Angry Boys (2011)
8/10
A nice little story
13 July 2011
Warning: Spoilers
I had heard nothing of Angry Boys in the lead up to it, and stumbled upon it by accident and have now seen all episodes to date, and I've got to say, it's a pretty good show.

I would argue that initially, the show starts out stumbling, as if it should be watched all-at-once, and it comes across as not quite as good as his other shows initially. From a technical standpoint, this is his most ambitious show so far, because the logistics and the editing to incorporate all these characters into the one narrative appears to have been very constricting. Nonetheless, I'd say that what is going on is the best Lilly's come up with yet.

I must say, the show is rarely funny. It is profane and offensive, but not funny in any "laugh-out-loud" moments save from the oddball one-offs that come and go in each episode.

The best thing about it is that it has heart. The characters all have a story and depth to them. There are reasons they're angry, and they run much deeper than can be seen on the surface if taken at face value. Indeed, this is where the strength of the show lies, not in the "in-your-face" nature of the spoken word, but in the despairing relationships these "angry boys" have with those in their lives. We have the surfer, Blake, who is in a state of arrested development, having never learned any form of responsibility for another human being; the quiet criminal, whose mother can't be bothered to visit him in prison and he is picked on by his peers; the skater whose overbearing mother has taken away his identity; the twin brothers whose relationship is threatened by abandonment and separation issues; and the upper-class black rapper, whose father thinks of him as a worthless human being.

It's these relationships that make these characters believable and make the show worth watching, albeit it is sad at times to see the way the characters talk to each other.

Cheers.
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