The perfect return vehicle for Joseph Gordon-Levitt

The first episode of Mr. Corman– a new Apple TV + series created, written and directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt – talks about how its eponymous lead character is a drag. Josh Corman (Gordon-Levitt) is anxious, uncomfortable with his public school students, and unable to see the joy in the world around him. Fortunately, that’s just the show’s setup to show just how wrong he is.

Gordon-Levitt updates the familiar “sad man story” by making Josh look beyond himself for salvation, adding the kind of whimsy the protagonist might laugh at, but create in fact by itself. The magic of the show comes from the emotional and romantic asides that flow from Josh’s psyche. He admits in the first episode that he hasn’t played a piano in a year, but once he does, that effort kicks off his one-season story. Gordon-Levitt is perfect for this role – he showed some remarkable nuance at the start of 3rd rock of the sun, and his turn in (500 summer days still feels fresh after 15 years, but you can see why he avoided playing a singular lead role on a TV series until he created his own show. The music-imagery game has to be wholesaled by its lead actor, as most of the other characters are more self-confident in their personal identities, at least compared to Josh. The actor can tap into a sort of menacing anxiety and self-pity in a way that even keeps audiences at bay, making his attempts to connect more deserved. Josh’s point-of-view breaks add another layer, showing that his sad bag worldview is remarkably truncated, even when he’s right about things (like wearing masks).

Gordon-Levitt moved his entire family, as well as the production of the series, to New Zealand late last year, but the show doesn’t skip a beat. The pandemic has changed a lot of things in the world, but what is striking Mr. Corman This is how he weaves the reality of the pandemic into the story, so it feels like it’s still part of the character arc. At first, Josh’s anxiety seems to come out of nowhere and annoy his friends and family, but as the series unfolds and the pandemic begins, his unease begins to feel justified. That doesn’t mean he stops pissing off people around him, but the way his mother Ruth (Debra Winger) and roommate Victor (Arturo Castro) take his precautions helps them all end up halfway there. .

The interplay of form, imagery, and music creates an elegant vehicle for Gordon-Levitt’s ideas: a crowd of people are made up of blurry, flickering images, while the crossword becomes a visual motif for Ruth. The way the series uses music is also fresh, although it has its precedents. Mr. Cormanthe soundscape of is not the maniacal musical theater of crazy ex-girlfriend, who demonstrated how music can offer television writers the chance to be both sincere and satirical. It is more comparable to Bo Burnham’s Inside, whose songs quickly went viral on TikTok for their scathing references to mental health and fears of capitalism and climate change. Like with Inside, Mr. Corman allows us to see the main character playing with all kinds of instruments: a keyboard, a synthesizer, a recorder, drums and a few other instruments that are more difficult to identify. A loud gong provides a unique chorus as Josh’s anxiety mounts. At one point, he looks at his mother and is filled with forgiveness for her which manifests in a song and dance number through a Los Angeles surrounded by mountains of crosswords. Meanwhile, a fight scene on Halloween is a cross between a video game and a superhero movie.

Like Crazy ex-girlfriend, Chip bag, and Russian doll before that, Mr. Corman suggests that part of the management Mental health issues are all about seeing the people around you as fully trained humans whose perspectives are just as important as yours. Big city alum and Alternative designer Arturo Castro shines in the episode “Mr. Flores”; A trip to the childhood home of Josh’s ex-girlfriend Megan (Juno Temple) reveals more about this character. Even background characters like Ruth’s boyfriend and UPS customers see their moments exist outside of Josh’s story, as the camera follows their point of view. The show has several female characters– including Megan’s mother (Lucy Lawless) – who go beyond Josh’s judgments to express their real opinions in their messy glory. Megan, Ruth, Josh’s sister (Shannon Woodard), Victor’s daughter and ex, even a parent at one of Josh’s lectures, all of these women get to share their own perspectives and philosophies.

Some the episodes feel especially mindful of Josh’s 30-something boredom, especially “Many Worlds,” which plays with the different directions Josh’s life might have taken, after learning how badly Josh’s current situation is – especially his job as a teacher rather than the musician he apparently aspires to be – is his own doing rather than something to blame on the rest of the world. Mr. Corman has a some missteps, especially in an episode that attempts to tackle the bureaucracy of insurance companies, but the series more … than recovers in the last episodes. All the preparation for the Zoom reunion and the frequent wearing of masks led to the real-world show, making Josh’s old anxieties about climate change and the end times feel relatable and justified without suggesting that these anxieties should rule his life. As was probably the case with a lot of people, this uninterrupted time brings Josh to face (sometimes literally). He copes with his roommate after a fight and time apart, approaches a heart-to-heart with his mother gently instead of hostility, and connects best with his students when he runs a class on Zoom. Above all, he begins to take a larger inventory of the people around him.

The season finale is a neat bookend, a stark contrast to the premiere: As Josh’s anxiety predicted the Connection’s disaster in the first episode, a Zoom date takes refreshing twists rarely seen on TV, with a conversation that takes place between surprising and authentic. These moments are often added to the end of these sad sacking tales to show how a man has changed. But here it seems deserved, if only because Josh lets people’s words – those of Victor, of Ruth, of his date, of his students – touch him. Most importantly, he becomes someone who he (and the audience) can genuinely enjoy being surrounded with.