Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Miracle Workers: End Times’ On TBS, Where Two Apocalyptic Road Warriors Move To The Suburbs

One of the things that has been most notable about Simon Rich’s series Miracle Workers is that, no matter where the cast finds itself, it’s always dealing with the same thing: Mundane, modern problems. The fourth season finds the cast in a postapocalyptic world, but the problems are still basically the same ones we deal with every day.

MIRACLE WORKERS: END TIMES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “In the beginning, there was the boom,” says a British voice as we see video of a mushroom cloud.

The Gist: “My name is Sid,” says Road Warrior Sid (Daniel Radcliffe). “I was born into a world with no past, no future. Wandering the endless wasteland… alone.”

A group of road warriors approach in their modified Jeeps and trucks. Sid manages to take out most of them, except for Warlord Freya Exaltada (Geraldine Viswanathan). But instead of killing Sid, the two of them kiss instead. We see a quick montage of their relationship, including their wedding — Sid steps on a skull instead of a glass. Then we see the two of them with luggage, and their War Dog Scraps (Jon Bass) as they decide to move from the Wasteland to a suburb called Boomtown.

They figured they’d give it a try; Freya figures “I can warlord from anywhere.” Sid gets a job with a wealthy junk dealer named Morris ‘The Junkman’ Rubinstein (Steve Buscemi). Morris likes the cut of Sid’s jib, so he invites Sid and Freya to dinner.

Meanwhile, Freya takes Sid out to try to menace the townspeople and gets no response. But then her bestie, a killer robot named TI-90 (Karan Soni), sees her. After the usual cries of “Bitch!” between Freya and “Tai,” Tai wonders just what the hell Freya is doing in the suburbs. He warns her about how boring things are there, and boring the people who live there can get.

At Morris’ McMansion (an abandoned McDonald’s), the couple meet Morris’ subservient hologram wife Holly (Erin Darke). Freya gets so bored that she calls Tai in to rescue her; he busts through the wall and starts shooting his handgun (which is in place of his hand). Morris fires Sid on the spot. But then Freya finds out why he’s so excited to be in Boomtown: Because he’s there with her. She becomes determined to get Sid his job back.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The first three seasons of Miracle Workers, all of which have had Radcliffe, Viswanathan, Buscemi, Bass and Soni in the cast.

Our Take: As with the first three seasons of Simon Rich’s anthology series, Miracle Workers isn’t as much about the setting or what the characters do, but how they deal with the everyday mundanities of modern life. By this fourth season, the idea has been stretched a bit thin, but there are still some pretty funny character-based moments during the first three episodes.

Like Seasons 2 and 3, the stories in End Times are more episodic than the season-long arc of the first season was. The 20-minute episodes somehow seem to fit in a decent B-story. In the second episode, Freya tries to conquer her neighborhood’s HOA while Sid and Morris deliver a cube to a cackling blog Sid is convinced is pure evil. In the third episode, Freya and Sid turn to Tai’s Matrix-like VR sex therapy when their passion goes cold, and Morris attends his 40th high school reunion to shove his success in everyone’s faces, even after he learns his classmates all died in the Boom.

As you can see by these plots, they could be from any sitcom, but now they’re contrasted with this postapocalyptic hellscape. That premise definitely fades as the season goes on, because the setting gives way to the stories and relationships, and it makes the postapocalyptic gags start to look tired. But this group, which has faced some attrition over the show’s run but is still largely intact, knows how to be funny together at this point. So even if the show isn’t as cohesive as it was four years ago, it still has lots of funny moments, especially ones involving Radcliffe and a boulder.

Sex and Skin: Did we mention Daniel Radcliffe humping a boulder? That was in Episode 3.

Parting Shot: Freya and Sid invite Scraps on the bed, and Scraps proceeds to lie right on top of Sid. Then he flops on his back and sighs.

Sleeper Star: Bass is funny as the couple’s human pet Scraps, who seems to be intelligent enough to operate a computer but still threatens the mailman.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Freya calls Tai, he’s at a rave. “Everyone’s so hot and sweaty and unidentifiably multicultural!” he yells to her on his hand-phone.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Miracle Workers: End Times is probably the thinnest of the show’s four seasons, but the episodes are pretty quick and there’s more than enough funny stuff to help you binge through the episodes once they hit Max.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.