Seth Rogen’s An American Pickle Should’ve Been More Sour

An American Pickle, the new Seth Rogen comedy streaming on HBO Max, kicks off with a funny idea. Long ago and far away, in the Eastern European shtetl of Schlupsk, the humble but hardworking gravedigger Herschel Greenbaum (Rogen) falls in love. He sets his eye on a local redhead, Sarah (Succession’s Sarah Snook), and what do you know, they have much in common. Both love the color black. Both aspire to riches: she, to earn “afford your own gravestone”-level money, and he, to someday take a carefree, luxuriant sip of seltzer water. Also: both of their parents were murdered by Cossacks.

On their wedding day: more Cossacks. And the annihilation of their entire village and way of life. All the more reason to hop aboard the USA Express and start new lives elsewhere, in the land of the free.