‘The New Yorker Presents’ Is A Grab Bag Of Subjects — But It’s Also A Mixed Bag

Not to be undone by Netflix and Hulu, Amazon has been producing their own original content for the past few years and this week they are releasing a new round of pilots for free. Unlike a lot of other studios, Amazon will be taking viewer comments into consideration when it comes to deciding whether or not to pick these pilots up for full season orders. Check back here for all of Decider’s recaps.

Here’s where I confess a shameful secret: I do not read The New Yorker. Despite all of my pretentions, I am but a pedestrian, taken more to short content on the Internet than long-form journalism and short bouts of humor putting together anachronisms or oft-used social phrases in ways that make me chuckle at best. That’s not to say I haven’t read great things in The New Yorker, but it’s not a go-to for me; I find it, like literally every other magazine out there, to be a mixed bag. Some of it’s for me, some of it isn’t, and I generally find the former when someone recommends something in an issue to me.

Having said all of that, it feels unfair for me to write a review of the pilot for Amazon’s first attempt at a docu-series, The New Yorker Presents. Like its print predecessor, the series is presented as a magazine — a TV magazine, of course (which is nothing that’s particularly groundbreaking in 2015), but one that looks more like an iPad app than, say, 60 Minutes. And like the real magazine, The New Yorker Presents delivers a grab bag of content: a short film, an interview, a mini documentary, a poetry reading, and, yes, even several cartoons scattered throughout the episode.

The first offering is a short film based on a story written by Simon Rich. Alan Cumming plays God — or, well, possibly God — who delivers orders to a schlubby, half-naked man (played by Brett Gellman) who marches up and down the streets of Brooklyn delivering God’s messages concerning the world’s imminent destruction. It’s cute, and charming, although fleeting — it’s perhaps perfect for a episodic docu-series. It’s the sort of thing you watch once and ultimately forget rather than the kind of viral video that’s worth rewatching and sharing with those you’re connected to via various social media platforms.

Next is an interview between Ariel Levy and Marina Abramović, described in the episode as the world’s most famous performance artist. It’s true — she helped oversaturate the artistic genre, meaning that any time a celebrity does something especially weird for attention (see: Shia LaBeouf, James Franco) we now have an overused, potentially pompous phrase to define their behavior. The segment is a very quick and shallow explanation of who Abramović is, focusing on some major moments in her career and overselling the impact of her work before her monumentally popular 2010 installation, The Artist is Present. The question is: if you’re a fan of The New Yorker, and you must be because you’re watching The New Yorker Presents, are you going to learn anything new from a rudimentary segment on and interview with a performance artist who is so mainstream that she’s collaborating with Lady Gaga and Jay Z?

The highlight of the pilot is a segment about a herpetologist (a phrase I learned, in fact, from the show) named Tyrone Hayes. To say he doesn’t look like your average herpetologist is an understatement: a large African-American man in baggy jeans and t-shirt, Hayes is the star of the Jonathan Demme-directed segment that examines, in brief, his fascination with amphibians (particularly the effects of chemicals on their formative periods) and his achievements as a Harvard-educated scientist that grew up a poor black boy in rural South Carolina. But again, the segment’s brevity works against it: it barely scratches at the surface of Hayes identity and work, tossing so much information in such a short amount of time. I wanted to know more about his work! About the obstacles he faced both as a child and as an adult, not just socially but also within his field of expertise! About his experience as an outsider in the Ivy League institution, and once again as he returned home! But by the time I felt I was peeling back the layers of his identity, which would definitely merit a full-length documentary, the segment was over. And then I had to watch Spider-Man star Andrew Garfield dramatically recite a poem.

The one surprising aspect of the show that I did enjoy were the cartoons drawn by Emily Flake, shown in minuscule moments scattered between each longer segment. Each beautifully shot piece depicts Flake in her studio (presumably her home) as she works on a quick sketch, which she then traces over and fills in with black watercolor paint. And then the caption is placed below it on screen. Each of these brief filmed moments breathe fresh life into the New Yorker cartoons, which exist beyond the magazine as having their own powerful and important (if at times groan-worthy) legacy. It’s these mini segments that rationalize turning The New Yorker into a visual series, even if I am as ambivalent to the New Yorker cartoons’ brand of humor as I am to the magazine as a whole.

The New Yorker Presents may very well land with audiences of the magazine, and all of the words above could be just my pedantic response to an established media product that, let’s be honest, is just not my thing. That’s the caveat of this review: I can see the moments of brilliance here despite not being particularly into it as a whole. But I wonder if regular New Yorker fans will also get frustrated at trying to cram long-subject material into a short-subject medium. I’m eager to see how the show is received when its released to Amazon’s public, whose votes and reviews will determine if it is picked up for a full series.

[Watch The New Yorker Presents on Amazon Instant Video]

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Photos: Amazon Instant Video