Review: YOLO: Silver Destiny – The misadventure of a lifetime
Created by Michael Cusack
Voices by Sarah Bishop, Todor Manojlovic, Michael Cusack
Network: Stan
7.5/10
Following the first season (Crystal Fantasy) with its second season (Silver Destiny), YOLO’s expansiveness with multiverses and multitudes of fantastical creatures and detailed cartoonish worlds may make it seem similar to certain other Adult Swim shows (namely Rick & Morty), but it’s in YOLO’s direct humour and casual attitude, both that seem to be quintessentially Australian, that singles it out from its contemporaries.
Besties Rachel (Todor Manojlovic) and Sarah (Sarah Bishop) continue with both their wild adventures and ordinary lives. Rachel tries to find contentment in her new garden, while Sarah is, well, doing her own thing – partying and recovering from hangovers. There’s some great new adventures to be experienced, such as time travel (300 million years forward), and even a story from Sarah’s dad about how he met her mother.
There are just a handful of dud moments, like when Rachel dreams of being wooed by a Timothee Chamalet type character, that just feels like it’s forcing a relevant person into this series. It goes to show that sometimes with this show, it’s the little details, not the big picture, that makes it so funny and amusing.
YOLO continues to demonstrate an interesting style of how it presents itself, with lots of mini-gags and quick humorous asides, which makes it feel like it’s still a Flash cartoon made for the internet, but it still has the high production quality of an Adult Swim show, combining the best of both worlds.
What’s so great to see is one of the peculiarly funny characters from the first season get to have much more screen-time and of more importance in the show, and that’s Lucas. Upon just looking at him, he’s very much a fedora-tipping, hygiene-ignoring, squirmy dweeb, but he’s not presented simply as a punching bag – he’s instead mostly ignored by the girls, left to his own devices to make himself such a specifically hilarious character.
It’s funny to observe this show, a two season Adult Swim show emerging from a meme cartoon whose name is already culturally outdated. Unlike the name, the show has remained fresh, not trying too hard to seem relevant, nor taking any wild chances that backfire and make it seem cringey – it’s simply funny, packed with jokes and gags, and features enough time on the characters and their plights and problems without resorting to dropping the humour and injecting depressing character moments and monologues in an attempt at being deep and thoughtful (looking at you, Rick & Morty). YOLO lacks the pretentiousness of some of its contemporaries and replaces it with comedy instead.
DAVID MORGAN-BROWN