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Average Joe

Average Joe

TV-MA

netflix

This dark comedy succeeds by placing ordinary people in extraordinary events

7.0

TV Show

United States of America
English
Comedy, Crime
2023
Ashani Roberts, Deon Cole, Pasha D. Lychnikoff

TLDR

Equal parts gory and funny, Average Joe will make you squirm and squeal in delight

What it's about

After his father passes, Joe Washington (Deon Cole) and his closest friends and family get sucked into the life of danger and crime Joe’s father secretly led.

The take

The success of Average Joe’s humor lies in showing how ordinary people realistically react to extraordinary events (in this case, being hunted down by the Russian mafia). Joe and his friends are blue-collar workers who barely make ends meet, so it makes sense that they won’t immediately know expert self-defense. They’re no John Wick, they don’t have combat skills hidden up their sleeves. And even with a police accomplice, they wouldn’t know how to hide bodies and launder money. But they’re forced to try, and those attempts are as clumsy as they are darkly funny. One of Joe’s friends fumbles over a body part they try to hide and vomits at the sight of blood. Meanwhile, his wife comes up with all sorts of uncanny solutions, like slathering peanut butter on dead bodies to attract hungry animals in the woods. The tonal shifts can be jarring sometimes, but the show is consistently funny and frightening. It’s also just refreshing to see everyday people go through all the fuss action stars do. What would we really do when placed in their shoes? Joe and his friends are just like us, but funnier and way more prone to gore.

What stands out

Again, as much as Average Joe is a comedy, it’s also a twisted crime thriller. It is unapologetically (sometimes sickeningly) gruesome, so consider yourself warned. There will be blood, buckets of it, as well as decapitated body parts flying every which way around. Another stand-out worth mentioning is Cathy (Cynthia Kaye McWilliams), who plays the aforementioned wife coming up with solutions for Joe and the team. As a true-crime aficionado, she seems to know what she’s doing by suggesting seemingly nonsensical ideas, but it’s not really her effectiveness as much her gusto in selling them that makes her shine in every scene.

Comments

Excellent review of an excellent series. So enjoyable, very good writing, acting, directions, cinematography. My favorite kind of crime thriller: streaked with fatty veins of dark comedy.

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