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Its a TV comedy that feels reliable, comfortable.
(Its very hard to resist car metaphors when describing this show.)
(Im sorry, Im sorry, Im trying to stop.)
But those basic character types are present inTaxiin the 70s, and inNewsRadioin the 90s, and inAbbott Elementarytoday.
Thats still true onAmerican Auto, at least a little.
Katherine has lots of on-the-nose bad-boss qualities, especially early in the series.
Jack (Tye White) is the salt-of-the-earth common-sense guy.
Cyrus (Michael Benjamin Washington) is uptight and knows better than everyone else.
Elliot (Humphrey Ker) is the bootlicker.
Dori (X Mayo) is the wacky, anti-authority assistant.
Its a cookie-cutter workplace-sitcom character spread, well balanced and primed for high jinks.
Something shifts, though, by the end of season one.
As season two revs up, we learn that Katherine actually does care about her co-workers.
Shes good at corporate crises.
She wantsto do better.
She even learns to drive!
But the specific nature of her corporate job keeps putting her into bizarre, defensive, inhuman circumstances.
Whats most effective aboutAmerican Auto, though, is the way that concept plays throughout the ensemble.
The dizzying weirdness of existing in this workplace squeezes everyone at one point or another, though.
Dori invents an elaborate fantasyland of fictional social-media accounts to boost Katherines profile.
Elliot has to extort a middle schooler for the legal rights to their improbably accurate car-design school project.
Even Jack, the most levelheaded, ends up on an all-male committee to assess corporate abortion policy.
The season-two finale, Judgement Day, walks this line perfectly.
