By Joshua Tyler
| Published 51 seconds ago

One of the funnier scenes ever to make it into a movie happens in the classic Chevy Chase/Dan Aykroyd comedy Spies Like Us. The duo, playing inept spies, arrives at a Doctors Without Borders camp, and all it takes for them to convince the people there that they belong is to call everyone “Doctor” over and over and over again. It’s a fun, silly way of poking fun at pretentious PhDs and also the limited intelligence of our heroes.

Now imagine that sixty-second scene stretched over sixty minutes, played seriously instead of as a joke, and with Chevy Chase’s character replaced by a badly rendered miniature reindeer in a top hat. That’s what happens in season 2 episode 7 of Netflix’s pirate adventure show One Piece. Aptly titled “Reindeer Shames,” it may be the single worst hour of programming ever released on streaming, and somehow it’s the penultimate episode of the streamer’s new flagship show.

Having not seen episode 7 yet, and having previously enjoyed season one and all six previous episodes of season 2, I’d been recklessly recommending One Piece to everyone I know. Now, not only am I rescinding that recommendation, I’m not sure I have the strength to continue on and watch the second season’s final episode.

One Piece Fans Waited More Than Two Years For Time Wasting Filler

A quick positioning statement: I love anime and watch a lot of it. Like 99% of the people watching the Netflix show, though, I’ve never watched the anime version of One Piece. I’ve avoided it largely because there are thousands of episodes, and that seems daunting, but also because even its most ardent defenders often admit that many of those episodes are actually time-wasting filler.

The One Piece anime’s predilection towards time-wasting filler episodes may explain the presence of “Reindeer Shames” on the Netflix version, the plot of which involves none of the show’s actual cast. The story also has basically nothing to do with any of the narratives being developed in the rest of the season.

That might be an acceptable side trip in a series with thousands of episodes, but in the modern era of lazy streaming production, we only get eight episodes every two or three years instead of an annual two-dozen. Wasting one of those precious episodes on anything not directly relevant to what’s happening on the show would be a bad idea, even if it were somehow good. When it’s this bad, it feels almost criminal.

A Blatant Cost-Cutting Measure From Netflix

“Reindeer Shames” tells the story of a Doctor on the run in a country where Doctors are being rounded up for weird anime doctor-hoarding reasons. The Doctor encounters a tiny, talking reindeer who looks like he just fell off a Toys R Us plushy shelf during the Christmas holiday rush of 1997. Or he would look like that if the CGI used to animate him didn’t also look like it came from 1997.

It seems clear that at least part of Netflix’s motivation in making this episode was as a cost-cutting measure. The show’s other episodes look fantastic, with high-level special effects and large-scale action sequences. However, “Reindeer Shames” largely takes place in either an unremarkable bush or a single hut and offers only a few, half-hearted seconds of action at the end. And again, it doesn’t involve any of the show’s actual cast, which probably means Netflix only paid them for seven episodes while still producing eight. 

Netflix Has Opened Its Own Learing Center

This has all the earmarks of a scam. Making your subscription-paying audience wait two and a half years for eight episodes and then cheaping out on one of them is the streaming version of a Minnesota Learning Center. 

The talking reindeer is named Chopper, and I’m told by Jonathan Klotz, who I consider an expert in all One Piece matters, that this character is a beloved figure in the animated version of this tale. Maybe he’ll grow into that over the course of Netflix’s live-action series, assuming the awfulness of this outing doesn’t cause the show to be canceled. Still, he’s garbage in this episode, and plays out like a clumsy, half-baked attempt to create the next Baby Yoda in a world where everyone’s sick to death of Baby Yodas. 

Stop Watching One Piece Unless Supervised By A Doctor

Instead of delivering the kind of pirate adventure One Piece viewers are tuned in for, the episode meanders around, fixating on endless speeches about how amazing and important Doctors are. Doctor this and Doctor that, and oh, aren’t Doctors incredible angels who totally aren’t doing this job just because they like buying Corvettes and hanging out at country clubs. 

Sitting through “Reindeer Shames” made me wish One Piece was on YouTube instead of Netflix, so it could be interrupted by an Incogni ad. In that worse-than-streaming-sponsorships environment, I guess Chopper, since he isn’t a Doctor and only wants to be one, is the least worst thing about it. That’s a hopeful point for his continued Doctor presence on the show, which seems like something I’ll have to endure if I ever again work up the doctor-like courage to watch another One Piece episode. I probably won’t, at least not without the supervision of a Doctor.

“REINDEER SHAMES” REVIEW SCORE