Apple TV's animated series draws to a close with this third season, after which the show was cancelled. A cancellation on Apple TV is a fascinating situation, because given that viewing figures for anything on the platform are quite low, I'd imagine that given the names involved, the show was an expensive production, and that must have contributed to its downfall.
Owen (Leslie Odom Jnr) tries to establish a campaign extoling the virtues of Central Park, he gets the mayor's backing. Bitsy (Stanley Tucci) also wants to meet the mayor, to establish if her plan for buying the Park can continue. Paige (Kathryn Hahn) is planning on writing a book, and needs to meet with publishing houses about it, however, she's distracted when her sister, Abby (Kristen Bell), moves to New York to try and become an actress.
I mentioned in my review of season two that the 16-episode run (as opposed to 10 in the first) made the show a bit more of a slog that is previously was and that certain episodes, that were not quite bottle ones, but not far away, felt like padding. This third season is an improvement, back down to 13 episodes, but still with a couple of episodes with film parodies and another Fista-puffs episode that feel more like they're there to make the order. This season does have the most socially conscious episode of the show though, with Owen having to explain to Cole about the placation of white people's fear of African Americans that he'll have to deal with.
I'd assume the show is expensive and time consuming to produce, requiring the scheduling of an in demand cast as well as the need to write three to four original songs for each episode, some of which utilise star names like Regina Spektor or Mike Shinoda and wonder if that was a contributing factor to the cancellation. All of which happens before the animation process begins.
The series ends in an OK way, as in there's no cliffhangers - but the wider plot points, such as Bitsy's plan to buy the Park aren't really resolved. I don't like this run as much as I did the first, but it's certainly not bad and I would advocate for a single feature length episode finishing up the series properly.
Owen (Leslie Odom Jnr) tries to establish a campaign extoling the virtues of Central Park, he gets the mayor's backing. Bitsy (Stanley Tucci) also wants to meet the mayor, to establish if her plan for buying the Park can continue. Paige (Kathryn Hahn) is planning on writing a book, and needs to meet with publishing houses about it, however, she's distracted when her sister, Abby (Kristen Bell), moves to New York to try and become an actress.
I mentioned in my review of season two that the 16-episode run (as opposed to 10 in the first) made the show a bit more of a slog that is previously was and that certain episodes, that were not quite bottle ones, but not far away, felt like padding. This third season is an improvement, back down to 13 episodes, but still with a couple of episodes with film parodies and another Fista-puffs episode that feel more like they're there to make the order. This season does have the most socially conscious episode of the show though, with Owen having to explain to Cole about the placation of white people's fear of African Americans that he'll have to deal with.
I'd assume the show is expensive and time consuming to produce, requiring the scheduling of an in demand cast as well as the need to write three to four original songs for each episode, some of which utilise star names like Regina Spektor or Mike Shinoda and wonder if that was a contributing factor to the cancellation. All of which happens before the animation process begins.
The series ends in an OK way, as in there's no cliffhangers - but the wider plot points, such as Bitsy's plan to buy the Park aren't really resolved. I don't like this run as much as I did the first, but it's certainly not bad and I would advocate for a single feature length episode finishing up the series properly.
