The Tavi Gevinson of Chicken

The Weekly Binge: 3 Web Series to Watch this Week

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We had the pleasure of attending The Feels season two premiere this past weekend at Alamo Drafthouse in New York City and we’re excited for what you have in store for yourselves (it premieres June 1, with a new episode dropping each day this month). The show is structured like a comic strip, with short episodes that intermingle animation and live action and usually focus on a central joke or message, often about unexpressed emotions or being trapped in one’s head. The writer and lead, Tim Manley, has presented at The Moth and it comes through in his overly-confessional arc about a teacher with depressive tendencies who is maybe bisexual and maybe asexual with a universe of friends and romantic interests who are all struggling to find their purpose and place.

The setup here is that Winston Churchill, in an effort to turn the tide in World War 2, time-travels to assemble a team of legendary scientists, including Tapputi, Tesla, Darwin, Freud, Marie Curie, and Einstein. They travel in a vehicle that best resembles Adam West’s Batmobile and solve crimes like why all of England’s apples are disappearing. The scientists all have superpowers — Freud sniffs cocaine and can make other people horny, Darwin can morph into a wide variety of animals, Einstein is super-fast, and Churchill preaches about “always packing a lunch.” It’s like Scooby Doo with a dose of science and history and it’s very very fun.

The beauty of the internet is that it is both deep and weird, like this staggeringly popular series that defies its simple premise. An unbelievably confident British pre-teen who calls himself The Chicken Connoisseur tours and rates the fast food chicken joints in a particular London neighborhood. As someone who will undoubtedly never go to any of these restaurants, it’s unclear what’s so compelling about the show, except to say that the kid has a magnetism that makes his pronouncements about free barbecue sauce, fry crunchiness, menu prices, and references to his viewing audience as “fam” completely addictive. This kid is the Tavi Gevinson of chicken and we cannot wait until he transitions to talking about things we actually care about.