The End of the ----------- World is a very good and clever dark comedy series about two teenagers with serious emotional difficulties who fall in love. James is a troubled teen who likes to kill and torture animals with a deceased mom and an inept dad; he thinks he might be a psychopath. He decides he would like to kill a human to see what it would be like. Alyssa is a smimlarly troubled teen abandoned by her father and neglected by her mom who has to deal with a stepfather who would love it if she were gone. She runs away from home and meets up with James to go in search of her biological father, and James steals his father's car and helps her while mulling over whether she might be his logical murder victim.

This show is interesting because the extreme dysfunction in the lives of James and Alyssa serve as a lens to see our own less extreme versions. The comedy emerges from them getting into more and more outlandish and desperate situations in the process of their runaway, and the show is truly insightful as the lens is focused in various ways. There is also plenty of suspense and a bunch of interesting secondary characters, the plot often goes into delightfully unexpected directions. Acting performances by the two leads are excellent.

My only quibble is that the show is at its best early on when the tension exists regarding whether James is going to kill Alyssa or fall in love with her, but as his character arc progresses the writers ease off of his psychopathic tendencies. I think they would have done better to maintain these, which is always one of the central ideas of the show. The psychopathy returns nicely however, with the character Bonnie in season 2, and the triangle with the mains returns to the formula that worked so well in the first episode. All in all a great watch.