Lloyd 'Happy Trails' Farley: the man, the myth, the legend. What can be said about this amazing - and humble - man that hasn't been said before? Or, more accurately, what can be said in public? Born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Lloyd is a master of puns and a humorist, who has authored one pun book to date - Pun and Grimeish Mint - and is working on a second. His time with Collider has allowed Lloyd's passion for writing to explode, with nearly 1,000 articles to his name that have been published on the site, with his favorite articles being the ones that allow for his sense of humor to shine. Lloyd also holds fast to the belief that all of life's problems can be answered by The Simpsons, Star Wars, and/or The Lion King. You can read more about Lloyd on his website, or follow his Facebook page and join the Llama Llegion. Happy trails!
Post-apocalyptic television fare tends to be nihilistic, an understatement if ever there was one. The 100, where juvenile delinquents are sent to a bleak, radioactive Earth. Snowpiercer, where the last humans are trapped on a train that never stops, where greed, class warfare, and cannibalism are par for the course. On The Walking Dead, humans are often more frightening than the walkers that have enveloped the land. There's no point wearing shades: the future's not that bright, or family-friendly for that matter. Why isn't there a series where things aren't quite so dire? Does such a beast exist? Oddly enough, yes, with "beast" being the operative word, a Netflix series that finds warmth and joy in a dystopian world: Sweet Tooth.
What Is 'Sweet Tooth' About?
Sweet Tooth, adapted from the comic book series by Jeff Lemire, takes place ten years after a viral pandemic, aka "the Sick," has wiped out most of the world's population, a trope that exists in almost every entry in the post-apocalyptic genre — and, just like its kin, something about the world changes. In Sweet Tooth, after the initial event, which is dubbed the "Great Crumble," children are born as hybrids, with animal body parts and characteristics. Human survivors don't know if these hybrids caused the virus or are a result of it, and, as a result, many humans hunt them out of fear. Again, nothing to suggest that Sweet Tooth strays from the post-apocalyptic script.
Yet there's already something different about Sweet Tooth: a narrator (James Brolin), who opens the episode with, "This is a story, a story of a very special boy who found himself at the end of the world." A narrator, telling a post-apocalyptic tale as a story, simply isn't dark, dystopian fare, and the special boy he's talking about is Gus (Christian Convery), a young, part-deer hybrid with the antlers to prove it. He lives in the wilderness with his father, "Pubba" (Will Forte), looking to keep him safe from those who would hunt Gus down.
To that end, there's a fence surrounding their area that Gus is told explicitly never to cross, with a dangerous world to be found beyond it. But after his father dies, Gus, now ten, finds a box under a tree that contains pre-Crumble paraphernalia and a photo of his mother, Birdie (Amy Seimetz), with "Colorado" written on the back. Having learned from his father before passing that his mother was alive, Gus decides to venture outside the fence on a journey to find her.
Don't let the end of the world stop you from watching these shows.
His trek is short-lived after Gus is captured by poachers, but "Big Man," Tommy Jepperd (Nonso Anozie) quickly comes to his rescue. Jepperd warns Gus, whom he nicknames "Sweet Tooth" on account of the boy's voracious love of chocolate, not to venture outside the fence, as his father did, and walks away. But Gus won't be denied, and ventures outside the fence for the first time. What he finds is beautiful, green, and wide open, nature reclaiming the land. Gus is simply awestruck by it, jumping and playing in its freedom before spying Jepperd in the distance. He catches up to him and asks him for his help in getting to Colorado. Jepperd, reluctantly at first, agrees, and the journey begins.
'Sweet Tooth' Approaches Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi From a Different Angle
What's most interesting about Sweet Tooth is how it hits all the markers of stereotypical, post-apocalyptic sci-fi series, but in a way that rewrites how they are approached. They meet good people along the way, like Bear (Stefania LaVie Owen), the leader of the Animal Army, and Aimee Eden (Dania Ramirez), genuine people who aim to save and protect the hybrids, not people who happen to have a storage bin full of bullets they'll exchange for food. There are bad people, like General Abbot (Neil Sandilands), leader of the Last Men, who hunt hybrids, but it isn't an opportunity for gratuitous violence simply to show how ruthless he is, rather a means to elevate Gus to become a leader among the hybrids.
There's laughter, there's grief, but a consistently hopeful tone throughout, a new tomorrow that doesn't grow darker by the day as in most fare, but more vibrant and alive — and the reveal at the end of the narrator's identity, telling a tale in a reinvigorated world, is simply heartwarming. Sweet Tooth rewrites the rules of post-apocalyptic fare, shattering the norms of the dark, dreary, and often violent to prove that hope and optimism, family-friendly at that, can exist without sacrificing the traditional beats of the genre. In other words, it can be sweetened after all.
Image via Netflix
English (US) ·