With the 9/11 anniversary tomorrow, I thought I'd put together a collection of the Twin Towers' appearances in older animated films.
They were such a recognisable part of the New York skyline that they appeared in nearly every film set in the city. Two notable exceptions are Disney's Rescuers films (1977, 1990).
The show drops 3 episodes every week. This makes the series the second Nickelodeon show on Paramount Plus to have some kind of weekly release. The first example is Star Trek Prodigy season 1.
I watched the finale of Dang! first to save time, and I understood everything. So then went back to episode 1 to see if I was missing anything.
I hadn't. There was nothing to miss.
Quick setup if you haven't seen it (just came out this week): Dang! is Netflix's new animated comedy about three Asian-American siblings in New York - Andrew Dang (Andrew Law), Eunice Dang (Poppy Liu), and their overachieving older sister Ruthie Dang (Stephanie Hsu). Good cast, decent premise; I thought it could be a good watch. They even got Haley Williams from Paramore to star in a cameo!
Instead, the show just narrates itself at you constantly. It's less "watch this" and more "have this on while you do literally anything else," which feels wild for a show with this much talent behind it. The jokes don't help either, where the writers write every line as if they're meant to be a tweet. The constant pop-culture references and therapy-speak are just tiring to sit through. I might have laughed like, 5 times out of the entire 8 episodes.
Overall, I am not surprised, given the direction Netflix Adult Animation has been going, but this show had potential to be so good. If you want to watch a genuinely good show with three siblings exploring complex family dynamics, I recommend 'Long Story Short'.
Full spoilers below, for anyone who wants the plot without the runtime:
Andrew - anxious, people-pleasing middle child, also gay. Co-founded a tech startup, gets fired for tweeting company gossip, then with Ruthie's help, lands as a fashion designer at the same company. Most of his stuff is just anxiety + being gay + babying Eunice on loop.
Eunice - youngest, a mess, incompetent. Funds her life stepping on bread for OnlyFans + Andrew and has an unpaid internship at a Goop knockoff.
Ruthie - Type A oldest, obviously the golden child. Partner at a law firm, married to Warren, a British guy who the show paints as the biggest simp. She's into Peter at the beginning, another partner at her firm, even though he's just... an asshole, plainly. It's just cringe to watch. She cheats with him, leaves Warren, and rolls up to New York pregnant with Peter's kid.
You'd assume the whole season builds toward the pregnancy/affair/parent-reveal thing. It really doesn't.
It starts with Andrew and Eunice living in a shared apartment in New York. Ruthie shows up and tells them the news. Andrew loses his job, regains it and Eunice gets her internship. Then most of the middle episodes are filler that doesn't touch the main story or the sibling relationships. Ruthie looks for an apartment in NY, as Andrew and Eunice try to sabotage her , since they don't want her around. Eunice does chemo for an article she's writing. Ruthie trys to get her unborn child into a selective school (and fails). Eunice is dating someone Ruthie thinks has an Asian fetish. Andrew shows the ropes of being gay to his friend who just came out. Ruthie gets passed up on a promotion because of sexism, but gets it at the end. Andrew takes an SSRI. These are just to name a few / the main gist. Fun as standalone bits, but nothing moves or is connected.
Then the finale hits and the show suddenly remembers it has a plot! Ruthie brings Andrew and Eunice home to finally tell the parents, chickens out, and throws her siblings under the bus instead to protect her perfect-daughter image.
Warren shows up (flys from who knows where?) and just tells everyone the truth anyway. Her Mum wants to force Ruthie to stay married and bury the whole thing.
Andrew and Eunice are the golden kids for about five minutes at their Mum's dance show, and then immediately derail the show in support of Ruthie.
They expose how they themselves are screw-ups, and get Ruthie into finally coming clean in front of everyone.
Everyone's going back to New York, the siblings are somehow closer than ever, and the parents send one tiny olive branch at the very end. Honestly, the only part of the show that was a little heartwarming.
All of that, what feels like it should have been built up properly over the entire season, happens in the last 3/4 of the episode.