Though Hunters creator David Weil appears much too young to even have existed in the 1970s, much less remember them (his biographical material is strangely silent on the subject of age), his show seems firmly rooted in that era, from its Starsky & Hutch-style musical cues to the fourth-wall-busting gimmicks that seemed so funny back in the days of Kentucky Fried Movie. (The actors break into one scene with a PSA for Nazi-hunting tips like, look out for white guys with walk-in ovens.)
Coupled with the Jewish-frat-boy parameters of most of the humor—one character confides to another that he had a serious lust for the kid's recently murdered grandmother, he would have liked to have "mazeled her tov, gefilted her fish"—Hunters gives itself a garish comic-book sensibility that's screechily incompatible with an account of one of the 20th century's most abominable crimes. (Hang on to your emails about Stalin for when we discuss the Roseanne Barr remake of Dr. Zhivago.) I'm not saying that jokes about Hitler or World War II are innately beyond the pale, but they need to be shaped by genuine humor, not a sophomoric in-your-face impulse.
Hunters' obsession with juvenilia is unfortunate (seriously unfortunate—he introduces two of his Nazi-hunters as "a couple of Chabad-asses"; surely there's a constitutional violation there somewhere) because the show's tri-cornered plot has the makings of a good suspense thriller.
https://reason.com/2020/02/21/hunters-wastes-its-cast-plot-on-stupid-frat-jokes/
Coupled with the Jewish-frat-boy parameters of most of the humor—one character confides to another that he had a serious lust for the kid's recently murdered grandmother, he would have liked to have "mazeled her tov, gefilted her fish"—Hunters gives itself a garish comic-book sensibility that's screechily incompatible with an account of one of the 20th century's most abominable crimes. (Hang on to your emails about Stalin for when we discuss the Roseanne Barr remake of Dr. Zhivago.) I'm not saying that jokes about Hitler or World War II are innately beyond the pale, but they need to be shaped by genuine humor, not a sophomoric in-your-face impulse.
Hunters' obsession with juvenilia is unfortunate (seriously unfortunate—he introduces two of his Nazi-hunters as "a couple of Chabad-asses"; surely there's a constitutional violation there somewhere) because the show's tri-cornered plot has the makings of a good suspense thriller.
https://reason.com/2020/02/21/hunters-wastes-its-cast-plot-on-stupid-frat-jokes/