Animation
The Legend of Vox Machina
When it comes to being suitable for families, Amazon Prime’s The Legend of Vox Machina failed its saving throw.
“So our daughter’s boyfriend—the sweetest kid that I have ever met—his father is head of a Russian crime family. And your dad, Teddy, was his drug mule who stole $10 million from him?” Angela asks Joe.
“And a Lamborghini,” Joe responds.
Angela continues: “And a Lamborghini. And so this crime boss sends his son all the way to Pittsburgh just to date our daughter, just to get close to you to see if you know where Teddy hid the money before he died. Is that right?”
“Yes,” Joe answers.
“You sound insane,” Angela says.
Well, it really does. But that doesn’t make it any less true.
The day after his father’s memorial service, Joe went to his dad’s towing business to clean up the office. Only it was completely trashed.
Next thing Joe knew, he was tied up and his daughter’s boyfriend, Dimitri, was ordering a big Russian guy named Georgi to break Joe’s fingers, trying to weasel Teddy’s safe code out of him.
Long story short, Joe didn’t give up the code. He managed to kill both Georgi and Dimitri when his buddy Leon showed up and created a distraction. And now, they—along with their policeman friend, Touch, who walked in as they were trying to dispose of the bodies—want to find the money themselves.
Joe’s wife, Angela, wants nothing more than to call the cops. Which is absolutely what they should do. It’s what they should’ve done to begin with.
But once you’re involved with the Russian mob—especially when they keep sending guys to kill you—you start running low on options. And the best thing Joe can do now is find a way to get the Russians’ money back while somehow keeping his family safe.
Inspired by a true story, this dark comedy is incredibly profane with upwards of 70 f-words in the first episode alone. Harsh abuses of God’s name and other crudities make their way into dialogue frequently as well.
Violence, blood and gore fill the screen far too often, too. Granted, most of the deaths that occur are in self-defense. But when you’re resorting to chopping up bodies with chainsaws and smearing them with peanut butter so animals will eat the remains, you can’t help but wonder, “where did it all go wrong?”
[Spoiler Warning] We learn in later episodes that Touch’s girlfriend’s daughter got hold of his gun and accidentally shot her mother, not realizing the gun was real. Years after that, the girl took her own life. Other characters experience suicidal thoughts and ideation as well.
Given all those issues, sexual content is comparatively low. But a teenager brags about having sex with a man’s daughter, pantomiming the action, to enrage the man. And a married couple is caught on the verge of removing clothes by their friends.
The show contains heavy drug and alcohol use, as you might expect, with Touch imbibing pretty much anything he can get his hands on.
So yeah, Average Joe isn’t really a show average families will want to consume.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
After the death of his father, Joe and his friends are attacked by Russian gangsters, who claim Joe’s father was a drug runner who stole money from them.
After getting knocked unconscious with a pipe, Joe is tortured for information (we witness one of his captors, Georgi, snap four of Joe’s fingers into unnatural positions). He manages to escape his bonds and grab a gun off a table, shooting Georgi. He then fights with the other gangster (his daughter’s boyfriend, no less), and the two punch, kick and even bite until Joe breaks the other man’s neck.
Another Russian mobster threatens Leon with a gun while Leon sits on the toilet. He smacks Leon in the head a few times with the weapon before Leon’s wife, Cathy, shoots the man from behind, splattering Leon with the man’s brains and blood. (Leon falls into a catatonic state from shock.)
Joe, Touch and Leon hide bodies in the back of Joe’s van, planning to sink them in the reservoir later that night. (One is later found by Joe’s daughter.) We hear a man died in a fire. While drunk, Joe jokingly threatens to kill his daughter’s boyfriend. A man throws a glass mug at his subordinates in anger. A woman watches a true crime show, and we see some bleeding corpses.
A man pantomimes having sex with another man’s daughter. Cathy makes a crass remark about wanting to have sex with a football player. Later, we see her messaging other men on a dating app. While going through Georgi’s phone, Leon finds many pictures of female bodybuilders posing in bikinis.
A man drinks from a flask. Joe becomes inebriated at his father’s funeral and is hung over the next day. Many people consume alcohol. We don’t see the act, but Touch opens up a heroin kit (and a later episode shows he used it). He also secretly pops some Oxycodone pills from Joe’s medicine cabinet and takes extras for later.
We learn Teddy, Joe’s father, was a drug mule for the Russian mob and stole $10 million and a Lamborghini from it before he died.
Touch arrives at Teddy’s funeral wearing his police uniform since he has to work a shift. When people stare, he gets offended, assuming they’re prejudiced against white cops. But Leon points out that Touch just entered a house full of grieving Black people, in uniform, with his hand on his gun. And after Touch relaxes, so does everyone else.
Leon expresses frustration that big brands have nearly put his hardware store out of business. Later, Joe encourages his wife to “support Black businesses” by shopping at Leon’s (even though it’s way more expensive than the alternative).
Cathy rips up a card for flowers and replaces it with her own to claim credit. She also steals money from Leon’s shop. Folks inappropriately try to swindle Joe out of his dad’s season tickets for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Joe’s boss tells him to take all the time he needs to grieve but then immediately asks Joe to return to work the next day. People lie. It’s clear not many people like Cathy, but she’s equally rude in return.
There are roughly 70 uses of the f-word and 10 of the s-word, as well as multiple uses of “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “d–k” and “h—.” God’s name is abused a dozen times, half paired with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is abused thrice. A man flips himself off in the mirror.
We see a reverend at Teddy’s funeral.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
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