Black Monday

It’s often laugh-out-loud funny, and the cast has instant comedic chemistry. It also mines a lot of laughs by reveling in gaudy ’80s nostalgia: floppy disks and shoulder pads, the aforementioned stretch Lamborghini (aka a “Lambo limo”) and a robot butler who dutifully fetches cocaine. But there are hints of melancholy around the edges, too, and a plot twist at the end of the pilot that actually adds a level of intrigue to what follows.

Ups and downs aside, Black Monday's meta, madcap silliness works as a parody of the genre and a fresh take on an old story. It's a good investment.

The comedy, starring an effervescent Don Cheadle, Andrew Rannells and Regina Hall, is an outrageous reimagining of what caused the Wall Street crash of 1987 and is packed to its coke-crusted gills with rapid-fire one-liners, not all of which work, but it doesn't matter because the one that comes three seconds later probably will.

This is the first time anybody has unleashed director Seth Rogen, the overlord of Hollywood juvenilia, on the subject, and Black Monday is every bit as madly, sickly funny as you might expect.

At the same time, Black Monday can be very funny, very clever about incorporating 1980s cultural references (not counting the piles of coke and “Wolf of Wall Street”-style excess) and very vulgar. It’s also propelled by three extremely talented people, among them Mr. Cheadle, who makes Mo abrasive, egotistic and obnoxious, yet at the same time a sympathetic outsider.

There are enough storylines planted in the opening episodes to promise plenty of opportunities for these characterization issues to even out as the season goes on. And this and the occasional burst of misplaced schmaltz only stand out as issues because Cheadle and Hall so confidently grasp their characters from their first seconds on screen; they’re instant icons. More layered jokes emerge as the group dynamic solidifies.

Black Monday is peppered with stock characters, but thanks to the sharp writing and the skills of the cast, virtually every one of them is intriguingly offbeat and, not incidentally, flat-out funny.

Cheadle and Hall approach the roles with a lack of piousness, infesting their characters with humorous bits of business that almost always land. ... One feels Hall’s anger, but like Richard Pryor, she mines a bleak and tense situation for all its comic potential--and the results are perpetually perceptive.

Even the only adult in the room, Mo’s deeply undervalued deputy and ex-girlfriend Dawn Darcy (Regina Hall, whose characteristically warm performance gives viewers an unexpected hero), has to indulge their sophomoric antics to survive. What makes Jammer tolerable is the threat it poses to an industry Caspe and Cahan portray as being numb to human suffering, where bratty blue bloods like the hilarious twin “Lehman Brothers” (both played by comedy treasure Ken Marino) hold all the power.

Sure, Black Monday needs to slow down every once in a while or risk exhaustion; when Rogen and Goldberg are behind the camera for the premiere, they transfer the chaos of the trading floor to practically every other setting, pushing things right up to the edge of shrill. In its first three episodes, the show hasn’t figured out a proper balance.

The “everything and the kitchen sink” approach taken by Caspe and Cahan pays dividends up front: Their episodes race by with loads of joyful enthusiasm, even as they’re laced with doomed morose. ... But it’s also awash in red flags for a burgeoning series, as the lead character is a questionable, outdated pick and the premise begs for a quick resolution to the mystery being teased.

The show’s cocaine-fueled energy is undeniable, although some may find it exhausting. In early episodes “Black Monday” seems to be trying to find its footing while rushing headlong into schemes and character development at as loud a volume as possible.

There’s good raw material here. Just don’t buy until we see if the creative team can land on a consistent and satisfying tone.

Broadly satirical. ... Thankfully, you don't have to like these jerks to enjoy them. [21 Jan - 3 Feb 2019, p.13]

Too much of Black Monday is sounds and furious self-absorption/deception.

Black Monday isn’t very successful at capturing the zeitgeist of the time beyond sappy music by Bryan Adams, cringe-worthy fashion choices and bright red Lamborghinis. The performers work well together, but they don’t have a lot to work with.

Cheadle, Hall and the supporting players lustily sink their teeth into these morally bankrupt characters, but "Black Monday" doesn't even make them particularly interesting as antiheroes. Nor does the big-buck finagling rival smarter versions of this material, leaving the '80s excesses as the program's main calling card.

There’s so much going on that it’s difficult to separate Black Monday’s sharpest moments from its constant throwaway lines. Cleverness appears in each of the first three episodes (one bit in which Oliver Stone’s hired researcher shadows Mo to get ideas for the movie “Wall Street” is a nice, full basket of ’80s Easter eggs), only to be drowned out by all the frantic energy and half-attempts at humor that smother it. Rannells and Cheadle are good together--enough so that the series may yet settle down and find its way.

Black Monday mines humor from its Wall Street cesspool and Maurice’s extravagance, but those two components eventually undermine whatever goodwill the character might inspire.

It’s possible to nail all the details but miss the feeling entirely. ... There’s hope yet for "Black Monday," whose first three episodes are carried across with confidence if nothing else; even when characters are delivering long and clumsily written chunks of exposition, they carry it off like tightly crafted David Mamet dialogue.

The problem is that the market is short for either catharsis or humor on Black Monday and, given the options abounding on TV, audiences may not want to bet on a whole season.

There is a lot about Black Monday that’s desperate; characters are desperate for success, respect, money, revenge, happiness, and change. It makes the show an uneasy watch, as its leads strain so hard to get what they think they need.

The Jammer Group would be nothing without the skill of Dawn Darcy, who is Maurice’s top lieutenant and former girlfriend. The same might be said of the show’s reliance on the actor in the role, Regina Hall. ... Dawn functions as the conscience of the show: she groans at the Challenger line before the audience can, and she articulates our objections to the nonsensicality of the plot. Still, she’s just a den mother. Cleaning up this crassness is janitorial work--it’s beneath her to manage such toxic assets.

The barrage of period allusions functions as a connective tissue binding the disjointed parts of Black Monday, which tries to stitch together an over-the-top comedy of the go-go ’80s and a tut-tutting, cautionary morality tale, fitted out with appropriate music, fashions and hairstyles. What it doesn’t supply is an actual feel for the period, or a coherent point of view about it, or anything more than clichés for the show’s talented stars--Don Cheadle, Andrew Rannells and Regina Hall--to play.

If the writers behind Black Monday can wrestle their tonal problems into something more enjoyable, they’ve got the right people to make this show great. Right now, they just don’t have enough comedy capital to close the sale.

It takes a serious piece of modern history and builds a jumbled narrative around it that’s full of exaggeration and tastelessness. ... Every one of [the actors] tackles their part with enthusiasm and gusto. The problem is that these characters have been scripted on a one-dimensional level, at least at this stage in the season.