There are some TV shows that make you laugh out loud.
Other shows make you weep into your UberEats, as the main character slips into a three month coma, after a car crash that could definitely have been avoided.
Then there are the shows that are so brilliantly executed you want to watch them over and over again.
And then there’s… What/If.
What/If is none of these things. It’s not funny or sad or clever. It just exists.
Netflix’s latest thriller series seems to be the result of someone over-enthusiastically yelling in a pitch meeting “We should make a show just like Revenge but worse and it should have a lot of Renee Zellweger’s face in it”.
And then someone else added: “And that nice guy from Brothers and Sisters should kill a lot of people for no apparent reason”. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What/If follows Renee Zellweger as Anna Montgomery, a mysterious and ruthless venture capitalist looking to help Lisa Donovan (Jane Levy), a woman desperate to secure funding for her medtech startup which seeks to help children.
But the investment has just one catch… Anna Montgomery wants to spend one night with Lisa’s husband, a former baseball star who is a paramedic.
What/If is a terrible TV show but I watched all 10 glorious episodes because I wanted to see what weird and convoluted storyline they would pull out next. (Most of them involved Renee Zellweger’s face and that guy from Brothers and Sisters).
Here are all the things that made zero sense in What/If:
1. Renee Zellweger’s face.
A large amount of the “drama” in this series is hinged on Renee Zellweger making a lot of dramatic facial expressions straight into the barrel of the camera.
Which seems like a great strategy except for the fact that Renee cannot move her face. She can only move her mouth to form tiny little words for her tiny little sentences.
It’s very silly.
2. The main actress looks like Emma Stone but is very much not Emma Stone.
I spent most of the first episode Googling 'Who does Jane Levy look like' and then looking at comparison photos of Jane and Emma Stone.
They look exactly the same, except Emma Stone was in La La Land and Jane Levy is being chased by Renee Zellweger, who can't move her face but is a perfect shot with a bow and arrow.
3. Why is the guy from Brothers and Sisters killing people in an unnecessary sub plot?
The weirdest part of What/If is all the unnecessary sub plots that don't tie in together.
Like when the guy from Brothers and Sisters (Dave Annable) plays a homicidal control freak stalker who has absolutely no link to the main plot.
He just wants to kill everyone because he had a hard childhood and apparently women are to blame.
4. Why did we have to get so invested in this couple?
In the first episode of What/If, we're introduced to Lisa's adoptive brother, Marcos. We also meet Marcos' boyfriend, Lionel.
They're a lovely couple and throughout the series we see them navigate infidelity and commitment issues before finally deciding to tie-the-knot.
None of this is necessary. Marcos and Lionel only have a slight connection to the main plot.
5. All the characters were abused as children.
It's pretty common for a character in a TV show to have a tragic backstory. It's a device writers use to explain why the character is so sh*t/emotionally unattached/reckless now.
Usually this character has been abused or abandoned by their parents or both.
In What/If there are at least three characters who have been abused as children. All unrelated to each other.
All of them had sh*tty childhoods and then they're kind of/not really linked together in adulthood.
It feels a bit like they couldn't be bothered coming up with different backstories for the main characters, so they just gave them all the same one and changed a few things.
6. The guy from Revenge literally plays a straight version of his Revenge character.
This is the point when I knew these guys were literally trying to remake Revenge but with Renee Zellweger.
You see, Gabriel Mann, the guy who played Nolan Ross in Revenge, makes an extended cameo as an independently wealthy tech investor who helps Renee's character do her plotting and scheming.
Sounds familiar, right?
He's basically playing the exact same character as Revenge but this time he likes women.
Have you watched What/If? Tell us your thoughts in a comment below.
Top Comments
I'm enjoying the show. It's great, binge-able fluff. Renee Zellweger looks great to me. She looks like you'd expect a 50 year old version of herself to look. I don't see her face being frozen. She's always had a small mouth that purses, squinty eyes, and there is still movement in her forehead. I think the work she's had done looks fine. Not as bad as some of the other actresses of her age group.
But. This morning it was binge worthy. What/If the writer watched the show first?
(I know it was different writers, I just wanted to do the What/If thing) 😁