DUMMY (Limited Series)— TV Review
By John Argote Rodriguez
“Dummy” was released April 20, 2020 on Quibi and consists of 10 episodes and stars Anna Kendrick, Meredith Hagner, and Donal Logue. “Dummy” tells the story of an aspiring screenwriter Cody Heller who discovers her partner’s secret sex doll, but not only that it’s also revealed that the sex doll itself is alive.
“Dummy” is one of those projects that go around Hollywood, at first it starts off as a film then as a show all in different studios until eventually it’s finds a home, in this case it found a home in the form of Quibi.
Technically “Dummy” isn’t a series as it falls under Quibi‘s movies in chapters category, but this is a TV format so I’m going to list it as a limited series. It’s also worth mentioning that this show is semi-autobiographical in that the two main characters played by Anna Kendrick and Donal Logue are real people, for example Logue is actually Dan Harmon, the co-creator of “Rick and Morty”.
After watching Quibi’s excellent series such as “Most Dangerous Game” and “The Stranger”, I was really looking forward to “Dummy” because Quibi is killing it in the original content area which is the main area and why it sucks that it’s not doing anywhere near as good as it should be, but that’s a discussion for another time. So after watching “Most Dangerous Game” and “The Stranger”, what were my thoughts on “Dummy”? It was a let down.
However, that’s not to say that “Dummy” was bad, it’s just that when you have great series like the ones I previously mentioned then you follow it up with “Dummy” it’s kind of a step down, I’m sure if I would’ve seen “Dummy” first I would have a little more of an appreciation for it, but I just didn’t find myself too invested in the story nor the characters.
Anna Kendrick as the lead of the show was awesome because she’s Anna Kendrick, she automatically brings his likability and charm and charisma whatever roles she’s in and having her be the forefront of the series is what made me want to watch the show to begin with. It’s because of her that we follow and stay with Cody and we want her to succeed as a screenwriter because Kendrick always brings her A game to whatever project using even if it’s a bad film like Which is a testament to her talent, not a lot of actors can pull that off, when the only reason you watch a show because of an actor. I have no idea what the show was about until I saw Anna Kendrick’s name on it and I automatically made it my next show to watch after “The Stranger”.
The concept of the show is fascinating once I look into the show. The whole idea of anthropomorphic sex doll is a comedy that practically writes itself and seeing this sort of prequel like story leading up to its creation what is interesting, but it didn’t stick the landing that much. Again I want to preface that “Dummy” is not a bad show, in fact I would say in my opinion that it’s a pretty good show and it does have some pretty good laughs in it. One of my favorite ongoing gags to me has to do with Anna Kendrick‘s Cody Heller agent.
The best way to describe this show is like Quentin Tarantino “Kill Bill” streak. We get “Kill Bill” volume 1 and volume 2 and they are both fantastic, they are awesome, but then you get “Death Proof” which isn’t so good. You start off with two strong films then take a bit of a dip in quality. That’s how I would describe going from “Most Dangerous Game” to “Dummy”, only I thought “Death Proof” wasn’t good.
As for the main hook up this shell; the talking sex done named Barbara. I didn’t like her. she was the most annoying character, she was unlikable, and I found it really hard to root for this character because she’s kind of an antagonist in the beginning and she was selfish and that is not good because she is the whole series, the series revolves around her being a sex doll that is alive and the fact that I couldn’t stand her at all wasn’t good, if it wasn’t for Anna Kendrick I don’t think I would’ve finished the show.
Donal Logue is a great actor, but he’s barely in the show and when he is there he’s still the same guy he doesn’t go through any growth and that’s because he wasn’t really a main character he was more of a recurring character he didn’t go through any change of growth as opposed to Kendrick’s character. He was just there and that’s not a bad thing it just makes me wonder why he was credited as a series regular, my guess is that it’s because it’s Donal Logue.
Dummy in the end was an all right shell, it wasn’t bad but when you compare it to most dangerous game and the stranger which I’m not trying to but it’s kind of hard not to and even if I hadn’t seen those two shows, Dummy still would’ve been alright because the story didn’t really have much going for it until near to the end where we finally had some stakes, but given Quibi has a 10 minutes or less rule it happened very quick and sudden. The 10 minutes or less will it’s something I actually love and admire about the streaming service because they did something different and if done right it can work out really good like the two shows I have been mentioning, but I guess we were bound to run into one show that probably should’ve either been paced a little little differently or should’ve been at a disorient steaming service.
Either way I think you guys should check out “Dummy” because I’m sure some of you will get a good laugh out of it, I got a couple chuckles out of it too, but the dummy character Barbara and the story when weren’t my favorite aspects of the show, but I got to praise Anna Kendrick again, she really held the show together. I think I’m in love, I don’t know.
Grade: B-
