but simultaneously lost the friendship of Tom and awarded this insane experience 2 stars.
8. Going into Space (Season 1 Episode 5)
When a person goes through an unwanted divorce, he tries to do everything he can to get the love of his life back and Forrest MacNeil is no different. In this review, Forrest fulfils the lifelong dream of his father-in-law, Jack, by taking him on a trip into the space. As ridiculous as it may sound, there apparently is a company called 2space which is a pioneer in the brave new world of space tourism, that can turn this dream into reality.
This scheme works and Jack becomes so ecstatic that he promises Forrest to convince Suzanne to get back together with him as “A daughter doesn’t listen to anyone more than their pop”. But in a hilarious yet sad turn of events, Jack fails to fasten his safety harness, which hurled him out of his seat and led to his tragic demise. But that’s life, eh? You plan something, it happens something entirely different.
9. ‘There All is Aching’ (Season 1 Episode 7)
Our life is filled with uncertainty and confusions and this became apparent to Forrest through this review. What I admire about this show is that it takes a simple concept and turns it into an absurd & hilarious episode. Here, Forrest receives a cryptic review task – to review there all is aching. This bewildering review completely messed up Forrest’s mind, and he started to adopt that same manner of speech in order to have an authentic experience.
A hilarious review was this but take help from a psychiatrist it made Forrest. Oh, seems like it messed up my mind too. I meant to say, this was a hilarious review but it made Forrest take help from a psychiatrist. He tried to decode these cryptic words with the professional but as always, it led him to an awkward, unwanted position. This time, he got admitted to a mental hospital. But the love for his work never went away, he kept thinking about this review despite being put into a shock therapy.
But everything became better when he found a similar guy, Georgie, who uttered the same words and just like my ex and my roommate, they became best friend. And with an amazing teamwork, they finally escaped the facility BUT Forrest apparently ordered Georgie to kill a woman named Mrs. Pinney. So, Forrest’s search for finding meaning to everything led him to a mental hospital and led another guy to murder someone. Just a normal day in Forrest’s life, eh?
10. Mile High Club (Season 2 Episode 2)
People like to get it on at strange weird places and some thrill seekers want to do it at 30,000 feet up in the sky on an airplane. So, when Forrest got a chance to do the same, he grabbed the opportunity with his both hands. In order to achieve this mile-stone (pun intended!), Forrest takes his girlfriend, Shampoo, to pick up his son Eric from San Francisco. Despite being a “professional clothes remover”, she is just disgusted by Forrest’s proposal of having a quickie in the flight.
With no other resort, Forrest tries to convince another woman on flight to join the mile-high club with him, but then the seatbelt light becomes a buzzkill. But remember, Forrest is an extremely dedicated guy and he will complete the review, no matter how hypocritic he may look.
On his way back, he finally decides to hire a prostitute but in a strange yet hilarious development, people all around the flight pay her even more than Forrest to have their go as the whole aircraft was full of recovering sex addicts on an immersion therapy trip to a Tijuana brothel. The seatbelt light tries to pleasure-block Forrest again, but she lets him join the club on the seats itself. He finally got to fulfil his review, but at what cost? Sloppy sec…..
Review (2014) is undoubtedly one of my favourite mockumentary shows. It’s a fine piece of satire that needs to be seen by many more people. It still bothers me that this show got cancelled but hopefully, Forrest MacNeil get back to reviewing life experiences in one way or another.
I say this, because on 28th of July, 2020 Andy Daly created a YouTube channel named “Forrest MacNeil, Life Reviewer” and posted a video titled “Important Updates from life reviewer, Forrest MacNeil.”
In this video, Forrest (Andy Daly) basically gives his life update. He still believes that the deftly executed prank of all time namely pranking him into believing that his television show had been canceled is still going on. But he never stopped working, he now reviews life experiences for private clients.
This is an excellent YouTube video and is definitely worth a watch. Maybe I’m just being optimistically hopeful and stretching my brain out by believing that there’ still a chance that Review TV show might be back but the world will become a better place if Forrest MacNeil starts reviewing again. Till then, goodbye and don’t stop living this wonderful life.