Amazon's Forever is absurd, reflective, irreverent, fantastical and grounded

The New York Times

"If you’ve heard anything about Forever, you’ve probably heard nothing," says James Poniewozik of the Amazon comedy starring SNL alums Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph. "That is, you’ve heard that it takes some sharp turns and goes places you didn’t expect to follow it to, and that it would be unsporting for a reviewer to say much more. That’s all true, and thus I’ll zip it about most of what happens beyond the first episode. You will think you have figured out what kind of show Forever is, and you will be wrong, and you will figure it out again, and you will be wrong again. (The show is best binged quickly; if it’s not for you, you’ll probably know three episodes in.) But in another sense, Forever is the same story from beginning to end. It’s a narratively nimble show that’s thematically about routine, emotional fidelity and the possibility, or impossibility, of reinvention."

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• It's rare that a series ends up being something much different from what you expect at the outset
• Forever is forcing us out of our habitual TV comfort zones
• Unfortunately, Forever seems too prioritize twists over story
• Co-creator Alan Yang: "One of the freedoms and luxuries Amazon gave us was to pace the show in this unusual way"
• Yang and fellow co-creator Matt Hubbard pitched Armisen and Rudolph all kinds of show ideas, including one set in a preschool
• How Forever created its powerful opening montage