Avenue 5 Review: Was It Your Ears? (Season 1 Episode 6)

Space babies and oxygen are to be cherished, but those on Avenue 5 Season 1 Episode 6, “Was It Your Ears?” may not see it that way.

The episode takes a simple beeping noise and runs a marathon with it. The beep isn’t the funny bit, of course, but what it causes in these already stressed characters, tearing them down to their most base anger and frustration. As it turns out, exhaustion and weak fights are the kinds of developments needed to show signs of humanity starting to come back.

There is something strangely poignant about the episode as a whole, this need to make every word count and how there is a new appreciation for life. It’s counterbalanced by talk of sending five hundred passengers to their death and shunning people for non-essential stories, but it’s doing so through making the characters realize that they may not hold onto doom as tightly as they anticipated.

While the episode may not be completely comedic, per se, it’s in the way characters slowly lose their marbles and collapse into exhaustion that makes some progress. There are still comedic moments, like the very feeble fight for the sleeping pills or Clark slowly losing it when trying to occupy himself, but it is like a drama for sections of the episode, to put such gloom against everyone.

Judd and Matt teaming up is something that seems so simple and obvious, but it’s such a stroke of brilliance. They are both inconceivably silly, and so doubling their efforts to cause chaos out of bad ideas is exactly the kind of energy Avenue 5 needs right now. Their fecal light show provides a nice little display to cap off the episode, but it’s their ridiculous time together that matters.

Matt is the kind of character that goes along with anything and is essentially a bad influence. On any other show, that would be considered a detriment; here, it’s a godsend. He’s the confidence boost that Judd needs to do weird things, but Judd ends the episode with closing off that new friendship from ever happening again, so maybe that fun is off the table for now.

At least we still have Matt’s passive-aggressive way of insulting people. His attack on Clark’s ears and sudden reversal at the end of the episode is a strange but pretty funny character quirk. Is it something that has been on his mind the entire time, or simply a way to give Clark some more peace to sleep with? Either way, it’s a fun little quirk.

One part of the episode that leaves a ton of questions is how power works in the United States in this future. With the introduction of two Presidents, it’s not entirely clear if the wi-fi antenna Rav speaks to is a proxy for the second President, or if the second President is an AI. The way the conversation goes, it is likely the latter.

With Matt’s comment on the Pennsylvania fires and the bizarre waiting rooms Rav frequents, this version of the United States seems a little post-apocalyptic, to put it mildly.

It may be a quiet episode, but Avenue 5 Season 1 Episode 6, “Was It Your Ears?” marks that quiet with beeps of terror. It’s a social experiment of sorts, watching people fall to mania over a sound and see how they would react. But the episode also has something to say about how fast life becomes expendable when the need to live becomes strong.

Luckily, life wins out and there is no need to jettison hundreds of people yet. But the space baby gets too much disrespect on the episode, even if the chosen name isn’t great. Hopefully with some sleep, everyone can give the proper respect and just enjoy the nice (but gross) show outside their windows. It’s a stop and smell the roses sort of thing, but with the need to drop the second half of the phrase.

 

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Avenue 5 airs Sundays at 10/9c on HBO.

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