While I’ve never been an adherent to the four episode rule, it does make a useful checkpoint if nothing else.  So we’re probably getting pretty close to a decision point on Carole & Tuesday, even if the cord can stretch a bit farther with a two-cour series.  And once you get past the Watanabe context and all the baggage that carries with it (i.e., wanting the series to be great because of the name above the title) Carole & Tuesday is a show sporting both positives and negatives in similar numbers.

In some respects this episode was a microcosm of that.  I quite liked certain elements here, but it’s a little alarming that the main reason the episode was successful is that it focused on characters besides the two leads – who are, frankly, pretty boring.  It’s also striking that in an episode focused on making a music video and part of an arc where the leads are trying to break through as musicians, the only song used was a rehash of the ED.  On the other hand this was the first episode where the sci-fi elements actually factored into the story.  But because they’ve been so underplayed, what happened here came off as pretty ridiculous.  Contradiction city.

I was thinking last week about how I would describe the soundtrack (the actual songs, not the BGM) so far, and it finally clicked – these songs sound like what you’d hear playing on the PA at Uniqlo.  And while opinions may vary, believe me that’s not intended as a compliment.  Indeed the musical product of Carole & Tuesday (non-italicized) is very much like the characters themselves – bland, overly familiar and not very interesting.  And too much like Carole & Tuesday (italicized) as a whole.  Given that this is a series about music, that’s a big, big problem.

It’s almost inexplicable that someone who loves music as much as Watanabe does would make a series with music as its raison d’etre and this would be the musical result.  All of the in-jokes and musical gags – hell, even the episode titles – reflect that Carole & Tuesday is obsessed with pop music minutiae.  Getting the music right should have been among both the first and easiest things this show tackled, and that (so far) it hasn’t is a big tell, it seems to me.  Is this on-purpose, making the music as inoffensive as possible to try and appeal to a wide audience?  If so it seems to be working and hey, Sakamichi no Apollo did tank commercially…

Where that leaves viewers who aren’t buying that approach is a real problem, though I doubt Netflix cares too much.  Introducing Gus’ ex-wife Marie was a nice change of pace, because their interaction was way more interesting than anything involving the kids.  And while the whole IDEA thing (seriously – the 1-star review average didn’t clue you in?) was built around a bog-standard Watanabe robot character, it mostly worked on a comedic level (even if it was totally unrealistic to the technology level of the mythology as it’s been shown so far).  And the Roddy torture gag is already getting pretty old.

What I’m really searching for is something to give me optimism that it can prop up the story for two cours.  A Gus redemption story?  Cleary not the main point here.  Not the music, seemingly.  A romance angle between Carole & Tuesday?  Watanabe certainly wouldn’t shy away from it based on this episode’s developments, but they’d have to blossom as interesting people a lot more than they have for that twist to pack any narrative punch.  My fear is that we’ll be left picking and choosing the isolated successful moments every week, as has been the case for the first month, without anything really coming together as a whole.