FX
Parents are the worst—especially when your mom is a control-freak Wiccan and your dad is the undisputed ruler of the underworld. Life is thus hard for Chrissy (Lucy DeVito), a disaffected 13-year-old who on the first day of school, in the latest of many new hometowns, goes through puberty and discovers that she’s the half-human child of Satan caught in a tug of war between her ferociously protective mother and charmingly devious father.
Executive produced by Dan Harmon, creators Darcy Fowler, Seth Kirschner and Kieran Valla’s half-hour FX comedy Little Demon (August 25) is the latest in a string of recent animated efforts (such as Netflix’s Inside Job and Hulu’s Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K) to indulge in out-there R-rated insanity. And like those predecessors, it’s at once rat-a-tat-tat inappropriate and surprisingly sweet, charting its protagonist’s attempt to understand herself and define her identity while negotiating a familial situation that’s dysfunctional beyond belief. Whether that balancing act is sustainable in the long run remains to be seen, but at least in the early going, this raucous and raunchy affair exhibits a flair for the absurd and profane, even if its boundary-pushing elements get in the way of casting its characters as three-dimensional figures worth rooting for—or caring about—in a serious manner.
Chrissy is the only child of single mom Laura (Aubrey Plaza), who at the start of Little Demon relocates them to Delaware. On her first day at Middletown Middle School, Chrissy befriends nerdy Bennigan (Eugene Cordero) and then has her life thrown into disarray when, while in the bathroom, she gets her period—which manifests itself quite strangely, via menstrual blood dripping through her pants and into a toilet where it takes the shape of a glowing demonic face. When bullies appear outside her stall, intent on tormenting her as well as Bennigan, Chrissy’s eyes suddenly go black, the bathroom’s mirrors and windows shatter, and her two would-be tormentors go splat—literally. Their legs blowing up with huge pustules, followed by their bodies exploding in a sea of flesh, organs and goo, they become the first victims of Chrissy’s newfound powers, which—much to everyone’s dismay—cause her to blast energy beams from her eyes and mouth, creating a giant black hole in the sky that sucks up everything in its vicinity.