Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Baymax!’ On Disney+, Where ‘Big Hero 6’s Gentle Balloon Robot Dispenses Health Advice

One of the reasons why Big Hero 6 was such a big hit movie for Disney eight years ago was the big, puffy robot Baymax. He’s a gentle giant, whose mission is to help people with medical issues. Now Baymax gets his own series of shorts, and he’s helping both people in his own family and folks around San Fransokyo.

BAYMAX!: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A short woman feels around her mailbox for that day’s delivery. As she sorts through the mail, she feels pain in her hip. A robot standing across the street wheels over to help.

The Gist: That robot is Baymax (Scott Adsit), a balloon-like, gentle robot invented by Hiro Hamata (Ryan Potter) to dispense healthcare advice and treatment. When he hears the woman, Kiko (Emily Kuroda), utter “Aw, itai! Aw!” he wheels over, hoping to provide healthcare assistance. After an instantaneous scan, he sees she has a degenerative hip; he recommends she swims for exercise, which is great because she’s right next door to a community pool.

Kiko tries to shake him, citing she’s afraid of water, but Baymax attempts exposure therapy to get her over her fear. Then, she decides to use a chopstick to puncture him and get him out of her hair. He ends up leading her to the pool, where he finds out the real reason he doesn’t want to go swimming.

In the six-episode series of 7-minute animated shorts, Baymax helps Hiro’s aunt Cass (Maya Rudolph) run her café when she sprains her ankle, a middle schooler named Sofia (Lilimar Hernandez) who is having her first period, a fish soup purveyor named Mbita (Jaboukie Young-White) who is suddenly allergic to fish and a stray cat named Yachi who has an AirPod lodged in his throat. Finally, when Baymax himself is in trouble, Hiro and Cass find the people he’s most recently helped and they search for him as a team.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Baymax! is a sequel of sorts to Big Hero 6 and its offshoot TV series. But this time Baymax is close to the sole focus, at least in the first five episodes.

Our Take: It may look like the six quick episodes of Baymax! are just light entertainment for kids and adults, much like the other shorts that Disney has placed on its streaming service. But Baymax’s medical abilities are prodigious, and his advice — given in Adsit’s “gentle robot” voice — is usually pretty spot on, people watching the series might actually learn a few things.

But whatever message the show is trying to impart is done with quite a number of laugh-out-loud moments. We were surprised, for instance, that the episode with Sofia dealt pretty frankly about a girl getting her first period. But it also gave us a laugh when we see Baymax standing in the female hygiene aisle of a drugstore, not knowing what in the heck to buy to help Sofia (believe us, we’ve been there).

Other gags, like the first thing Cass sees when she straps a camera to her cat’s head — she wanted to spy on Baymax while he ran the cafe — were sharp and funny. Creator Don Hall and writer Cirocco Dunlap do a good job of giving us insight into characters that we don’t know from the film, which is tough to accomplish in such a short period of time. We even get to see Mbita ask Yukio (Brian Tee), a guy he’s crushing on, out on a date.

The final episode does a good job of bringing the story to a conclusion, which is why we recommend watching the six episodes in one go, which will take less than an hour.

What Age Group Is This For?: The series is rated TV-G, and we think the physical comedy is appropriate for all ages. Some of the medical stuff will go over the heads of kids under 10, but that’s just fine.

Parting Shot: Hiro comes home to see Baymax in his charger, wearing a swim cap. He tells Hiro that he didn’t swim with Kiko; he actually floated.

Sleeper Star: Maya Rudolph is funny as Aunt Cass, as she was in the film, and we love how Cass is drawn to look like a Disney Princess, even if she owns cat cafe in San Fransokyo.

Most Pilot-y Line: Maybe the idea of Kiko arming herself with a chopstick was a bit on the nose for her character, but that’s a quibble. We did like her bunny slippers-turned-holsters.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Baymax! dedicates each episode to all healthcare heroes, and they should be happy that such an informative, funny series is made in their honor.

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.