Love, Death, and Robots (Season 2): Not Quite as Good as the First One – Netflix Review

Season 2 doesn’t hit the same highs, but still keeps the premise interesting.

SUMMARY

It’s an anthology with the basic requirement that each of the short films must involve love, death, or robots. Mostly robots. Here’s a summary of the films:

Automated Customer Service

A woman finds the help line to be very unhelpful when her roomba goes lethal.

Ice

Two brothers compete in a race to prove themselves to the locals in their new home.

Pop Squad

In a world where everyone lives forever, cops have to stop overpopulation.

Snow in the Desert

Snow is a man who seemingly can’t age and is targeted by bounty hunters.

The Tall Grass

A man takes a smoking break and learns that you should never leave a stopped train.

All Through the House

Two children meet a very different version of Santa Claus.

Life Hutch

A pilot has to defeat his own security robot in order to stay alive after a crash.

The Drowned Giant

A man becomes fascinated by the body of a huge man that washed up on shore.

END SUMMARY

The first season of this show was originally supposed to be a new Heavy Metal film that eventually ran out of production steam and just became a series of short films. However, the fact that they were originally supposed to be part of a film like Heavy Metal meant that a lot of time and effort and passion had been put into the projects. You could tell how much effort everyone put into each of the shorts, which is why some of them were so impressively detailed and why they managed to get past the uncanny valley so much more than most films. This season seems to have had just a few more constraints on time than the previous one, because the animation isn’t quite as elevated. That’s not to say there aren’t still amazingly well animated episodes (for example, Life Hutch has a photorealistic Michael B. Jordan and Ice mimics the animation style of season 1’s Zima Blue), it just happens that there aren’t as many episodes where my mind was blown by the creativity of the imagery. 

I will say that this season definitely doesn’t follow the Heavy Metal-level exploitation like the first season. Very little of this season relies on extreme violence or sexuality. The problem is that they also don’t have a ton of stories that are as entertaining or creative as the last season. That said, here’s how I rank the episodes:

8. The Tall Grass

Really short and a story that’s been done a ton, in which a person wanders into tall grass that’s supernatural.

7. Snow in the Desert

The idea of the loneliness of immortality has been done before and, while this is well animated, it doesn’t go far enough to be memorable.

6. Automated Customer Service

The animation style here doesn’t sit well with me, but at least some of the jokes are funny.

5. Pop Squad

The idea of an agency that kills children is viscerally horrifying, but a world of haves and have nots based on mortality is old.

4. Life Hutch

This episode benefits from Michael B. Jordan and the fact that the animation is damned near perfect. 

3. Ice

The animation style is great and the imagery is crafted to be the focus rather than the story.

2. All Through the House

This was by far the most original story and it will stick with me for a while. It’s not for everyone, but I loved it.

1. The Drowned Giant

Tim Miller wrote and directed this and it’s basically the perfect study of humanity and oddities.

Overall, the season is short and you can probably get through it quickly. I recommend at least watching the top 4.