User Reviews

As some reviewers noted, with this country flooded with Australian (and New Zealand) actors, why weren't they cast in Everything is Bonzer!? Anyway, still season 3 is like a reboot in a way, with the cast now on Earth, akin to Gilligan's Planet where the cast left the island to explore the solar system.

The season starts out pretty well with the same brilliantly original and well acted characters continuing to do great stuff with an often funny and sometimes laugh out loud script. I particularly love the naive lines that drop from Jason's mouth and Eleanor is so likeable and engaging.

For Australians though the cliched accents and set designs are very very distracting. I wish they had presented the setting as a SIMULATION of Sydney rather than the real thing on real Earth - then I could have relaxed and laughed at how bad it was. But you don't CREDIBLY make America into Australia just by:

• substituting Australian flags for American ones (we don't have flags in the corner of our offices unless we are the Prime Minister and the one on the University symbol overlaid by an American liberty torch, and an establishment year far too early to be likely and then placed absolutely everywhere was just silly),
• "subtly" placing koalas, kangaroos and jars of Vegemite in EVERY scene (why would a muffin cart, which is an American thing anyway despite its cliched Australian "down under" name, even need a jar of Vegemite?), and
• sprinkling the script with old-fashioned poorly-applied Aussie slang badly pronounced by British people (the word bonza pretty much died out 40 years ago - and you don't spell it "bonzer").

Other reviewers have said that the same thing happens when American accents are assumed by actors from other countries - but what we have here is in another league entirely. Its the equivalent of having a fake American TV character saying things like, "howdy partner", "you betcha baby doll", "right on man" and "hot diggedy-do!" every second sentence out of context and having plastic raccoons, bald eagles, Statues of Liberty and Golden Gate Bridges placed somewhere in every scene. You would surely be distracted by that!

The new character Simone's accent was the worst because it was played seriously and yet was so gratingly wrong. I'd rather see the accent deliberately faked and mocked rather than unwittingly rendered badly. (For example, she says "interesTID" like the British.) They had Aussie actors there in minor roles so I can't understand why they didn't use them (or get in others) for the Simone role. After all the British actor wasn't particularly valuable in terms of her input into the comedy or the plot. A poor casting decision.

Its a shame that even my review has been consumed and distracted by the "Fake Aussie" issue. As I said, I DID actually manage to enjoy the episode and would still recommend it to anyone.

I love the show, but as an Australian, the attempted Aussie accents in this are just awful. It's fine when Michael does it because they acknowledge that it's bad. If you think I'm being harsh, you just don't realise how stupid these people would sounds of they spoke with that accent in Australia. Listen to the Hemsworth brother in episode 3 for a comparison.

I loved the first 2 seasons of this show. I was definitely more worried about THIS season after how the 2nd ended. A lot was uncertain and it seemed like the show was almost ditching it's winning concept.

Initially, halfway through this season (when I first saw it when it originally aired), I lost interest as I felt the show had completely lost its touch and was going in the wrong direction. So coming back to this season now is definitely not as favoured as rewatching the first two, but I'm keeping an open mind just in case this season isn't as bad as I thought it was the first time around.

This 2 part start to the season starts off strong albeit quite messy and out of character. But in the second half is ultimately fails to capture my attention due to how uninteresting some of the characters are getting.

I do really enjoy Michael going to earth to intervene with our 4 main characters to get them all together. His interactions with Eleanore and Chidi were easily the best. Since the show has always been very good as being philosophical, heartfelt and surprisingly insightful when it comes to these characters. I was hoping for more time between the 2 but we haven't gotten it just yet.

However, the backstory involving Tahani and Jason after their near death experiences just felt weak. Tahani started out as a parodic character, but evolved into a misunderstood and obnoxiously charming character in S2, and I was really glad to see her character develop the way it did. Her path toward joining "The Brainy Bunch" didn't flow as naturally as the other 2 and actually felt forced.

I really think Jason's dumbness and his overall story has lost its novelty. At this point it's kind of getting annoying and doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I find the characters in his plot line to be extremely annoying and uninteresting. Especially Donkey Doug who we see in Ep.5. I just think that plot line is really messy and lacks the heart or consistency of that of Chidi or Eleanore.

Good things about this episode? Kristen Bell, Ted Danson and William Jackson Harper continue to be fantastic in their roles. Bell is hilariously sarcastic as she's always been, and I got some good laughs from her. I find the experiment very intriguing and worth exploring for a season's opening concept. Also, Marc Evan Jackson kills it as Sean, the demon of all demons. The season so far isn't devoid of the show's absurdist charm quite just yet, but as funny as it can still be... it feels wrong for these characters to be on earth now. So far this season feels like a completely different and less interesting show.

Also. The new character Simone is one of the reasons I lost interest in the show. She feels out of place with the group, and is only there because for some reason we're in Australia. Some people say the Australian accents are terrible but I wouldn't know so I don't care. Simone particularly annoys me, but we're also witnessing The Bad Place trying to sabotage the experiment by bringing in Adam Scott (Trevor). I don't remember how his character works into everything, but I really like Scott's character in the show.

So far, S3 is trying new things. For a 43 minute first episode, it can't carry itself as well as the S2 opener of the same length. It starts off strong but falls apart in the latter half. It's just a pretty messy start that wasn't as engaging as this show has proven itself to be.

I know the season ditches this for more afterlife stuff later on, which I do look forward to revisiting as i enjoyed it a lot.... until the once again messy ending. But I got really sick of the Australia stuff really quickly.