‘The Residence' Was Mostly Good, But It Didn't Quite Earn a Second Season

Yahoo

2 days ago

The Residence is not extending its residence at Netflix.
On Wednesday, the streamer canceled a pair of freshman series: medical drama Pulse and The Residence. Critically-speaking, Pulse had basically no, well, pulse from the get-go — but The Residence was generally well-reviewed.
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Both shows, meanwhile, faired pretty well in terms of viewership. With just four days of availability during the week ended March 23, 2025, The Residence (released March 20) debuted as Netflix's number two show, trailing only the juggernaut that was Adolescence. The standings repeated the following week, and though The Residence began to slip after that, it remained in the top 10 for two more weeks.
One of the shows that first pushed The Residence down Netflix's list was Pulse, which premiered on April 3, 2025; both series would spend four weeks on Netflix's Global Top 10 Shows chart. Adolescence lasted twice a long, and is Netflix's second-most-watched English-language TV show of all time.
Ultimately, it is disappointing that both The Residence and Pulse were one-and-done, though for different reasons. Pulse may not have been good, but by virtue of being Netflix's first foray into medical procedurals — one of television's longest-running and most-successful genres — Pulse was going to be precedent-setting one way or another. Turns out, precedent was set in the right direction.
But losing The Residence after just one season is a bummer because it was a really good show — mostly.
Like pretty much all TV programs ever, The Residence was flawed. But its flaws were really only apparent at the very end, when a first-season show is supposed to leave the viewer wanting more. (And hopefully much more.)
You never want to end on a low note, especially if it doesn't have to be the end.
First, let's talk about some of The Residence's strengths. For starters, Uzo Aduba as Cordelia Cupp, the 'greatest detective in the world,' was excellent. Randall Park was tremendous in support, and Giancarlo Esposito, Ken Marino, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Susan Kelechi Watson were excellent as well. And there were others — the ensemble was truly terrific. And it is hard to do much better than having Shonda Rhimes' Shondaland as the producer of your series.
The set, a near-full re-creation of the White House built at Los Angeles' Raleigh Studios, was gorgeous. The production connected 132 rooms across seven stages, used 10 miles of molding and had 200 working doors, according to Netflix. The colors were beautiful and the rooms were distinct; hell, it may have been nicer than the actual White House. If you're not getting the idea here, we're saying that The Residence was expensive — the kind of expensive that makes a cost-benefit analysis hard to come out on the side of 'benefit.' Remember, this isn't Netflix circa 2021; these days, the bottom line is the bottom line (on an income statement).
Had The Residence gone forward with a second season, the plan was for it to become an anthology series with Cupp taking on a new case each season. So unless there were more murders in the White House (I mean, it worked for Only Murder in the Building…), all of that carpentry and decorating goes to waste. You don't throw good money after…pretty good money.
From a storytelling standpoint, The Residence season finale is what truly failed us. A must-have quality to be counted among the great whodunnits is the ability for the viewer to use clues and solve the crime. That wasn't possible with The Residence. Yes, there were breadcrumbs along the way, but the sheer scope of the production made it realistically impossible to come to the same conclusion as Cupp. Even if you randomly guessed the culprit, there was no feasible way of figuring out what happened and how it happened. That's frustrating for a show that for seven of its eight successfully drew its viewers in to a White House's-worth of suspects of theories. Interestingly, Netflix only initially sent critics those first seven episodes (and not the finale) for review. Most likely that was more an effort to protect spoilers than it was to hide a subpar finale — even I'm not that cynical.
But the ending was a let down. And then the ending-ending was a head scratcher.
After Cupp solves her case and gets her man (or woman), a reveal that took forever to reveal within the finale, and before she went wheels up for even more birdwatching — a hobby that begins as funny and gets kind of grating as the season goes on — the greatest detective in the world had 'to make a quick stop.'
We'd say this next piece is a spoiler, but the payoff has so little to do with anything that's important to the story, it's really not.
Cupp has her boss, Metropolitan PD police chief Larry Dokes (Whitlock Jr.), pull over at the White House for one more key scene. But we don't return to the scene of the crime for anything that fans cared to see. Like, for example, to finally give the young boy who is obsessed with the White House — and who helped Cupp out with a key clue — the tour he so desperately wanted (but couldn't get due to it previously having been a crime scene). No, it wasn't that. Cupp returned to the residence to have some random brief chat with the POTUS' mother-in-law Nan Cox (Jane Curtin). Ostensibly, Cupp wanted to tell Nan who it was that killed White House chief usher A.B. Wynter (Esposito). Turns out, Nan, a pretty minor character throughout the season, either already knew the answer, or she made a good guess in the moment. Either way, The End, for some reason.
There was at least one more long setup in The Residence that had no punchline. For someone who does not actually appear in The Residence, Hugh Jackman plays a pretty big role in its story — bigger than Jane Curtin's, at least.
The general plot of the season goes like this: At a White House state dinner intended to repair relations with Australia, a murder is committed on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue's residential floors. The night's guest list includes a lot of Australians, mostly fake, but is top-lined by the real Kylie Minogue, who plays (and sings as) herself. But the big running joke throughout the season is about an even-more-famous Aussie apparently in the building, the dude who plays Wolverine. Jackman's face is never seen, but (a facsimile of) his body often is, and we get an OK vocal impression as well.
(The real) Jackman had no participation in the series, though producers did ask him to be a part of The Residence. Cool idea. But once the actor passed on the project, why leave the running gag in? It comes across to the viewer as a tease for a big reveal — perhaps (the real) Jackman is the killer? Or maybe, once we've become convinced it's a double whose face we'll never see, it turns out they did get actual Hugh Jackman for just long enough to get one over on us? But none of that happens, so why plant the seed? And don't say 'because it's funny,' because it isn't. It's just a self-imposed letdown, an unnecessary device that gets in front of a good mystery. In some ways, that makes it the perfect metaphor for The Residence.
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