Saturday, January 09, 2021

Xmastime New Sitcom Review

MR. MAYOR

Hulu

At a quick & easy 21 minutes, Mr. Mayor is a well-done show whose up-to-the-minute current events jokes and attempts at showing wokeness are saved by being in the hands of obvious professionals. I'm *guessing* a deep dive into the talent behind the cameras would reveal a lot of uber-successful Hollywood heavy hitters, an idea more obvious by the fact that the two stars are Ted Danson and Holly Hunter and the show is a Tina Fey creation.

At first the show threatens that it's gonna be yet another "clueless out of place new politician unwittingly guided by quirky, genius handlers!" and "clueless single dad ruining daughter's life!", but by the end it seems to steer its way out of such waters, which makes me hopeful. It's also partly helped by Danson's assistant (played with great, vacant stupidity by Horatio Sanz) being more clueless than he is.

The onscreen Greek chorus, a black woman & an Asian guy, are the worst part of the show; there IS a ton of ham-fistedness here with them being the pair to shoot off quirky/incredibly quick witticisms that are curiously self-aware at every moment. I'm guessing there's gonna be a lot of cancel culture and he/she pronoun jokes. This needs to be fixed.

And let's be honest: this show is made on the fact that even after almost 40 years, Ted Danson is fucking awesome. He's exactly perfect in this show, as he has been every time over the decades, a fact I had to remind myself of a few years ago. At this point there should be a channel of just watching Ted goddam Danson scenes from his various shows.

So thanks to what must be an out-sized budget, NBC pushing all of their chips fully in, Mr. Mayor has a lot of promise, and I will give it a few more spins. Congratulations, Mr. Mayor!

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