Review: Stuart Fails To Save the Universe, "Spoiler: Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience"

Hey free subscribers—here's your preview of Donna's review of the finale of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, which concludes its first season. To join the conversation and get a full year of reviews at our highest discount, take advantage of our yearly subscription drive.

This end may or may not be the end. ‘Twas ever thus, I suppose; I can think of plenty of sitcoms that ended their runs on cliffhangers designed to set up their next seasons, and precious few that got to go out with a planned finale. But the streaming era feels far more precarious in this regard. A series might get a quick renewal while it’s airing, or even before, only to be axed ignominiously months later when it comes time for a studio to commit to actually making that second season. Or in the long, long waits between seasons, the streaming world moves on and that hoped-for renewal never comes; at some point, long after fans have accepted the inevitable, the official cancellation notice comes down.

This might seem like a weird beginning to a review of a show that got renewed already, but to be honest: I don’t have any confidence we’ll see a second season of SFTSTU. Seems like a coin-flip in the current climate, despite the renewal having been announced. And even more than usual, the “where will the next season take these characters?” type of finale feels a bit hollow. I’ve clung to the sort of hope represented by a cliffhanger season ending before—all the way back to Partners and Cupid, all the way up to Playing House and Grand Crew. I’m not anywhere nearly as interested in the gang’s experiences in alt-Burbank, though I’ll probably watch season 2 if it comes to pass, so I’m not saying hope has anything to do with my reaction here. It’s mostly that these season finales presume on my caring, and sometimes I suspect that the creators don’t even care that much.

Maybe we need a typology of these cliffhangers. First, comedies where you legitimately get attached to the characters and invested in what happens to them, where cancellation feels like losing a member of the family (the examples above). Second, comedies where you want to see the premise or the style continue because it’s a delight to see what they get up to every week (Galavant, Legends of Tomorrow). Third, comedies where the plot has you hooked and you need to know how things turn out (perhaps less common in comedy than drama, but think of Pushing Daisies, for example). Which category does SFTSTU think it’s in, or aspire to be in? It’s unclear to me. And that right there may indicate why this finale doesn’t serve as a confident launch toward that second season.