Vice Principals

Meticulously unhinged. [15 July 2016, p.62]

It subversively places white resentment at its center and dares us to look away, telling us that arson, violence, and outright bigotry are light comedy even as something in our minds tells us that’s not quite right. The show comes closer, in its twisted way, to suggesting why Americans embrace the politics of division than does much on-the-ground journalism.

There isn’t much that can pass for comedy here, but there’s plenty of compelling viciousness and two powerful performances.

It’s not a knowing satire like “Veep” or a subcultural ensemble riff like “Silicon Valley.” It’s a more obvious comedy about ignorance, insensitivity, ambition, and delusion, like “Eastbound & Down,” and it’s enjoyable if you don’t expect too much from it.

Vice Principals is as profane and outrageous as HBO comedies get. Once you realize where this is headed, you’ll want to stay after school just to see how it all plays out.

McBride is convincing, not surprisingly. He has a special knack for inhabiting the skin of imbeciles, and I mean that in a good way. Goggins proves he is one of the finest character actors working in television.

As to its relevance outside of disposable chuckles, there’s a lot to admire--namely Goggins and Hill’s propulsive direction--in this maniacal, hilarious, ass hole of a show.

The level of profanity here would likely give any real life vice principal a heart attack, and Gamby’s stupidity is world class. Eventually you realize he’s just a lonely, sad jerk in need of validation. Comedy, you’ll recall, is just tragedy upside down.

The first episode doesn’t begin to suggest how far Vice Principals will go and how funny it will become. However, you can readily appreciate the chemistry between McBride and Goggins.

Vice Principals is the story of an unlikely partnership, and Goggins and McBride prove deliriously entertaining in evoking Neal and Lee's rocky relationship and oft-guarded passions.

The stakes in this show are very low; so is the humor, sometimes delightfully so.

Vice Principals could end up being some solid fun to fly through on a lazy Saturday. If it decides to double down on its characters’ grosser instincts, however, it could fade into the list of countless angry-dude-driven comedies that are just angry for the sake of it.

Like its predecessor, “Vice Principals” goes all in for profanity and the trading of childish insults (“Keep walkin’, sassypants” is one I can quote), and there is a certain melodic delight in hearing Goggins pronounce the multisyllabic bad words the basic-cable rules kept from him saying on “Justified.” But the comic returns do diminish.

There are moments where Russell and Gamby’s reluctant alliance, and later, their personal lives, give the series the depth it desperately needs, but it’s fleeting. Instead, the first four episodes are clogged with a crude sense of humor that for the most part isn’t clever (like say, Veep) nor is it funny.

This is a Danny McBride comedy--not exactly funny, but weirdly engaging in its own uncomfortable way. His fans should be pleased. Everyone else will be puzzled--or worse, repulsed.

Russell is an interesting enough character, but Vice Principals works better when the light shines on McBride's Gamby alone.

This material is hit-or-miss--it’s a difficult thing to pull off consistently--but for fans of their style, it’s its own reward.

Vice Principals marinades so much in its own outrageousness, it’s depressingly easy to imagine that some people will laugh at the show's antics for all the wrong reasons.

The result is a show with occasional laughs but lacking the freshness of the first season of “Eastbound & Down,” and the consistently funny plotting of the best episodes of that show. Even just over the first few episodes, Vice Principals already feels like it’s spinning its wheels.

Vice Principals is aware that it is a show about two petulant, middle-age white men trying to destroy the life of an admirable black woman, but this is still such a weighted setup that it topples the show’s comedy. I was fascinated, but I barely laughed.

If you can get through the first two puerile episodes--and that’s a big if--of Danny McBride and Jody Hill’s mean-spirited school comedy Vice Principals, you’ll probably notice a much better and possibly smarter work of satire lurking just out of reach.

Vice Principals doesn’t offer much of a twist on the familiar high-school setting, or even on the idea that teachers and administrators are despicable. It’s just a slight variation on McBride’s grating, played-out persona.

Vice Principals has some weird twists, like Russell’s home life, that keep the show vaguely watchable at times, but it doesn’t have enough laughs and or a satirical bite to keep it propped up.

The kind of nasty, mean-spirited, generically offensive comedy that we just don’t need more of in 2016.

It feels often as if the show cannot contain the anger and resentment it is trying to tap into, and instead of doing the work of converting it into comedy, it has just unleashed unpleasantness into the ether.

Crude comedy can be funny, but this is lots of crude and almost nothing in the way of comedy. Repeatedly dropping f-bombs doesn't make Vice Principals anything but lame. Neal and Lee are childish idiots, sure, but they're not amusing.

Vice Principals can be coarsely amusing in fits and spurts. But when it’s bad, it’s horrid.

Anything even marginally appealing about Vice Principals is overwhelmed by the witless ugliness, rampant stupidity and utter cluelessness about the times in which we live.

If F-bombs and infantile name-calling are your special vice, the very thought leaving you gasping with laughter, then maybe Vice Principals will seem like a gnarly, nasty treat. ... Some vices just can't be excused. [25 Jul-7 Aug 2016, p.15]