Corporate (2018)

Corporate is at its best when it's parodying the small absurdities that maintain the requisite veneer of professional office civility. ... Corporate may be the opposite of the comfort TV most of us are currently craving, but if you're in the mood for an icy splash of truth, it'll be waiting for you.

Like "Silicon Valley" does in its best episodes, this is a show that acknowledges the noxious nature of office ecosystems and success ladders, and the pointlessness of working oneself out of actually living. Desk jockeys don't watch "Corporate" to soothe themselves. They do it to validate the suspicion that they're not crazy.

The anxiety that marks the show is here channeled toward embracing the way weirdness and stupidity seem to blanket the realities of corporate life. In finding new ways to torque these office mainstays, “Corporate” has given the rest of the Hampton DeVille team plenty of ways to transform some of that simmering rage of previous seasons into a kind of office-centered goofiness. Lance Reddick remains an episode-to-episode comedic powderkeg.

New episodes that match Season 1’s gonzo greatness chronicle the executive team’s efforts to invent a lucrative addiction (makeup for men) and introduce a cowgirl billionaire (Kyra Sedgwick in the guest appearance of a lifetime) who’s equal parts Ted Turner, Dolly Parton and Annie Oakley. Pessimistic takes on technology, media, identity politics, the environment and the quest for personal fulfillment are baked into each of these profit-driven nightmares.

Each chapter’s pace flows well, but there can be a herky-jerky energetic inconsistency between episodes as Carnahan throws in one diversionary gimmick after another. ... Such contrivances come at the expense of gravitas, but given the frequent opacity of the stories behind what actually happened, a viewer can’t fault Carnahan too severely for doing all he could possibly do to keep the story light and limber.

The bleakness runs alongside a whimsical, Monty Python-ish absurdity. [11 Jan 2019, p.46]

It’s a cliché in TV criticism to say that the real protagonist is the setting, but Corporate flips that idea on its ear: Here, the setting is the antagonist, and every day you can stay alive within it is another day when you might lose yourself completely. I realize that maybe doesn’t sound very funny, but trust me, at a certain point, you laugh because your numbing corporate job has sapped you of the ability to cry.

Corporate spreads its story wide enough to ensure that one character doesn’t dominate. Even though they’re all cogs in the machine to an extent, there’s just enough distinction between each of their anxieties and misgivings that it makes for a richer tapestry of dread.

[Corporate] doesn’t do anything new for the genre, really, as it satirizes blowhards in meetings and the bells and whistles of PowerPoint. But it’s funny in an uncompromisingly nihilistic way, it never resolves into artificial sweetness, and the ensemble seems to be having a great time.

Darkly funny and clever in its skewering of the modern workplace, Corporate offers a welcome release valve for any corporate drones who tune in.