The Midnight Gospel offers life lessons and surreal worlds
The Midnight Gospel is an adult animated series released on Netflix at the end of April, amidst the heat of the pandemic. This gem of a cartoon focuses on psychedelic landscapes, spirituality, existentialism, and is unique in ways that only its creators (like Pendleton Ward, the mastermind behind Adventure Time) could pull off.
Don’t let the fact that the show’s a cartoon fool you; this is definitely a television show for adults. The Midnight Gospel follows Clancy Gilroy, a video podcaster who lives in another dimension where technology has advanced and is able to offer universe simulators. Through his computer simulator, he travels to planets on the verge of destruction to interview their inhabitants. What this means for viewers is prepare for cartoon violence as characters slash their way through different apocalypses in hallucinatory, alien worlds while they discuss philosophy, grief, and the human condition. It’s a cartoon like no other on the air right now.
While this series was released (most likely intentionally) on April 20, a date associated with cannabis culture, viewers will get the most meaning out of the series if they watch it sober. (Although don’t get me wrong, watching it under the influence would definitely be an experience.) The dichotomy of watching the surreal animation along with listening to completely unrelated and heavy dialogue revolving around death and religion can be a lot to take in, or at least take concentration to fully appreciate. It’s a long-standing joke on the internet that stoners often philosophize while high, but while those might be superficially deep ramblings, The Midnight Gospell offers its viewers substance.
The conversations that take place on the show are with renowned and educated figures in media, and they genuinely have valuable experiences and information to share. Each episode takes the bulk of its dialogue from The Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast, produced by the comedian Duncan Trussell, who collaborated with Ward to create the cartoon. The Midnight Gospel is even worth watching twice since what’s discussed on the show changes in light of knowing who the guests are.
Guests include Caitlin Doughty, a mortician and activist, Damien Echols, a man wrongfully convicted of murder who was part of the West Memphis Three, and Drew Pinsky, a doctor of internal medicine and a public broadcaster. The emotional and deeply impactful season finale features Trussell’s late mother, Deneen Fendig, a clinical therapist who battled breast cancer.
The only thing left to be desired in The Midnight Gospel is cohesiveness. Since it’s a show based on unrelated episodes from a podcast, there is little sense of a narrative until the season finale — although it does manage to wrap up its plot in a reasonable, albeit open-ended, way. Each episode begins with Clancy meeting a new interviewee and launching into a very intimate and deep conversation without prior rapport, which is confusing for those unaware of the show’s affiliation with Trussell’s podcast.
It can also be difficult to follow in terms of admiring the stunning worlds featured in the animation while also trying to understand the intricacies of the dialogue since the two are disconnected from each other. Some elements of the dialogue are connected to the animation thematically, but more loosely than one would expect. In the first episode when Dr. Pinsky argues that there are no good or bad drugs, the characters on screen see the effects of a zombie cure that has both positive and negative consequences of its use.
Initially, the trailer for this show was a major turn-off. It comes off as edgy, showing off a montage of its most violent moments without giving viewers a taste of what the show’s actually about. If you’re reentering society (now that quarantine has partially lifted) after being forced to spend time with yourself, this show is a great place to start to further foster a journey of self-reflection and mindfulness. Or, at the very least, it’s a whirlwind of animation that will take viewers to planets from the minds of Pendleton Ward and Duncan Trussell. Sit back, relax, and allow your mind to be expanded by The Midnight Gospel in more ways than one.
Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.
