Don’t want to ruin the finale of Netflix’s 2017 sleeper hit , American Vandal ? Then don’t Google «who did the dicks».
But …
Don’t want to ruin the finale of Netflix’s 2017 sleeper hit, American Vandal? Then don’t Google «who did the dicks». But if you can’t imagine a world in which you would submit that search query, you clearly haven’t had the pleasure of making the mocu-series’ acquaintance. In my experience, not enough people have and that’s a shame. It could be the show’s prickly premise — American Vandal’s unofficial log line is » Serial, but with dick jokes.» Maybe most people, myself excluded, won’t say, «You had me at dick jokes.» But here’s where I adopt the whiny voice befitting someone who enjoys toilet humor as much as I do: You just have to tryyyyyy it. Truuuuust me! If you enjoy either Serial or dick jokes, though, I can almost guarantee you’ll love American Vandal, created by Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda of CollegeHumor. And if you’re lucky enough to enjoy both (and, honestly, who among us…?), this canceled-before-its-time mystery series deserves a prominent spot on your Netflix «My List.» Read more: The best Netflix documentaries to watch this weekend Set in the not-quite-historical year of our Lord 2015, American Vandal is an incisive, deadpan send-up of the true-crime genre, which experienced a remarkable renaissance in the same pop cultural epoch. In 2014, we had the podcast Serial, of course, and then HBO and Netflix delivered The Jinx and Making a Murderer, respectively, in short order. (Cult classic The Staircase was also dredged from the depths of 2004 with new episodes around this time, to meet the audience’s insatiable demand for the examination and narrativization of evidentiary minutiae.) But American Vandal sets itself apart from the true-crime milieu by being… not true. Hulu has since gotten in on this fictional-true-crime beat with Only Murders in the Building, a comedy starring Selena Gomez that joins a growing tradition of mockumentaries, parodies, satires and spoofs of the genre, which American Vandal pioneered. So if you’ve binged Only Murders and haven’t yet seen American Vandal, you’ve got some catching up to do.
