TV Review: The Umbrella Academy Season One (2019)

The Umbrella Academy Season One (2019) created by Steve Blackman based on the comics by Gerard Way

A group of adopted children (who are now grown) gather to bury their recently-deceased father. These aren't just any orphans--they were all born on the same day (October 1, 1989) to women who weren't pregnant the day before. Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) saw their unique circumstance and realized there might be more going on. He adopted seven of the forty-three children. As he raised them, they developed superpowers. He formed them into a tweenager team of superheroes called The Umbrella Academy. That's all long over. All the children have gone their separate ways and are trying to live their own lives. The funeral naturally leads them to question the uncertain circumstances under which Sir Reginald died. Especially when one lost sibling, Number Five (Aidan Gallagher), suddenly comes back from the future (his superpower is jumping in space and/or time). Five warns them that an apocalypse is eminent. The family has mixed feelings about starting up again, especially Vanya (Ellen Page), who exhibits no powers whatsoever, which has left her an outsider. She wrote a tell-all book about growing up in The Umbrella Academy and was estranged from her adoptive father. 

The siblings have a hard time working through their issues with each other, making saving the world difficult. An additional problem is two time-traveling assassins (Mary J. Blige and Cameron Britton) who are trying to take down Five, though they often get additional orders from their mysterious employers. They think Five is the key to stopping the apocalypse, which they want to happen for their own reasons. Five is searching for the key to starting the apocalypse, narrowing it down to fewer and fewer individuals. Could it be someone one of the siblings knows? Is it okay to kill someone to save billions of other lives on the Earth? Can they cooperate long enough to accomplish anything?

The siblings come off like real people, with a mix of emotions and motivations that generate family drama. They try to be regular people with varying degrees of success. Stepping back into the hero game is a lot harder for them. The actors do a good job and I did care for most of the characters. The premise is fantastic and full of potential. 

On the other hand, the plot moves very slowly. The show uses a lot of songs to enhance the visuals by contrasting or complementing or being ironic. The show is good-looking visually but feels padded out by the pseudo-music videos and other side stories that don't really go anywhere interesting. Especially egregious is the one episode where at the end time travel erases everything that happened (the episode is even called "The Day That Wasn't"). Rubbish time travel is a pet peeve of mine and this show had a bit too much of it. I found myself rolling my eyes more than once. They very ending 

Slightly recommended--it isn't terrible but I found it disappointing.

Streaming on Netflix.

Book Review: The Umbrella Academy Vol. 1 by G. Way et al.

The Umbrella Academy Volume 1: Apocalypse Suite story by Gerard Way, art by Gabriel Ba, and colors by Dave Stewart

A freak incident has forty-three children born at the exact same time across the world, mostly to single women who were not pregnant. Seven of those children were adopted by Sir Reginald Hargreeves, a famous and wealthy inventor. Six of those children show extraordinary powers. He helps the children develop their powers at his Umbrella Academy. Ten years later, they are a band of heroes who help to avert the end of the world. One emergency they stop is an insane Eiffel Tower, which starts tossing people off of itself. The story picks up again with the death of Hargreeves many years later. By this point, the team is broken up and scattered across the Earth (except for Spaceboy, who has been working on the moon). They come together for the funeral and are forced together to face a new threat. The one child who seemingly didn't have any powers (other than playing the violin) has been recruited by a doomsday orchestra that is ready to destroy the world with a special piece of music, the eponymous Apocalypse Suite.

The story is extremely quirky with a creative visual style. The author was clearly bursting with ideas. Unfortunately, the storytelling is very choppy and a bit hard to follow. Each child's powers are shown only through action and it is difficult to sort out who does which thing. Other than being highly original, this book is not very satisfying. I can see how its creativity made it popular and I will try the next volume, but my expectations are a lot lower.

Slightly recommended.

UPDATE: I just read the second story and it has the same "throw in everything I can think of" feeling that I found so unsatisfying in the first story. So I am not going to read volume 3. I still might try the television show.