On September 15, 2017, when Netflix subscribers opened the app they discovered a new series had dropped, titled American Vandal. It was released with little hype or fanfare, but audiences who tuned in were quickly given a pleasant surprise. American Vandal is a parody of true-crime documentaries like Netflix’s own Making a Murderer, with the first season focused on a group of student filmmakers making a documentary to clear a student who has been expelled from school following that left 27 faculty cars vandalized with phallic images on them. Despite featuring a cast of unknowns with no known brand recognition behind it, American Vandal became one of Netflix’s most-streamed series of the year and earned both an Emmy nomination and a Peabody award.

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The series was quickly renewed for a second season which premiered the next year in 2018, this time investigating a new crime at a Catholic private high school after a mysterious criminal known simply as “The Turd Burglar” sabotaged the cafeteria’s lemonade and resulted in multiple students defecating themselves. Despite the critical acclaim and the supposed sustained viability of the series, Netflix decided not to renew the true-crime satire for a second season, and much like it entered Netflix, American Vandal ended with little fanfare. For audiences who tuned in to the hilarious but heartfelt and clever show, it was a heavy loss. While it has been over four years since season two of American Vandal aired, it is still worth checking out as the series remains as funny today and, in many ways, seems more relevant now than ever.

Development History of American Vandal

     Netflix

American Vandal was created by Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault, who both had previously worked on videos for sites like Funny or Die and College Humor. They were joined by showrunner Dan Lagana, who worked on the comedy series Deadbeat, to help craft the series with a writer’s room of relatively new television writers.

When it came to casting the series, in an attempt to sell the reality of American Vandal, the creators avoided stars and cast relative unknowns, with the biggest star of season one being Jimmy Tatro who (despite having appeared in films like 22 Jump Street and Boo! A Madea Halloween) was primarily known for being a YouTube star, very much fitting the series’ tone of feeling like a real high school student.

American Vandal’s Comedy Works by Taking its Silly Premise Seriously

Both seasons of American Vandal are kicked off by absurd childish pranks reference to a bodily function or fluid. While this appears to be a laugh-out-loud comedy joke premise found in multiple R-rated raunchy comedies, the key to the humor in American Vandal is the presentation and the decision to play the joke out with a serious straight face.

Despite what appears to be a juvenile inciting incident in both seasons, the comedy comes from how serious everybody takes it. A group of students defecating themselves is treated with a serious level of grandiose horror. This contrast of subject with tone makes the joke even funnier and has the added effect of being a true-to-life recreation of the mindset of a teenager. These events, while absurd and in the grand scheme of things can be small, are treated with massive stakes, just as teenagers feel emotions on a scale where everything is apocalyptic.

The mockumentary format also helps add another layer to the humor. Viewers tuning into American Vandal are likely familiar with the beats and structure of a true-crime documentary, from interviews and recreations to the level of stone-faced seriousness of the subject matter, and it plays off that to great comedic effect. The series enjoys playing the absurd nature of characters connecting the dots while looking at a whiteboard with various connecting lines but instead of solving a murder, they are solving a senior prank. It is a comedy that is in perfect understanding of the subject it is satirizing.

Yet while being a comedy, the series also touched upon social issues that are plaguing everyone, particularly teenagers who have grown up in a world where their entire life is on social media. It dealt with topics such as cyberbullying, depression, and the stress of what comes to teenagers’ life after school all while still delivering an incredibly humorous story.

Cancelation and Attempts To Save American Vandal

Netflix canceled American Vandal on October 26, 2018, just a month after season two premiered on the streaming service. The news came during a wave of high-profile Netflix cancelations including Luke Cage and Iron Fist and would be followed shortly by Daredevil and One Day At A Time. Reportedly CBS Studios, who produced the series, attempted to shop the series around to other networks. Due to contractual agreements with Netflix, while developing the series, it could not be sent to another streaming service which ruled out CBS All Access (now Paramount+) or Hulu.

The second season displayed that the series could extend beyond its initial joke, and could sustain for many years to come. American Vandal burst onto the scene and shined brightly but was put out just as it was getting started.

Lasting Impact

     Paramount

When American Vandal premiered in 2017, the interest in true-crime documentaries and podcasts was a growing market. This rise in true crime material only grew with more documentaries like The Tinder Swindler and series dramatizing events like The Girl from Plainview and Inventing Anna. Fascination with true crime is the basis for the series Only Murders in the Building. While American Vandal can’t quite be directly linked to these series, it is interesting within the larger context what the series was tapping into, and how the format of these stories could be easily applied to various stories.

Series creator Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda have since moved on to develop Players for Paramount+. Like American Vandal, Players focuses on a fictional League of Legends e-sports team and is a parody of sports documentaries like The Last Dance and Cheer. Players has been a hit with critics and audiences, and while American Vandal may not have gotten a third season, its legacy continues to live on.