In theory, it should be impressive whenever a YouTuber, especially someone nobody’s heard of before their YouTube channel, gains a following big enough to win them a TV show or a film. Unfortunately, YouTuber shows and films have consistently been awful, from the Fred movies to Smosh: The Movie to Netflix’s own Haters Back Off. Oddballs is yet another failed attempt from a YouTuber to transition to a bigger platform, so much so that not even TheOdd1sOut fans will find much enjoyment in this show, other than the novelty of seeing a YouTuber they follow on Netflix.
Oddballs follows a bubble-shaped boy named James (named after the YouTuber himself, James Rallison) and his alligator best friend Max as they live their wacky lives. If that sounds boring, that’s because it is — the show doesn’t have a premise strong enough to warrant 12 episodes, especially not episodes as long as they are. Rallison’s videos average around eight or nine minutes but Oddballs’s episodes average 16 minutes and good grief, is the length noticeable. Each episode is a slog to get through — by the time you’ve finished the third episode, it’ll feel like you’ve finished six.
The episode length doesn’t make much sense, either. Cartoons usually run for eleven minutes an episode, like The Loud House, The Amazing World of Gumball, We Bare Bears, and The Cuphead Show. If an animated show is longer, it’s usually because it features overarching plots like The Legend of Korra, or a large cast of characters like The Simpsons. Oddballs has zero continuity and only two main characters, James and Max. There really is no reason for its runtime and the show greatly suffers because of it.
But even if the episodes were shorter, there’d still be nothing in this show worth watching. Every character is tremendously annoying, especially the two main ones. James is loud and fitful. Max is obnoxious and irritating. The two constantly do the dumbest of actions and react in the dumbest of ways, both acting like toddlers desperate for attention. The writers seem to believe the “quirkier” the main characters are, the more likable they’ll be, but they achieve the exact opposite — James and Max are two of the most unbearable characters from any film or show this year, animated or not.
Here’s another unbearable thing about the show: its humor. I didn’t expect James Rallison’s show to be primarily for kids, but it may as well be given how immature the humor is. Grotesque, hyper-realistic images of faces, shots of buttcheeks, characters randomly saying stuff in weird ways — these are jokes even fourth graders would find unfunny. It took cartoons like SpongeBob SquarePants and Fairly OddParents a couple of seasons before they ended up relying on this type of humor. Oddballs has taken that as a starting point.
The show is also really, really random, and not in a fun Monty Python way. It feels desperate, as if they’re trying to make up for the lack of organic wit by making the characters behave as oddly as possible. There’s a scene where James complains that his flip phone is too old and then uses it as a thermometer on his drink. How is that supposed to work, exactly? What even is the punchline? It’s a flip phone, it’s not like James could’ve downloaded a thermometer app and was too dumb to realize it wouldn’t work or something. It’s a half-baked joke where the only punchline is a character doing something silly.
Another type of humor this show has in abundance is lampshading humor, the type of humor where something illogical is explained away by the show acknowledging said something is illogical, then moving on. This is a cartoon — nobody’s looking for realism here and the meta-humor gets grating fast. It’s the show equivalent of having a conversation with someone who’s constantly mentioning how annoying they’re being. Yes, we know you’re being annoying. You’re making things worse by being self-aware about it.
This show’s humor fails and fails hard, and because of that, it’s insanely evident how little thought went into writing this show, and how little the episodes have to offer other than the terrible jokes. The Cuphead Show’s humor fell flat too but it had gorgeous animation, colorful worlds, and even a few likable characters. Oddballs has none of those.
There is nothing remarkable about its animation, feeling only a few cuts above the usual quality of TheOdd1sOut’s animation. The character and location designs all seem so amateur, which is fine when you’re watching a YouTube video for free, but not when you’re paying for a Netflix subscription and expecting professional quality.
Oddball’s world is so bare-bones and I’m not even really sure it reaches that level. It’s more like a skeleton missing a hundred or so bones. You compare the world of Oddballs to, say, Springfield from The Simpsons or Bikini Bottom from SpongeBob, and right away, you can see how empty the worldbuilding feels. This town doesn’t have any culture or community. It doesn’t even feel like anything exists outside of James’s home and his school. Every other location they visit feels like they only exist when James and Max are around — by the time the two are gone, they vanish.
The same can be said for characters other than James and Max. Every now and then, they’ll say or do something annoying, but other than that they’re just so stale and blank that they’re not really characters, just chess pieces in a plot. Again, compare this to The Simpsons and SpongeBob, whose characters felt solid and well-defined, with lives outside what we saw onscreen. Even James and Max feel rather bland themselves, being nothing more than a string of loud, random, and often obnoxious actions.
There really is nothing in this show that justifies the digital space it takes in Netflix’s library. It seems unfinished and the screenplays for each episode all feel like first drafts. Netflix offers a plethora of original animated shows, from The Dragon Prince to Hilda to The Cuphead Show. Not all of them are great – but they deserve your attention far, far more than Oddballs does.
READ MORE: 5 Things We’d Love To See In The Animated Mario Movie
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