TV Review - Special (2019)

In March, Hulu released a TV series called Shrill. It was about a plus-size woman who's insecure and who has self-esteem issues regarding her body. She has issues with her mother. She has issues at her job, which is a writing job. She has a sassy female friend who is a person of color. She also has issues in her dating life. Now, that vague description could be applied to many TV shows and maybe it's simply that Shrill is a web series released within such a short window as this one, so it's more imprinted on my mind, but I strongly feel like this series, written, produced and starring Ryan O'Connell in a semi-autobiographical story, is exactly the same as Shrill. The look, the tone and the style of humor feels so similar. Instead of a plus-size woman, the protagonist here is a gay man dealing with cerebral palsy or CP.

Ryan O'Connell stars as Ryan Hayes, a version of himself. A child on the street asks why he walks funny or essentially with a limp. He explains that he has cerebral palsy, a developmental disorder that results in a person having trouble with their muscles, resulting in physical disability and sometimes mental disability. However, he realizes and bemoans the fact that compared to other people with his same disability or others, he's very privileged. He's not like Micah Fowler's character in ABC's Speechless. He's not mute or confined to a wheelchair for example. With the exception of a few things, one might not be able to tell immediately that he has a disability, let alone identify what it is. This frustrates him as feeling like he can't quite fit in anywhere. He feels alienated from a lot of disabled people and certainly feels alienated from able-body people.

This could be an interesting space for this series to operate, which for the most part it does. However, it adds a wrinkle that might have been true in his real life but only feels like a typical, romantic comedy trope. Ryan goes to work at a web site called EggWoke. People are hesitant to ask what was the cause of his limp. When he happens to mention he was hit by a car, people assume that the limp was the result of the car accident and not CP. Ryan doesn't correct them. He even reaffirms or lies about his CP. The arc of this season then becomes about him having to come out about having cerebral palsy. Years ago, a series like this would have hung its hat on Ryan coming out as being gay, but now his homosexuality is like third on the list of what's on this series' mind.

Jessica Hecht co-stars as Karen Hayes, the mother to Ryan. She's a meek and mild woman. She's a single woman having raised Ryan all by herself. She's also been his primary caregiver even as he's become an adult. She's grown to be very overprotective, which has developed a very co-dependent relationship between the two. As he's gotten older and desired to be more independent, she's also started wondering about a life separate from her child. One of the ways that manifests is in her interest in her next door neighbor, a retired firefighter named Phil, played by Patrick Fabian.

It's good that Hecht is very integral to the story that O'Connell is trying to tell. Yet, she's not as overbearing as Minnie Driver's character in Speechless. Because of Ryan's privilege and age, he's allowed to explore more provocative things than can be done on a PG-rated sitcom. This includes some near full-frontal nudity in a same-sex intercourse scene that feels like a scene analogous to what Helen Hunt was doing in The Sessions (2012). Except, replace Hunt with Brian Jordan Alvarez who was recently on NBC's Will & Grace, in which O'Connell worked as a story editor. Aside from providing insight into the sex lives of women over a certain age, we also get insight into the sex lives of the disabled.

The humor is delightful. As usual, a lot of it are fueled by personalities or quirky characters. At the top of which is Kim, played by Punam Patel. Kim is akin to the character played by Lolly Adefope in Shrill. She's the sassy women of color who doesn't take crap from anybody. She's very much like Mindy Kaling meets Octavia Spencer. Kim works at the same place as Ryan, so she's able to interact more with Ryan at work where there's the other top, quirky character. The woman who runs that blog where both Ryan and Kim work is Olivia, played by Marla Mindelle. She's progressive but very cynical and aggressive about it. She's a boss that exploits the diversity of her employees and the people around her in order to capitalize off them, building up her blog. She's borderline sociopathic, certainly narcissistic.

Yet, what makes this series not feel complete is its short running length. TV shows on Netflix have had the opposite criticism of episodes and seasons feeling too long. This one instead feels too brief and somewhat incomplete. Comedy series usually have episodes that are a half-hour or 30 minutes. Each episode here is only 15 minutes. With only eight episodes, the whole thing is a little under two hours in total length. It's enough to tell the story O'Connell is trying to tell, and if this were a feature film that was just under two hours, I could forgive certain things, but since this is supposed to be a TV series, there's some things that feel like serious blanks.

I don't feel like I get enough of a grasp of Ryan as a person before this narrative starts. I get that he's suffering a kind of arrested development that is only now starting to end, despite being probably in his mid-twenties. It feels almost as if he didn't exist prior to the start of this series. For example, Ryan calls Kim his first real friend, which I can buy as true but it only makes me wonder what his experiences were like in school all the way through college, which I presume he attended.

Nonetheless, this is a fun series and compelling. O'Connell is great as this character or as himself. He has a great sense of humor, which includes a lot of puns and pop cultural references. He's also an adorable, charming presence and cute in his awkwardness.

Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 15 mins. / 8 eps.

Available on Netflix.