A new pandemic shifts the future of mankind.
What They Say:
A decade after The Great Crumble wreaked havoc on the world and led to the mysterious emergence of hybrids (babies born part human, part animal), a sheltered hybrid deer-boy named Gus unexpectedly befriends a wandering loner named Jepperd. Together they set out in search of answers about Gus’s origins, Jepperd’s past, and the true meaning of home.
Technical:
The Blu-ray edition of this release is one that’s pretty barebones and I’m not too surprised – though I think they could make out well with a special edition later. There are no extras on this release nor is there even any sort of preamble to the load-up other than the WB logo itself. It drops you right into the static menu that uses a widescreen version of the cover with better color quality and it has a standard clean if simply navigation along the bottom. There’s only an English DTS-HD MA 5.1 language track here and closed-captions subtitles so there aren’t any real options, again making this a fairly narrow focus. But what it does present is a very clean and great looking presentation that sounds good overall. We had no issues during playback with it and the end result was something that delivers the story without distraction or issue.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Based on the comic series of the same name from writer/artist Jeff Lemire, Sweet Tooth has its first eight-episode season that streamed on Netflix here. And first I just want to be thankful that it got a home video release as so many streaming series do not and so many people do not have access to quality streaming, so this makes it accessible, especially to those with streaming caps. I had read the first collection of the comic when it came out and enjoyed it well enough but this series takes the themes and ideas but runs with it in a different way, one certainly more influenced by the real-world pandemic that we went through and with more characters and themes playing out to deal with its larger narrative. There are a lot of very human storylines going on here but it’s also a story of how nature evolves to deal with the threats it faces in ways that we can’t always understand or master.
The basic premise takes us largely into a world ten years after The Big Crumble, when society fell apart. A very contagious and always-changing virus swept through the world where children were born as hybrids that had animalistic elements to them, some more so than others. A great many people died from the virus itself but the design of it seemed to say that those who will be born through it and after it will be different and far more connected to nature. That connected part isn’t quite as covered here because it focuses more on various characters trying to survive and find what they need to do so. There’s a mystery to it as well for much of it as to whether the virus came first or the hybrids came first and that’s interesting as we get a good number of flashbacks throughout the series, not just for that but for several characters so we can see what it was like for those from before the Big Crumble.
The primary focus is on Gus, a ten-year-old hybrid that’s half-human and half-deer that has spent most of his life in the woods with his father whom he called Pubba. For the past year, he’s been living on his own since his father died and has decided to make the journey to try and find his mother after he finds a box that has things that he believes are her, including that she’s someplace in Colorado. It’s a simple journey forward but one that takes him from the relatively safe confines of what his father built for him and sends him into a dangerous world. With so many people dead, those that have survived view the hybrids largely with anger and there’s a group known as the Last Men that spend their time hunting them. There’s also a leader in General Abbot who sees the hybrids as tools he needs to undo what’s going on so he’s spending his time with the Last Men rounding them up. There’s nothing to make him sympathetic here and it leans into some almost cartoonish villainy at times, particularly with his look, but it fits well for this kind of project.
The journey with Gus, Big Man, and Bear works well as they travel across the country and have various encounters, which aren’t overdone and are spread out well. Getting to Gus’ story in terms of his origin helps to dig into more of the Big Crumble itself while still leaving the question of which came first there. But in one episode later in the run it does an amazing job of giving Gus’ father, played by Will Forte, a really strong story to explain why he took care of this kid for so long and why he kept the materials he did about Gus’ mother even though he should have just abandoned it all. Bringing in Amy Seimetz as the mother was fantastic and it left me really wanting to see more of their story in a longer form with a different path followed because they managed to humanize these smaller roles really well, even while the story keeps things loose as to the research and what was going on there.
Gus’ story itself is pretty straightforward and you have only so many expectations for a ten-year-old. I will say that Christian Convery in the role did an amazing job of really capturing a lot of things that didn’t make him feel older and wiser than he should be but not as wildly childish as it could have been, or was in the comic from my recollection. The series also gives us something beyond just these characters, however, with a woman named Aimee, a therapist in the old world that ends up creating a place in the city that was formerly a zoo where she’s quietly bringing together hybrids. That’s going to go only so well as the General is out there looking to add more to his ranks but it’s a good story that operates completely separate from Gus’ story with only the General as the connective piece. And it helped to give us a lot more going on to enjoy without it being tied closely until we get to the season finale where things do, naturally, come together.
One storyline that I really liked even though it’s wildly complicated and weird at times is the one that follows Dr. Singh, who was involved in trying to find a cure for the disease as he and his wife saw so many die from it that they knew. And when she catches it after things collapse, he works to mitigate it while trying to find the cure. There are some odd turns with this and with his story not being all that linear at times it can be a little confusing, but seeing how he crossed with someone like Big Man early on and them comes into things at the end, again through the General, it shows another interesting angle to the storyline from someone trying to solve the problem. These varying narratives help to flesh out the series as a whole so that it’s not just Gus’ story, though he’s central to it all as possibly the first hybrid. Seeing these facets of it unfold and reveal themselves over time as we know the characters more hits a really good sweet spot.
In Summary:
I was wary of the Sweet Tooth show because even though I knew it was going in a different way than the book, the book was a hard read with a very grim feeling to it that I wasn’t eager to revisit. Especially with its pandemic connections as well. I do like how they adapted it here and I think it’s better suited for a “mass market” approach whereas the comic is for a very particular audience. I’m definitely more curious for the second season after this and will likely watch it when it streams, so the home video release definitely did what it needed to get me on board for that. It’s a solidly put-together release at a great price that I can watch anytime without worrying about Internet connectivity, which is a huge plus for a lot of people. It’s definitely a show that I’m feeling far more positive about than I was during the lead-up to it and I’m glad I took the time to spend with it.
Features:
English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Language, English subtitles
Content Grade: B+
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A
Released By: Warner Bros. Hom Entertainment
Release Date: October 11th, 2022
MSRP: $24.99
Running Time:
Video Encoding: 1080p AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
