Miracle Workers: End Times 4×5 Review: ‘Jim Carrey in the Park’

Alrighty then. Jim Carrey gets the Shakespeare treatment and robot friendship is tested in the latest episode of Miracle Workers season 4.

In episode 4, ‘Jim Carrey in the Park’, the A plot has Morris (Steve Buscemi) announce that as the resident community person, he is in charge of presenting their annual cultural event, a yearly staged version of a Jim Carrey movie.

This year’s production? Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Scraps (John Bass) expresses interest in auditioning for the lead, but Freya (Geraldine Viswanathan) ends up getting cast, and she gets a little too into the role.

In the B plot, Sid (Daniel Radcliffe) goes on a weekend trip with TI-90 (Karan Soni) and his robot friends (five copies of Karan Soni) to a nuclear shelter. The machines all get high with magnets. There are a lot of drug jokes as a result.

Out of the two, I actually enjoyed the B plot a lot more. There is obvious tension between TI-90 and Sid, and there’s a bit of an ‘odd couple’ type trope when Freya ends up not joining them on their outing. The one really good joke is in this plot. When TI-90 gets fed up and tries to kill Sid, it backfires and knocks TI-90 out instead. In an attempt to revive TI-90, Sid pours rice over him.

It’s the A plot I have a problem with. While yes, the joke that the future is so bad that we’re treating Jim Carrey movies like Shakespeare works, at the same time – did they HAVE to pick Jim Carrey? And at that, did they have to pick THAT movie? There are so many other movies that could’ve worked and made the same point.

When I read the plot, I was fully expecting community theatre jokes and maybe even an homage to Waiting for Guffman. And while there could’ve been some great scathing commentary on actors who go method only to be a*sholes, it instead just gives Viswanathan a chance to pull out a Jim Carrey impression (which admittedly is a good one, which sort of saves the plot a bit).

When we have group screenings of The Room and as MST3K and its various iterations have shown that cult movies will survive even the apocalypse, it’s a bit sad the creative team had to pick one that was transphobic. Do better, Miracle Workers.

Miracle Workers season 4 airs Mondays, and more information about the show can be found on the TBS website.

Author: Angie Fiedler Sutton

Angie Fiedler Sutton is a writer, podcaster, and all-round fangirl geek. She has been published in Den of Geek, Stage Directions, LA Weekly, The Mary Sue, and others.

She also produces her own podcast, Contents May Vary, where she interviews geeky people about geeky things. You can see all her work (and social media channels) at angiefsutton.com.

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