In the Pitch Perfect movies, there is not much to be said about Bumper other than his back-and-forth dynamic with Amy and that he leads the Treblemakers.
Bumper’s character is never entirely explored. He is not the main villain in the first movie, even if he leads the primary rival a cappella group. Instead, even though Pitch Perfect is an ensemble, Beca is the protagonist, and Barden Bellas Captain Aubrey Posen is Beca’s central foil.
In Pitch Perfect 2, three years after ditching the Trebles for a backup singer gig for John Mayer, Bumper has returned to Barden as a security guard for seemingly no reason other than to give him a role in the movie.
Overall, Bumper’s relationship with Amy is the biggest thing he has going for him. Even his post-credits appearance on The Voice comes across more as a joke, even though multiple singers turn their chairs for him.
Since Bumper was never a leading character, his interest in pursuing music professionally was rarely expanded on, and it was never quite clear what his endgame hope was.
However, early in Bumper In Berlin, it is suggested that Bumper is good at improvising, a quality he most certainly does not show in the Pitch Perfect movies.
Bumper In Berlin tries to show Bumper’s strengths, such as using him being booed on stage as a background to build a short cover of Taylor Swift’s “Message In A Bottle.”
However, the entire concept of the show relies on character elements that did not exist before the spinoff started. Bumper is portrayed as an underdog whose life never picked up after a failed try on The Voice.
Even if that part could be justified in the sense that Bumper did not get anywhere after briefly working for John Mayer, he was so excited to leave for Los Angeles that it did not make sense why he would return to work at Barden at all. Did he need money? Did he want to return to where he had once been successful? Unfortunately, Pitch Perfect 2 does not expand on Bumper enough to explain his reasons.
Meanwhile, previous Das Sound Machine co-leader and Barden Bella’s rival, Pieter, is suddenly meant to be portrayed as empathetic to the audience after being an antagonist throughout Pitch Perfect 2 and never showing another side of his personality.
Granted, Bumper In Berlin explains how Pieter’s life drastically changed. Still, Pieter was a comical villain previously, so showing him as anything else without seeing the character development seems off-putting.
People can change, but in this case, it seems Bumper In Berlin relies on the audience excusing character development that was not seen, given it has been years since their characters appeared on-screen.
It certainly does not help that the spinoff picked two characters with no substantial history to run the series. On top of that, neither has a strong sense of chosen family bond, which was one of the highlights of the original trilogy.
Although Bumper and Pieter may have always shown charisma in the past, the Peacock spinoff is more of a show to watch for fun and nostalgia but lacks the heart of the original trilogy.
