Carol & the End of the World

What a weird show. Truthfully, ”Carol & The End of the World” had a lot of potential to be something interesting and successful. Hells, I'd even argue it could reach Pluribus heights if they focused on the right things to make this show enjoyable, but by the time this very short series ended, I was more annoyed than entertained. Maybe it was my fault for expecting to learn more about what was actually causing the world to end and what defined Carol as a character, but I'd say having those specific terms in the show title set up the viewer to expect a more character and apocalyptic-focused experience than it ended up being. The End of the World in this show feels weirdly, naively optimistic in a way. Everyone is naked and happy travelling, making memories and nothing really matters anymore. The dream, right? Maybe my own pessimism is what's causing me to believe this, but to me an apocalyptic scenario would be way more catastrophic and disorganized. We already felt an ounce of this during the Covid pandemic, I can't begin to imagine how utterly disastrous such an event would be in reality, especially for non-privileged people. Sure, the wealthy may happily travel and live life to the fullest, but I feel like the common people would be more horrified than anything. I doubt an apocalypse would render money useless and make our jobs obsolete... Outside of this extreme optimism, I feel like the show tried to be weird just for the sake of being weird without much significance. A „throuple” between a black caregiver and the white privileged elderly couple he has to care for 24/7 feels very wrong to me on many levels and the fact that the show tried to somehow normalize it and make it seem like a genuine, heartfelt thing left me pretty upset. What was the point of it, honestly? If they wanted to show the audience that Carol's parents are freaks, just a scene between them and the caregiver would have been enough, but they had to go out of their way and dedicate one of the 10 limited episodes for their nonsensical relationship. We barely know anything about those characters and it just felt forced in our faces for some unknown reason. Was it just for the sake of making the audience uncomfortable because of the racial undertones and clear power imbalance that's defining that relationship at its core? If that's the case, then again, a nonsensical choice to me. The issue of allocating time for pointless characters or situations is an on-going issue with the entire show. It has glimpses of real, good writing, like Carol's complicated bond with her sister and her heartwarming friendship with her new coworkers, but then we get spun back to absolute nonsense just as we felt like the show was getting good. What could have been a complex, interesting and well-put together story about an endearing protagonist kept turning into constant weird attempts to strays us away from the most interesting and loveable aspect of the show which was undoubtedly Carol. She has the potential to be one of the best protagonists of modern TV, but is tightly being held back by the writers because she's constantly being pushed to the side for irrelevant plots with irrelevant characters. I wish I knew what her past was. I wish I knew more about what she feels like in regards to her weird parents, I wish I knew how she felt when she found out the world was ending, I wish she was treated with the respect and consideration from the writers that she deserved. Such a sad waste of an excellent, atypical and fascinating protagonist, all ruined because the show tried to be painfully quirky. Don't get me started on the surfing episode that felt like a fever dream. If there was some artistic intent behind it, I must be too moronic to get it, or maybe the show too pretentious for its own good to actually write an enjoyable plot. 6/10 only for Carol, Elena, Donna, Luis and ”HR Lady”.