Clinical or Heartfelt? Baymax! the Series on Disney+ Review

When is a group of animated shorts not just a group of animated shorts? That’s the curious question behind the new Disney+ Baymax! spin-off series, which has to rank among the oddest structural decisions the Mouse has made with one of its intellectual properties.

In terms of the way Baymax! is presented on Disney+, the six 8-to-9-minute episodes appear to be stand-alone vignettes, in which the big, inflatable personal health robot from Big Hero 6 (once again voiced by Scott Adsit) has a series of adventures providing impromptu—and often over-zealous—medical care for individuals he encounters around San Fransokyo. Cass (Maya Rudolph), the coffee shop-owner aunt of Baymax’s owner Hiro (Ryan Potter), sprains her ankle; an elderly woman (Emily Kuroda) has joint pain; a food truck operator (Jabuokie Young-White) develops a sudden fish allergy. The gags are almost all built around how much more Baymax wants to help someone than they want to be helped, and they’re generally amusing if never riotously funny, partly because the faceless Baymax has to remain the ultimate deadpan when chaos is erupting around him.

Viewers, however, might be surprised to discover that Baymax! resolves in a way that makes it more like a serialized 50-minute movie than a group of independent shorts. That’s evident at first as Episode 5 ends on a cliffhanger, then turns into a rescue operation with all of the characters from the previous episodes reuniting to become an ad hoc Big Hero 6 team of their own. It’s an opportunity to deliver a single big emotional payoff, built on the idea that caring for others gives you the chance to be cared for, though it’s a little harder for that to work when Baymax’s responses will always be clinical, rather than emotional.

The odd part is that because the episodes are broken up, they’re constructed so that each one gets its own mini-feel-good moment, so it doesn’t just feel like a collection of jokes. It’s not that those moments aren’t generally satisfying, but that they feel rushed so they can be squeezed into an individual 8-minute span. Had Baymax! been presented as the single larger story arc it eventually proves itself to be, those grace notes might have emerged in a different way, allowing for more catharsis. There’s an experiment in serialized storytelling here that feels a bit caught between offering something that can be digested in small bites, and something that probably should have been digested in a bigger gulp.

All six episodes of Baymax! are now streaming on Disney+.

Let’s Hear From You

Do you think a short-format series like Baymax! can hold the same level of storytelling as a longer one-shot special? If you’ve seen Big Hero Six, was Baymax the standout character for you? Will you be adding Baymax! to your watchlist? Share your thoughts in the comments.