Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell
Season 3
Created by Casper Kelly and Dave Willis
Starring Matt Servitto, Henry Zebrowski, Craig Rowin, Dana Snyder, Dan Triandiflou, Jon Glaser
Adult Swim
Sunday at 11:30pm ET

Just in time for Halloween, everyone’s favorite psychopathic (yet mundane) demons are back. Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell aired its premiere episode of the third season earlier this month October, but we got a first look at a couple of the latest episodes and thought we’d share our thoughts.

Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell is a mouthful to say out loud, but then that’s part of its charm. The Adult Swim property is a sort of Office Space meets Hell, displaying the banality of evil in literal terms, much like Comedy Central’s two-season series Ugly Americans. The irony here is that Adult Swim’s show is live action while Comedy Central’s show was animated.

Your Pretty Face’s world is a bizarre one in which women barely exist and male corporate drones dole out the everyday tortures of eternal damnation with ruthless and routine efficiency in the hopes that they’ll be rewarded by their leadership (in the form of Satan) so they can climb the demon’s version of the corporate ladder.

The scenarios are ridiculous and include such premises as a series of corporate orientation videos derived off of classic rap song “Straight Outta Compton” and the male pregnancy, delivery, and subsequent maternal care of demon hellspawn derived of a mistaken rape which occurred instead of the premeditated rape that was planned. In both scenarios, hijinks ensue for some humorous conclusions but ultimately whether it’s the show’s unapologetic attempts to exploit the nature of maternity or its attempt to equate the problems associated with cultural appropriation with torture, the jokes that the writers are chasing down fall a little flat. Scenarios are predictable and without truth, so the surprise and delight that often makes comedy special is absent, replaced here by over-the-top depictions of discomfort.

That said, it’ll still make you laugh though. Performances by Henry Zebrowski and others are filled to the brim with the energy required to properly deliver slapstick comedy while Matt Servitto‘s cruel straight man Satan pulls off a sort of mentor-meets-bully vibe that’s strangely completely appropriate and is the highlight of the show.

That brings us to the problems that distract the view when taking the content in. Owing to the fact that it’s based in Hell, the show allows for a certain boys-will-be-boys attitude, complete with pelvic thrusts, toilet humor, fellatio jokes, and more. It’s telling that a hellscape scenario may be the last refuge for this “locker room” behavior on television — that only through the lens of fire and brimstone (which smells like burnt fecal matter) can this brand of comedy run freely and unchecked, without fear of being impugned.

Of course the show is meant to be mildly offensive, which is fine — the problem is that it takes very few risks. When a white actor in Red Devil make-up screams “Y’all too white… I’m the blackest man that’s ever been; I’m as black as Oprah’s pocketbook, and black as Whole Foods dark chocolate,” you find yourself cringing not at the nature of the sentiment, but at how incredibly hard they’re trying to make a joke that’s fundamentally not funny. The disconnect with the pregnancy experience likewise gives us pause as it lampoons a profound aspect of the human condition without a shred of nuance or grace.

But then again — THAT’S THE POINT.

Still, despite yearning for some verisimilitude, there were plenty of memorable moments on screen — especially from Servitto’s depiction of Satan. One can’t deny that there is something cathartic about seeing a white guy with a red face in a leadership position screaming “You’re fired!” on TV. Somewhere within our reality that could be a great idea for a show on its own.

Episode 3.1 “Straight Outta Hades” aired 10/23
Episode 3.2 “Circle Jerk MCMCVIII aired 10/30
Episode 3.3 “Three Demons and a Demon Baby” airs 11/6 at 11:30PM
Season 1 is available now on DVD
Season 2 is available now on Amazon Video

Videos

Season 3 Trailers | Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell | Adult Swim

Announcements From Hell 1 | Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell | Adult Swim