Hello and welcome to Project Nitsuj. Welcome to another edition of Animation Bang. So over the last few weeks I have been checking out some of Netflix’s original programs. Specifically, their animated shows and I have to say, it’s not bad. Netflix has been taking leaps of faith and investing in creators who are trying to present something different to the audience. Does it always work? No, but the fact that they’re willing to take these chances and give creators the opportunity to try something new is cool and when it does work it can lead to great new content like today’s review, Inside Job. Released in late 2021, Inside Job is the brainchild of Shion Takeuchi who has quite the impressive resume from an animation perspective. She was a writer for Gravity Falls (in fact, Alex Hirsch is an executive producer for the show), We Bear Bears, The Regular Show, storyboard artist on Inside Out and Monster University. That’s pretty impressive. Working for two of the major media giants in the world and being successful in both. With the ending of Bojack Horseman, Netflex was looking for their next big adult animated show to fill in the hole it left, and I think they found it with Inside Job. Despite only having 10 episodes the series has received high praise from everyone who watched it for its writing, characters, stories, and relatable themes. Today, we’re gonna take a look at this and see if it’s deserving of that praise and if it’s worth checking out. Let’s get started, this is Inside Job.
The Plot
So the plot of Inside Job is that all those crazy government conspiracies you hear about on the internet and from your friends is all true. The world is secretly ruled and controlled by a shadow government who have supposedly ruled the world since the dawn of time (and no it’s not the Illuminati. Although the Illuminati are their rivals). However, as time has gone on the shadow government came to realize that controlling the world isn’t as easy as it once was, so they created a company called Cognito Inc. Their job is to keep control over the world and keep conspiracies a secret from the public. In the show we follow this woman named Reagan and her team who handle a lot of field work with Reagan next in line to be the new head of the company. However, J.R. the current CEO feels that Reagan lacks the people skills needed to run the company and has hired a normal citizen named Brett to work side by side with her and her team.
Main Characters
Reagan Ridley voiced by Lizzy Caplan
A brilliant robotics engineer who is socially awkward and longs to be the CEO of Cognito. She has a number of issues with her parents and is so socially awkward that when anyone tries to hug her she punches them. She is also emotionally awkward as she has a hard time expressing her feelings to anyone.
Brett Hand voiced by Clark Duke
A yes-man who was only hired because his face is so generic that no face recognition program would be able to identify him. He is a kind and caring person with a few mental health issues and longs to be accepted and loved by everyone. At first I thought I was going to hate this guy, but they make him very likable, relatable, and pretty hilarious.
Gigi voiced by Trisha Campbell
Head of Media Manipulation and Subliminal Messages at Cognito as well as the office gossiper.
Glenn Dolphman voiced by John DiMaggio
A proud and patriotic soldier who is half-man half dolphin thanks to a super soldier experiment. He doesn’t have the funniest lines but DiMaggio delivers them so well that they’re hilarious.
Andre Lee voiced by Bobby Lee
The team’s biochemist who is addicted to drugs and sex. He is always on drugs. When he is not on drugs and sober he becomes very anxious.
Magic Myc voiced by Brett Gelman
A psychic mushroom-like organism from a hive mind deep inside Hollow Earth who has the ability to read people’s minds. Out of all the characters he’s my favorite. His dry sarcastic humor is hilarious and despite not having a face he just oozes so much personality. His whole character just gives off a Norm McDonald vibe.
Side Characters
Rand Ripley voiced by Christian Slater
Reagan’s father and co-founder of Cognito who was fired for almost exposing the Deep State and trying to blow up the sun as his “solution” to cure skin cancer. He is an alcoholic asshole who has been raising Reagan since she was six to take over Cognito. He lives with Reagan where he engages in flame wars and eggs on conspiracy groups.
Tamiko Ripley voiced by Suzy Nakamura
Reagan’s mom and Rand’s ex-wife. She is an author.
J.R. Scheimpough voiced by Andy Daly
The co-founder and CEO of Cognito. He is crafty and can talk his way out of almost any situation. He longs to be a member of the shadow government.
ROBOTUS voiced by Chris Diamantopoulos (they got Mickey Mouse!?)
A robot created by Reagan to replace the real president. In the first episode he gains true AI sentients believing that America is the greatest country in the world and tries to withdraw America from the rest of the world. However, this changes when Reagan shows him just how messed up America is via internet (Florida alone would drive any man crazy) and he decides to wipe out all of humanity. Reagan and Brett manage to stop him and lock him up in the basement of Cognito where he is literally a wi-fi connection away from becoming a god and destroying us all. As the series goes on he becomes obsessed with Friends and even starts to gain a soft spot for Reagan.
Episodes
As of now Inside Job has 10 episodes and one season. Netflix has renewed the series for a second season but at the time of posting this blog a date hasn’t been announced for the second season and it’s unknown if Netflix will renew it for a third season. Each episode is funny and managed to get a good laugh out of me. The first episode does a good job setting up the series and introducing the characters. If I had to name my favorite episodes it would to be a number of them. The first one is Sex Machina. Reagan gets into the dating scene and with the help of ROBOTUS finds a 99.999% match for her. But Reagan’s social awkwardness and anxiety gets the best of her and she finds that .001% would be a deal breaker. She decides to create a robot version of the man where that robot creates a robot version of Reagan who kills the man robot and goes on a date with the real man before Reagan shows up and fights her. Reagan is able to defeat her robot counterpart but when the extraction team goes to pick up the body it was gone setting up a future return and rematch. The episode does a good job showing the doubts and fears of dating someone and being rejected, but also shows that when one makes a change for the better than new possibilities can open up for you. There’s also a plot B storyline involving Brett and Glenn where they switch bodies to walk a mile in each other’s shoes which is funny and got a good laugh out of me. The next episode is the Brettfast Club where we discover there’s this town stuck in the 80s where we sell all our recalled products from that era. The group goes there for a mission where Myc accidently falls out of the plane, gets amnesia and the team has to rescue him before the town figures out what’s going on. Brett goes all 80s kid on us and we discover that behind his happy go lucky attitude is a man with serious mental health issues. He was ignored and neglected by his parents and found comfort in the family sitcoms he watched from that era as a child. This really does explain his desire to be loved and accepted by everyone. He fears loneliness and this in turn makes his character all the more relatable. We still get some good laughs this episode thanks to Myc who gets taken in by some kids where we get an E.T inspired story if the alien was an asshole. After that episode is Ghost Protocol. Reagan hooks up with Rafe Masters, a British secret agent (who is an obvious homage to James Bond) at her mom’s wedding for a one-night stand. Rafe of course becomes interested in Reagan but she wants no part of him and wants to break up with him without feeling guilty. At the suggestion of her friends she fakes her death devastating Rafe who begins to suspect that one of them killed her and becomes obsessed with finding the killer. Realizing she’s being the literal bad guy in this situation, Reagan confronts Rafe and tells him what he really is all while his archnemesis Skullfinger returns where the two have this weird sexual tension between them (scene here: https://youtu.be/XHbWTip8F3Q).
The final episodes that are my favorite are the last two episodes of the season. J.R. has finally decided to make Reagan the new CEO of Cognito, but it gets discovered that there’s a mole in the company who has stolen the master file. The chase is now on to find the mole as tensions rise, friends turn on each other, and lines are drawn. It gets discovered that the mole this whole time is Bear-O a robotic bear that Rand created for Reagan when she was a child to give her hugs and affection because he didn’t want to do it himself. Bear-O has been observing Reagan and has come to the conclusion that Cognito is making her life miserable and since his main function is to make Reagan happy he has decided to take down Cognito himself and free her. When the master file gets destroyed, Bear-O goes to plan B which is killing all of Reagan’s coworkers. The only way to stop Bear-O is to shut him down and the only person who can do that is Reagan, but she forgot the password needed to shut him down. In order to retrieve the password, Reagan and Rand dive into her mind where we learn the awful truth about Reagan and Rand. Throughout the show Rand has been compared to Rick from Rick and Morty. Both are alcoholic geniuses who neglect their families, but Rick is surprisingly the better person. Despite all of Rick’s faults he has shown in the past how much he cares for Morty and his family. Deep down he loves them despite what he may have us believe. Rand, on the other hand proves that he is worse than Rick. While exploring her mind Reagan discovers that she actually had a friend as a child who liked hanging out with her named Orrin. Unlike Reagan who was a child genius, Orrin was just your average fun-loving kid and Rand didn’t approve of their friendship as he felt that Orrin would reduce Reagan to a life of mediocrity and stop her from being his pawn for the future. Rand knew that J.R. was out to get him, so he devised a plan to get back into Cognito should he ever get fired, Reagan. He experimented on Reagan and erased all of her memories of Orrin so that she would stay the course and join Cognito just like he always planned. When Reagan confronts Rand on this he shows no remorse for his actions because of his three principles. One, in his mind there are two types of people in the world. People like he and Reagan who are smart and should rule the world and people like Orrin who deliver pizza and fight wars. Two, emotions and friends are pointless. And three, family is just an experiment. He never once saw Reagan as a daughter, only an experiment that he could use to achieve his goals and he succeeded. Throughout the show Reagan never once gives a reason as to why she wants to run Cognito or even why she joined the company. It was all Rand controlling her life and using her to get back into the company. He didn’t care about the mental or psychological damage he was doing to her because in his mind Reagan was an experiment first and a daughter second. After deactivating Bear-O, Reagan kicks Rand out of her house as well as her life and prepares to take over Cognito only to get a twist at the end. The shadow government feels that this mole incident showed she wasn’t ready to take over the company. They send J.R. off to shadow prison for conspiring against them and they put Rand in charge because he’s the majority shareholder of the company ending the season on a big cliffhanger.
Themes
Each episode does a good job of exploring the characters and showing the effects of what family, friends, and are jobs have on us. Nowhere is this seen more then with Reagan as we saw previously there are layers to her personality that makes her so messed up and we explore this throughout the season. In one episode Cognito has to attend this gala hosted by the lizard people in order to get a grant. This is another funny episode as we see some of the world’s famous celebrities and musicians are all lizard people and they’re the reason why global warming exists. Anyway, their main form of greeting and friendship is a hug and Reagan doesn’t like hugs. This episode explores why she doesn’t like hugs while also presenting a very funny and entertaining episode with these lizard people. In Sex Machina when Glenn and Brett switch bodies Glenn believes he can live the good life with Brett’s good looks and money only to discover that it’s his personality that’s holding him back.
Does it count as Amerime
No. The animation is similar to that of Rick and Morty combined with the writing Gravity Falls without the Disney filters.
Does it deserve a second season
Yes, this show is great. Every character is funny, the voice actors are great, each episode was clever, and with the way the first season ended I’m curious to see what happens next. What will Reagan do next, will Orrin make an appearance, is J.R. really gone, what happened to robot Reagan, and what will ROBOTUS do when he finishes Friends? Will he binge watch Seinfeld next?
Final Thoughts
Inside Job is a great show. When I first heard of it I thought it was going to be a Rick and Morty clone, but it’s not, it’s its own thing and I couldn’t be happier for it. The show has excellent writing, good jokes, and fun characters that you come to like and relate to.
Final Score
The final score for Inside Job is an 8.5/10 with a must watch stamp of approval. If you like Gravity Falls and Rick and Morty then you’ll like this series. It’s like the best of both worlds. I don’t know when the next season is coming out but I’m looking forward to it and I hope it gets renewed for a third season. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.