Season Review: Doomsday Brothers Season One

 

 

Canada has a proud history of animation. Though you would not know it by flipping through the channels. Unfortunately, much of the Canadian media becomes lost behind the slew of American franchises that dominate our screens. And it becomes even more evident when it comes to adult animation.

Truth be told, Canadian animation has knocked out some high-quality content.  Kevin Spencer was an underrated juggernaut of laughter. Undergrads has become a legendary cult classic. And most recently, the adaptations of Corner Gas and Trailer Park Boys are keeping the beloved franchises alive. But the handful of shows do not accurately represent the booming animation industry north of the 49th parallel.  

Animation studios in Canada have been widely used as a resource for the more-prominent American content. There are currently some significant adult cartoons being animated in the Great White North such as Rick and Morty, Solar Opposites, and the upcoming Magic: The Gathering Netflix series.

Additionally, when it comes to children’s animation, Canada may not have Disney, but maintains competitively. More than a few Canadian cartoons have swept the world. Like them or not, franchises like Caillou and Paw Patrol are dominant money makers. But when it comes to Adult content, Canada has struggled to make a mark.

The stars have been aligning to change Canadian adult animation for the better. For one, the industry is finding a boom with the rise of streaming services and the work-from-home-friendly nature of animating. More encouraging is the fact that this type of content now has an official home in the recently founded Adult Swim Canada. Meaning, Canadian comedy has less of a fight for airtime.  

Portfolio Entertainment is one of the first companies to expand into adult-themed cartoons. Developing this new series titled Doomsday Brothers was a major endeavour. Thankfully, the production company came in ambitious and put some strong pieces in place.

To make things even more difficult, it was decided that Doomsday Brothers would be simultaneously developed in French and English. A strong representation of Canada’s bilingualism and assurance that the new series could air on the highly popular Quebec Teletoon la Nuit. However, it was an obstacle that had never been done before.

Almost Surprisingly, the English-French collaboration worked in the favour of the series.  

The Quebec operation was able to utilize provincial celebrities to give weight to the brand-new show. Though unrecognizable to most of English-speaking Canada, the characters were designed specifically around the star-powered cast. Grounding Doomsday Brothers instantly with established character traits and features.

On the English end of the production, the show has some experience behind it with the addition of Willem Wennekers as showrunner. The co-creator of another former Canadian adult animated sitcom, Fugget About It, which performed strongly through a three-season run. Making Wennekers one of the countries most experienced producers when it comes to adult cartoons. Additionally, he is the nicest guy in the industry that I have had the pleasure to talk with. And you can read all about the obstacles he faced with Doomsday Brothers in his exclusive mid-season interview on Bubbleblabber.  

Doomsday Brothers broke ground when it premiered on September 20, 2020, becoming the first all-Canadian series to make its debut on Adult Swim Canada. Unfortunately, the premiere was quiet after the slim promotion of the series and landing a timeslot to directly compete with Fox’s Sunday night Animation Domination (they call it that for a reason) line-up.

Thankfully, Doomsday Brothers has a few attributes that help it stand out in the crowd. The setting of the apocalypse itself is relatively unexplored in adult animation. A slick choice considering that networks still believe that we do not want all our shows to take place in outer space. Plus, the series is built a little differently, integrating traditional sitcom storytelling with the more modern serialized approach.

There is a slight learning curve when it comes to watching Doomsday Brothers. The series jumps in at mid-hop. The first episode does not ease you into the world or characters. When we first meet the main players, they have already established their status quo and we are just joining them in their latest adventures. Unfortunately, the first couple of episodes can be confusing as you try to catch up on the characters and their situations.

Truth is, all you need to know going in is this: The world has been obliterated. Everyone is a mutant except for two brothers. These last surviving humans have been enlisted as the sworn protectors of the small community, St. Zephyr.

Getting into Doomsday Brothers is worth the whiplash. As the series progresses, the beginning makes much more sense. Especially as you uncover the ongoing plots and semi-serialized format of the show. All the questions that rattle your brain at the beginning, slowly reveal themselves over the 18-episode season.

It is a fine balance that the show is aiming to achieve between isolated plots and a larger anthological story arching the series. Unlike Rick and Morty, which uses this same format, the story is not only being built upon itself but also revealing itself as things progress. It is a rewarding experience to be attentive throughout viewing Doomsday Brothers.  

Equally, the series delivers on stand-alone episodes. Once you fall in love with the characters, the viewing order of season one becomes almost irrelevant, aside from a few choice episodes.

The third episode is where Doomsday Brothers begins to flaunt its value. “Flowers for Chudley” is one of the best editions of the collection. It features a Freaky Friday body-switching plot that concludes with some borderline bestiality. While also taking a supporting character through an addiction to psychoactive drugs. The episode is a testament to how outrageous this show is willing to go. As well as breaking free from the more carefully produced, censored, and edited starter episodes.

It is also around episode three that you begin to realize that you are watching two different shows. The series could easily be called Doomsday Brothers and Their Mommy, as half of each episode is dedicated to a third main character that rarely interacts with everyone else.  

This parallel story involves middle-aged alpha female, Judith, locked in a high-tech state-of-the-art bunker away from the rest of the remaining fragments of society. Thankfully, she has company; the world’s most annoying Artificial Intelligence, hilariously named AENUS. The two have a strained relationship that develops throughout the season to some unexpected places. Often their interactions could be considered romantic while other times they are ready to destroy one another.

I reached out to Doomsday Brothers co-creator Willem Wennekers to ask about the unique relationship between Judith and AENUS, and he was able to explain it with much more insight than I could offer:

“AENUS is an A.I. program designed to connect with bunker residents and help them through the trauma of the apocalypse. So, in AENUS’ mind, his growing relationship with Judith is romantic. He’s growing to love Judith the more he gets to know her. Judith, on the other hand, is an inadvertent prisoner in the super bunker. She goes from seeing AENUS as her jailer to a grudging friendship and then to a slight affection. But is it Stockholm Syndrome or genuine emotion? After all, if the opportunity to escape presents itself, Judith will drop everything and run.”

With Judith and her captor robot isolated across the wasteland, her two children, Gabe and Rafe, are left to fend for themselves. How this family became separated through the apocalypse is another secret yet to be unravelled. However, we get plenty of glimpses of the boys’ childhood with their militant mother.

Gabe and Rafe represent real-world siblings well, as the two of them could not be more opposites of each other. Rafe is very much the brutish muscle, but he is far more grounded than his brother. While Gabe offers more tactful solutions, he also tends to lose his cool much quicker. It makes for an interesting dynamic that the brains-and-brawn partnership will flip roles when the pressure is on.

Thankfully, their tumultuous upbringing gifted the brothers with the fortitude to become protectors of the doomsday sanctuary, St. Zephyr. And this is where the majority of the series unfolds, with the titular siblings working to keep the town secure and supplied as resources dwindle throughout the wasteland.

Survival is a major theme throughout the series. Whether the town is running out of water, or another villain has come to steal their goods, St. Zephyr is never safe. However, these situations are typically much simpler for the brothers to deal with than navigating social relationships. And things like losing their virginity or landing a date become much more pressing issues.

Doomsday Brothers is fully loaded with a diverse supporting cast of mutants. There are bad guys that reappear throughout the season. Allies that help the heroes along their way. But it is the town of unique individuals that truly fill out the show.

Over the course of the season, each of the beloved townspeople star in their own plots that help us to learn more about them. And especially how the apocalypse has impacted their lives. Such as the mayor who continues to wait for his lost wife who abandoned him while he hides his affair from his daughter. Or the alpha-male drug dealer who mutated into a hideous glob much to the disdain of his promiscuous girlfriend.  

The fragile relationships are the bread-and-butter of Doomsday Brothers. The more you learn about the individuals that call St. Zephyr home, the more you love their delicate little community. 

That really is a theme that was consistent with the entire series: the more that you watch, the more that you love this show. 

Even still when you think that Doomsday Brothers has shown you everything it has, it continues to get better.  

Each of the final three episodes offers something completely different from the rest of the season. “Daddy Issues” is a bomb drop of exposition, revealing answers to many of the questions brought up throughout the series. “Mutants Gone Wild” drops the main protagonists all together giving way to an entire episode about the locals of St. Zephyr. And the season finale is everything that you hope it will be, but in ways that you never expected.

As satisfying as the concluding trilogy of episodes are, they do not address all the burning questions about the apocalypse. In fact, it draws up a few more as the season wraps up on a cliff hanger. Which makes the stakes of a second season all that more necessary for fans.

Thankfully, Willem Wennekers does assure us that there are “rumblings” of another season, though nothing to confirm as of yet. Also, when queried about how the show would approach the teetering balance of serialization and stand-alone plots going forward – well, there could be some big things on the way.

“I’m a big fan of standalones, but as we worked on season one, I started seeing the value of a serialized approach to the storytelling. We always wanted there to be a soft arc and have incidents connect across episodes. If we’re lucky enough to do another season, I’d like to have even more serialization while still making each episode enjoyable on its own.”

Whether there is a season two or not, Doomsday Brothers has forever changed adult animated television in Canada. This series holds its own against any of the most popular sitcoms being produced in the US. And it does so while being developed in two languages simultaneously and breaking open the doors for local content on Adult Swim Canada.  

Despite the obstacles, Doomsday Brothers goes above expectations and does so in its own unique ways. This is not another poorly done rip-off of The Simpsons, nor is it trying to raise the bar of lewdness as other animations tend to compete for.  Doomsday Brothers is founded in intelligent writing, diversely interesting characters, and a fresh way of approaching storytelling.

Still, what truly separates this series from the crowd is the risk-taking. 

It took a gamble by dividing the series into two different casts and settings that rarely converge. It rolled the dice by completely removing its main characters for an entire episode. It took commitment not to give away the full story at the beginning and instead feed fans tidbits along the way. High risks often fruit high rewards, and it is the viewers that benefit from a series unlike anything else on television.