The Book of Rannells: Some Thoughts on Andrew Rannells’s Animated TV Show Roles

Chronologically, we’re at Andrew Rannells’s guest spot on Bob’s Burgers, so let’s look at animated shows he’s appeared on. Once again, we’re talking post-Mormon stuff here:  Rannells’s voiceover back catalog is incredibly long, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to dive into all that.  But, the animated roles he’s taken in more recent years offer up some fun stuff.

Rannells has been in a pretty good variety of shows since 2016, when he dipped his toes back into his animated roots with a cartoon cameo on The Simpsons.  He’s followed that up with other animated shows for adults (albeit playing kids, as a regular on Big Mouth and a guest star on Bob’s Burgers) as well as actual children’s shows (with two different minor roles on Sofia the First, a guest spot on Vampirina, and a recurring role on Welcome to the Wayne.)  Naturally, some of these shows are far more up my alley than others, but Rannells has been good on all of them.

One important advantage of these animated TV roles is that all of them have supplied excuses for Rannells to sing, which just doesn’t happen often enough for my liking in his live-action screen projects.  Sofia the First and Vampirina both regularly feature songs and took advantage of having a Broadway-seasoned guest star – I dare anyone to dislike Rannells playing a mummy who sings just a tiny bit like Elvis.  His Bob’s Burgers episode was one of many on that show to be music-centric, and he joined a lot of other Broadway names – old Book of Mormon pals Josh Gad and Rory O’Malley, along with former Hamilton co-star Daveed Diggs – in crushing it on goofy tunes (side note:  it’s so much fun to hear another Josh Gad character referring to another Rannells character as his “best friend,” and then the two of them singing a song about it!)  While the others aren’t as heavy on the music, each offers up at least one small moment for Rannells to sing.

I also like that these roles provide quite a bit of variety in terms of character.  No, most of them aren’t all that complex, but they’re all pretty different.  In live action and, to a lesser extent, onstage, Rannells tends to get cast as similar character types a lot, and while I absolutely adore what he does with these roles and think he differentiates between them much more than he always gets credit for, it’s good to see (well, hear) him stretch different acting muscles. 

I’ve said before, Skye on Sofia the First gives me total Reepicheep vibes, and I love it.  King Peppy on Vampirina speaks with this slightly lofty air, and Andrei on Welcome to the Wayne is alternately whacky, deadpan, and earnest.  Given that Rannells has a somewhat cartoonish quality to his voice anyway, it probably would’ve been fairly easy to coast on these vocal performances and still have them come off perfectly well, so I appreciate the attention he pays to voicing them all differently.

My favorites are his most sizable roles, Matthew on Big Mouth and Andrei on Welcome to the Wayne.  Welcome to the Wayne is such a fun, zany show with both kid and adult appeal, and Rannells fits really well into its type of humor.  And with Big Mouth, Rannells takes what is definitely a stereotyped character and kills it anyway with his hilariously-withering delivery.

The big question remains:  when is someone going to cast Andrew Rannells as a Disney prince?  He’s got strong voice acting skills, his singing voice sits in pretty much the perfect place for Disney songs, and he’s previously done Broadway work with two of Disney’s more recent composers, Frozen’s Robert Lopez and Moana’s Lin-Manuel Miranda.  I’d love to have him in a Disney movie with songs by either of these two, but I’m especially looking at Lopez.  He already has experience writing specifically for Rannells’s voice in The Book of Mormon, plus he’s already brought someone else from that show to Disney, with Josh Gad playing Olaf in Frozen.  Come on, Lopez – when are you going to hook Rannells up?

A Blade So Black (2018)

This book caught my eye – I’ve been trying to diversify my bookshelves, and I’m an easy sucker for a good deconstruction of classic literature – and I’m glad I picked it up. It offers up an engaging heroine and an imaginative incarnation of Wonderland tangled up in 21^st-century Atlanta.

Alice’s life changes the night her father dies, in more ways than one. Losing her father deprives her of a part of herself, but the same night, she also has her first encounter with Nightmares, monsters from the fantastical world of Wonderland who feed off of negative human emotion and cross over into our world. The encounter introduces her to Addison Hatta, an exiled Wonderlandian who identifies humans he can train to fight the nightmares. Before long, Alice is balancing school, home life, and interdimensional monster-hunting, and unsurprisingly, it’s hard for her to juggle all three. But when a mysterious figure emerges claiming to be a dark villain from Wonderland’s troubled past, she has no choice but to step up, and she embarks on a dangerous mission to save that world as well as her own.

There’s a lot to like about this book, chief among them probably being Alice herself. A heroine who’s flawed and unsure of herself but also determined, Alice revels in Wonderland’s incredible qualities even as she faces its monsters with trepidation. I love that she’s a huge fangirl (her and Kamala Khan, I tell you – teenage me would’ve loved these girls!), and I appreciate that portaling to another world without missing curfew presents serious challenges to her life. The first-person narration ranges from fun and snappy to vulnerably heartfelt; I’m glad to be in Alice’s head each step of the way.

Some of the Wonderland details are really neat. It’s been years since I read the Lewis Carroll books, so I’m sure there are some references I’m missing, but there’s plenty of fun easier inclusions for me to enjoy, like Addison and his Wonderland compatriot Maddie setting up shop on Earth at the Looking Glass pub filled with significant referential tchotchkes, or fellow monster hunters the Tweedladovs, nicknamed Dee and Dem. (Admittedly, some of the reference are a little too on the nose: Alice’s two cats are named Carol and Lewis?) I also like the vivid descriptions of the environments and flora in Wonderland, as well as the specifics of how magic works there. When you combine elements of Wonderland into our world, it gets really interesting, especially seeing how hard it can be for a Black girl from Atlanta to fight otherworldly monsters attracted to human fear, hatred, and anger – a major undercurrent running through the story is the recent police murder of a local teenage girl, and the Nightmare that grows specifically out of that community grief and upheaval presents a far greater challenge for Alice.

The novel is author L.L. McKinney’s first, and I’d say it feels like a first novel. There are points where the dialogue or the narration practically says, “And now here’s some exposition!”, so it can be unpolished in places, but the creativity of the piece, the fun banter, and the strong character work in Alice easily make up for it. (Also, I have to smile at the YA-ness of nearly every male character being a hot teenage boy, or in Addison’s case, hot immortal-ish Wonderlandian who has the appearance of a teenage boy.)

One more thing I need to mention: going into the book, I didn’t realize it was the first in a series, so I was not prepared for the ending. I’m happy I’ll have more opportunities to explore this world with Alice, and I wouldn’t say it’s not quite a Suzanne Collins/Hunger Games-style cliffhanger ending, but it definitely had me going, “Wait, no, but what happens next?”

Warnings

Violence, language, and strong thematic elements.

Other Doctor Lives: The Smoke: Episode 6 (2014)

Plotwise, a big episode. I’ve mentioned before that the structure and pacing of the story sometimes feels more like a TV show than a miniseries, but here, it feels more like a miniseries. This is the ramp-up, important threads of the story coming together that will build to the climax and ensuing conclusion. It feels more purposeful, which I like.

It’s a slow day, and the entire watch is stuck at the fire station waiting for something to happen. It’s the middle of a heat wave, and as personal issues between different watch members have been bubbling up, they’ve found themselves without the focus of their work to distract them. Major issues come to a head. It’s an especially hard day for Kev, as it’s also the one-year anniversary of the fire. Grieving what was lost that day, he can’t put aside his longing for revenge.

A bit of a bubble episode, with everyone hanging around the station and nerves wearing thin. It’s a good mix of drama, like the stuff with Kev, and comedy, like Al’s ex unexpectedly dropping their kid off for Al to watch (and the resulting havoc the young Batman-clad boy wreaks around the station.) We get major movement on a couple of main plots, and I enjoy the give and take, with some conflicts reaching their boiling point and others showing signs of a resolution to come. I won’t get into too many specifics for the sake of spoilers, but I like all of the following: 1) a nice scene between Mal and Al, 2) a subplot involving a group of women on a hen do (aka bachelorette party) stopping by in search of sexy firefighters, and 3) a small story for Rob (David Walmsley, who played Rick on In the Flesh,) the one firefighter who’s gotten hardly any focus so far.

I have mixed feelings about the Kev plot. While I like most of the way the story goes here, the acting takes me out of it at points. I liked Jamie Bamber on Battlestar Galactica, but in this miniseries, there have been different episodes where he just hits the drama way too hard for me. I’m not sure if it’s the dialogue or the direction or what, but it just gets laid on too thick and makes it hard for me to buy it. On the other hand, Taron Egerton’s Dennis is also in this plot and, while his material gets very dramatic as well, I think he pulls it off 100%. It’s heightened, but it still feels genuine. The contrast is palpable, which is unfortunate since Bamber is the lead and Egerton is supporting.

That storyline is also where Trish’s main involvement is. She comes by the fire station in the hope of being there for Kev on the anniversary and subsequently gets pulled into the stuff that goes down. Admittedly, there’s one scene where I feel Jodie Whittaker acting just a bit too hard, which suggests there might be more of an overall problem with the writing or direction (after Broadchurch, I know she can pull off intense drama without it coming across as overbaked.) Apart from that, though, I really like her work here. Trish is most interesting to me when she’s self-possessed and clear-eyed, and we get a good portion of that in this episode. In an environment where a lot of emotions are running high, she becomes a steadying presence, and that really works for me.