‘Final Space’ Has its First Dud with “The Notorious Mrs. Goodspeed”

Gary meets his mother, who it turns out is a notorious galaxy-wide thief but, when Gary springs her from a death sentence on an alien planet, that mother decides it’s time to turn over a new leaf and spend some time with her son and go on a heist together and, you can pretty much guess where it goes from there.

And I do mean that you can literally guess where it goes from there. Pretend that you’re writing this episode. The obvious story that you just came up with? That’s what happens. The most cliched, predictable, and often tried story… The one that we have seen from The Simpsons, Family Guy, and dozens of other television shows happens on Final Space and it is oh so disappointing to see.

I called this episode a dud, but I would not call it a bad episode. It does have healthy doses of humor, it has a very amusing side plot with Mooncake eating his feelings, and Clarence is actually pretty funny in this story – I still can’t believe that’s Conan O’Brien. I know what a bad episode is, and this episode isn’t bad… But it is a dud. Everything it set out to do with the mom story, it failed at. The “A” plot was a cliched mess of tropes that we have seen a hundred times before and it was painfully obvious where it was going.

It’s not that the episode was bad, it’s just that, with its predictable and recycled plot, the entire episode is a non-event, forgettable at best which is much worse than being bad. If it was bad, at least I would have something to remember… Something to have an emotion from. This episode gives me nothing.

“The Notorious Mrs. Goodspeed” tries to salvage itself again with an admittedly emotional montage of Gary growing up without his mom, but the ending overall is so badly paced and rushed that it feels like an unearned afterthought. Gary switches from being a loving duckling to a sour robin so quickly, it’s almost like there are scenes missing.

We didn’t even get any emotional fallout from Little Cato being trapped alone for 60 years in the last episode. He actually goes out of his way saying he has 14 years experience as a pilot – image if he’d said 74 years instead.

I hope next week is better.