The Detour
Cast & Key People
▶
Our Review
The family road trip sitcom from Samantha Bee and Jason Jones (real life spouses, drawing from their own travel disasters): Nate, a dad who lost his job over a whistleblower incident he’s hiding from the family, piles his wife Robin and twins into a car from Syracuse to Florida, and the trip becomes an escalating cascade of bedbug motels, accidental kidnappings, cheese factory cults, and little town Americana weirdness.
The humor is cringe adjacent but warm: the family stays a family even as the secrets pile up (season 1’s reveal about what Nate actually did is a genuine surprise). Natalie Zea’s Robin gets the best material, a woman with a past who’s more capable than her husband at everything except admitting it. Later seasons send them to Alaska, then exile them to reality TV, the premise stretches, but the cast keeps it honest. It’s the rare sitcom built around parents who actually like each other, which turns out to be its secret weapon.
Verdict: Watch it. National Lampoon’s Vacation as a serialized sitcom, and funnier than that sounds.
