‘Close Enough’ Will cause you to Feel Good About Getting Old

No matter how you narrow it, getting old sucks. Joints you never knew existed start hurting, your bedtime gets earlier and earlier, and suddenly the good British Bake Off becomes something you anticipate to even when you’re not hungover. 

Quintel’s new HBO Max series Close Enough. But instead of turning maturity into something to be mourned, it turns aging into an adventure.


Stylistically and humor-wise Close Enough is analogous to Quintel’s other creation, Regular Show. this point rather than a jaybird and a raccoon, the animated comedy follows the lives of latest parents Josh (Quintel) and Emily (Gabrielle Walsh), their daughter Candice (Jessica DiCicco), Anyone who’s conversant in Regular Show already features a clue about the extreme turns this series takes. Each 15-minute saga starts with a little, relatable problem, like Josh and Emily getting to a club to feel young again. But by the episode’s end that straightforward setup snowballs into something astronomical, during this case a club named Logan’s Run that murders anyone over the age of 35. It’s very silly, very extreme, and entertaining.

But unlike Regular Show, Close Enough consistently channels its random energy and silly characters to form a much bigger, more interesting point. Watching Emily and Josh struggle to reclaim their youth and therefore the forgotten dreams of their 20s are difficult. Time and time again they struggle to act as they did once they were in their 20s, getting too high and happening insane haunted house adventures, only to reconcile with the very fact they aren’t “cool” anymore. Together they need a loving family, great friends, and a fantastic daughter. None of that would have happened if Emily had devoted all of her energy to her comedy musical career or if Josh dropped everything to be a computer game developer. That’s a detailed story about maturity often miss.



Close Enough isn’t about the wide-eyed aspirations of youth or the wisdom that comes with adulthood. It’s about those messy years in between when nothing quite adds up, and who you're becoming remains at odds with who you wanted to be. Yes, getting older sucks, and yes it’s disheartening to ascertain old dreams die. But instead of framing this as something to be upset about, Close Enough reconstructs this complete metamorphosis into an adventure in its title. So next time you skip that third glass of wine because you would like to travel hiking subsequent morning, don’t get mad at the lame-o you’ve become. Take a page out of Close Enough’s book and embrace the thrill of getting old.