The Book of Rannells: Welcome to the Wayne: Season 1, Episode 4 – “Today Was Wassome” (2017)

This show surprised me.  I was prepared for a few episodes of a kiddie show, to enjoy Andrew Rannells’s part well enough and take or leave the rest of it.  But I really enjoyed it.  This is good kids’ TV, which, granted, I’ve always known existed (Recess was great, and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise,) because I don’t typically go into a kids’ show prepared for it to be genuinely entertaining for adults – or, at least, adults like me.

The Wayne is an old apartment building that’s home to all sorts of weird and supernatural activity.  Young siblings Saraline and Olly investigate and/or fight “WPs” (Wayne Phenomena) with the help of the shockingly-sophisticated technology they have access to.  New to their team is Ansi, a boy who’s still getting used to the Wayne but who resents Saraline and Olly, each in their own way, treating him like an inexperienced baby.  When given what he deems to be a worthless assignment, Ansi instead joins forces with another kid from the building, Wendell, who’s on a vampire hunt.  Together, they try to prove they have what it takes to fight WPs.

It’s clear that the show is surprisingly-serialized for a kids’ cartoon – this is only episode 4, but there are already references to ongoing plots, and the episode ends on a cliffhanger.  There’s a lot going on here, and the show offers a good mix of off-the-wall craziness, earnest moments that are only slightly cheesy, humorous non-sequitirs, and lots of character-driven stuff.  Wild stuff, like Wendell arming himself and Ansi with spoons to attack the vampire that he’s sure is afoot (vampires are terrified of spoons, obviously,) and fun one-liners.  My favorite comes when Ansi is reluctant to use his “Wheel of Training,” a data gadget to help him get up to speed with WPs, because its habit of making animal sounds when he pushes buttons doesn’t exactly sell his argument that he’s not a baby; re:  the animal sounds, Olly proudly announces, “I fought to keep that feature – makes it kid-relatable!”

Even though I know there’s stuff I’m missing from the previous episodes, I’m able to follow along pretty quickly.  Ansi is the slightly-jumpy everyman, Saraline is the boss/lynchpin/precocious-but-prickly genius, and Olly is the loveably-funny goofball.  The dynamic between the three kids is good, and I like seeing the different tech they use to investigate WPs.

Not much to say about Andrew Rannells yet, since his character is introduced in the aforementioned cliffhanger.  In other words, he promises to be a major factor in the next episode, and he’s placed in an important moment here, but there’s very little to see so far.  Little known about his character, including his name (although IMDb gives it as “Andrei”) – all we really know is that he presents a new mystery for the kids to solve.

Recommend?

In General – Yes.  I’m liking this show a lot – funny, creative, and exciting, with well-defined characters.  Not too shabby!

Andrew Rannells – Too early to say, since he’s had maybe a minute of screentime so far.

Warnings

Scary moments for kids and a bit of gross-out humor.