Wet Hot American Summer is one of the most bizarre franchises out there, having spawned two seasons of TV out of one cult comedy film. But it is a franchise with endless potential, since it exists in such a ridiculous world. In the Wet Hot universe, anything can happen to anyone, so the story has only gotten increasingly more ridiculous as it's gone on. When the First Day of Camp series was released two years ago, it was a novelty to see these actors back in their strange roles. But with Ten Years Later, the shine has worn off a bit.
Part of what makes it feel less impactful is that the reunion isn't as complete as it was before. The most notable absence is Bradley Cooper, whose character - Ben - has been taken over Adam Scott under the gag of "having gotten a nose job". That very much fits within the universe, but they got a season's worth of filming out of Cooper in a single day in the last series, and Ben doesn't feature too heavily throughout this one, so I don't know why Cooper isn't back. David Hyde Pierce's cameo is funny, and plays to the meta nature of the series, but it also feels a bit lazy.
The spirit of the series is still very much alive in Ten Years Later. What's so charming about Wet Hot is that it feels like a bunch of friends just messing around. The fates of characters are completely re-written - like it's a comic book written by ten-year-olds - in ways that make no sense, but because of the world the story takes place in, you just roll with it. The timeline is contradicted again and again, but it's either directly pointed out and corrected with a joke, or pointed out as a continuity error in a met joke. It's pure lunacy from beginning to end, but that's what you expect. The most genius new joke is the addition of two new characters, which the story pretends to have included from the very beginning with some unexpectedly good editing tricks.
Something that I found as a repeated theme with a lot of the jokes was that they all felt stretched. There's nothing wrong with a season-long running joke, but some of them weren't that funny in the first place, and very much overstayed their welcome. the whole series is essentially buildup to one big punchline, and it just goes on and on and on. It's funny, then it goes on long enough to stop being funny, then loops back around to being funny again, and then keeps going, and becomes unfunny again. Even some of the parodies of storytelling conventions, which this series excels at, just felt halfhearted.
I didn't quite feel disappointed with this series, but it just didn't have the same spark. The fifteen-year-long gap between the original film made the callbacks fun, but now they feel a bit stale. Quite a lot of what's being referenced was only established in the world two years ago, so calling back to it like it's some classic one-liner is strange. They also have to escalate things further, based on an already ridiculous escalation. First Day of Camp had Ronald Reagan wanting to destroy the camp? Well now, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush want to destroy the camp, and there's a nuke. I don't know, it's all just starting to feel a bit old.
When I finished First Day of Camp, I immediately started watching it again from the beginning. With this series, I don't really have any desire to revisit it. There are some shows that serve me best as ambient noise while I write or edit something, and Ten Years Later fits more into that category. There are definitely some great moments, and I was always looking forward to seeing what happened next. But it didn't feel like it had the same heart behind it all. The story is left open to be continued, and given how fast they seem to grind these seasons out, I'm sure we'll get more. I do look forward to seeing what happens next, but I hope it can move in some new directions, and stop relying on the greatest hits of the past.
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