Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K.’ On Hulu, Where A Big-Headed Villain Can’t Seem To Get His Act Together

M.O.D.O.K. was one of those oddball Marvel characters that rarely got a chance to shine on his own. But, seeing that he’s a gigantic head that needs a hoverchair to get around, he does seem to be ripe for parody. And who better to parody a nerdy, self-important but insecure character like Patton Oswalt? He co-created Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. and voices M.O.D.O.K. himself.

MARVEL’S M.O.D.O.K.: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In a modest house 35 years ago, a young boy with a massive head is upset when the other schoolkids broke his invention and called him “Big Head.” His mother tries to console him by saying he’ll invent something great.

The Gist: Cut to today, when the massive-headed George Tarleton is now called M.O.D.O.K. (Patton Oswalt); he’s more or less an engineered floating head who is bent on destroying and taking over the world (his name stands for “Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing”). He seems to be on his way to his goal when Iron Man (Jon Hamm) shows up and kicks M.O.D.O.K.’s ass while watching the British Bake-Off in his helmet… but M.O.D.O.K. does get away with Iron Man’s boot!

Back at headquarters for Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.), M.O.D.O.K. is celebrating the boot taking, but his co-worker Monica Rappaccini (Wendi McLendon-Covey) is just completely annoyed that M.O.D.O.K. is tweeting out his plans and other mistakes he’s making; she wants to take over but M.O.D.O.K. won’t let him. One other problem: A.I.M. is losing money and will soon go bankrupt. M.O.D.O.K. is so enraged he shoots off the arm of one of his minions, an extremely positive guy named Gary (Sam Richardson).

Things aren’t much better at home. M.O.D.O.K.’s wife Jodie (Aimee Garcia), who is making a lot of money as a mom-blogger and influencer, is looking to expand her horizons beyond being a supervillain’s wife. Lou (Ben Schwartz), his 12-year-old son, wants a ridiculous-looking tux for his bar mitzvah that will allow him to release doves during his Torah reading. And 17-year-old Melissa (Melissa Fumero), who looks like M.O.D.O.K., uses some evil of her own to drag her frenemies and make her even more popular. Oh, and their butler robot, Super-Adaptoid (Jon Daly), wants to be more than just a smoothie maker.

A tech company named GRUMBL wants to bail out A.I.M., and when an executive from the company, Austin Van Der Sleet (Beck Bennett), shows M.O.D.O.K. a stuffed version of the villain, M.O.D.O.K. takes the funding. Then he finds out that Austin is changing everything, including firing his minions. Now he needs to shrink himself into a molecule-sized version of himself, shoot himself into Austin, and keep him from singing the contract. He ends up going into Jodie — there for a meeting about a GRUMBL sponsorship — instead.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The animation style of Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. is reminiscent of Robot Chicken, which makes sense since they’re made by the same production company. But the tone is less rapid-fire, and more story-oriented.

Our Take: Oswalt and Jordan Blum (American Dad!) co-created Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. based on the MODOK character in Marvel’s comic history. The idea is to take this odd-looking, patently evil character and make him completely hapless, despite his intelligence and desire to destroy. The first episode was funny in spots, but seemed to try a little too hard to connect itself into the Marvel universe, and do fan service instead of build its own world.

There’s a mention that A.I.M. sells bootleg Avengers toys (“Some people prefer Spooder-man,” M.O.D.O.K. says). There’s the idea that M.O.D.O.K. will sleep with Iron Man’s boot. He also mentions torturing a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Despite the fact that M.O.D.O.K. is part of the Marvel universe, the fact that the show is making such an effort to plug him into it speaks to why they should leave well-enough alone and stick to building the world around him.

Oswalt, Blum and the writing staff have more than enough material to build that world. There’s Jodie, who asks M.O.D.O.K. for a divorce because she knows that she doesn’t want to play second fiddle to his evil schemes anymore. We see just enough about his kids to know that they’re both handfuls, but then we see little of them in the rest of the episode. Things at A.I.M. are in chaos, and that’s before GRUMBL took over.

The idea of a superhero or supervillain brought down to earth by the same issues we all have is one that’s immensely appealing, and Oswalt knows how to make the evil nerdy character trope come to life. But how downtrodden do we want M.O.D.O.K. to be? Will we laugh at his sad sack nature or start to cringe after awhile? Without a better idea of the story of M.O.D.O.K., the show has the potential to be a bunch of fan-service gags and little else.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Jodie asks M.O.D.O.K. for a divorce. After she leaves, he gets sad, burps and shrinks down again. “Shit,” he says in a tiny voice.

Sleeper Star: We don’t care if Sam Richardson is essentially recreating the eternally optimistic Richard Splett from Veep while playing Gary. We just like him and how he makes even a one-armed minion affably goofy.

Most Pilot-y Line: “it’s idiotic to put a mental condom on the horse penis that is my mind,” M.O.D.O.K. says to the GRUMBL HR director after being given a “no killing” edict.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. suffers from not only being not as funny as it should be, but it also pumps the fan service gags instead of actually developing the world around its star supervillain.

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.

Stream Marvel's M.O.D.O.K. on Hulu