While we’ve all come to terms with the end of Andy Daly’s brilliant Review, the show’s centerpiece most certainly has not. In a new video shared to the official Forrest MacNeil, Life Reviewer YouTube page, a masked Forrest is here to assure that “the most deftly executed prank of all time”—that Review has been canceled—is still going on, but that he’s doing just fine. “Very much alive, indeed,” he assures us. “Well, alive anyway. Alive enough!” He’s socially distancing with his nine roommates and now reviewing life experiences for a host of “private clients.”
Now, as a means of reintroduction, he’s here to share a few of his findings. Give it a watch below.
Here’s a few we found particularly insightful:
- What’s it like to put on a woman’s dead husband’s clothes and dance with her? “Very enjoyable! So few people like to dance these days, I find.” Four stars.
- What’s it like to give away his bicycle? “I really liked that bicycle. I depended on it, in fact.” Half a star.
- What’s it like to disable a security camera at the Rikers Island Detention Center? “I felt very Mission: Impossible, dare I say! Do that if you can, if you get the chance.” Five stars.
Things soon get personal, as Forrest reflects on a request to help a man divorce his wife in the same manner that Forrest did his. “She was as confused as I was, but she was a lot angrier,” he says, “and really took that anger out on me, which was unreasonable.” (Half a star, that one.)
The video ends with a plug for the Review series DVD and a lingering hope that this won’t be the last we see of Daly’s Forrest. While there’s no official news of a proper return for the character, it’s notable that the aforementioned Forrest MacNeil YouTube account was just created on Monday. And Daly’s long said he’s open to revisiting the character.
“I was just thinking about this the other day: One of the coolest things that’s ever happened in television comedy was when the character of Alan Partridge made the jump from Knowing Me Knowing You to the behind-the-scenes I’m Alan Partridge,” Daly told us a few years back. “So there is a part of me that wonders if there’s a reverse-Alan Partridge to be done with Forrest MacNeil, that we see him in his next job as the host of a show or something like that. Or, is there the opportunity to do more of the dead-on Alan Partridge, to leave the construct of Forrest doing a television show and follow this man and the rest of his life?”
He continued: “I wouldn’t rule out meeting him again in some other context. Because I like him, even though he’s an idiot.”
He also spoke about a potential return for the character in an interview with Polygon from earlier this year:
Yeah, I’ve talked to Jeff Blitz, who directed every episode, and ran the show’s writers’ room with me. He and I are always talking about a new show to do together. I think we’re on our fourth idea, we’re always kicking something around. At various points, one of us will say, “What about bringing back ol’ Forrest MacNeil and seeing what he’s up to now?” We’d love to do it, to be honest. I don’t know how things like that get done, how exactly it happens. But I’d love to do it. In fact, I’ve had a few specific ideas about what Forrest might be up to, but I shouldn’t spill them. I mean, if anybody ever expressed an interest to us to be a home for Forrest MacNeil, I think Jeff and I would both jump at the chance.
Considering how much the world has changed since 2017—hell, since the beginning of 2020—it’s not as if he’ll be lacking in review topics.
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