A high school comedy for the Trump era
Bill Murray has unofficially become Hollywood’s Cameo King these days, lending his wry, avuncular presence to small, memorable bits in Zombieland, Parks and Recreation, the new Ghostbusters — and now playing retiring Principal Welles of North Jackson High School in HBO’s new comedy series, Vice Principals. Here, Murray is practically the straight man, passing the comedy torch off to Danny McBride and Walter Goggins, two knuckleheads who want badly to become principal once Welles steps down to aid his cancer-stricken wife. (Why, one wonders? It doesn’t exactly seem like a dream job.)
No, it may not exactly sound like comedy gold either, but when you get two actors with as much fine-tuned foulness as McBride and Goggins together, you know that the PC-O-Meter is going to spin off the charts. Vice Principals gets there in pretty short order, even in censored local versions.
Vice Principals’ opening owes a little to Wes Anderson’s Rushmore — hey, it even features Bill Murray! — as it focuses on a grudge match between two overambitious, overzealous jerks. Here, it’s Neal Gamby (McBride) and Lee Russell (Goggins), both gunning for the vacated principal slot, only to see outside rival Dr. Belinda Brown (Kimberly Hébert Gregory of Devious Maids) enter and grab the seat.
Goggins — whose sleazy, unctuous smile is familiar from Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight and TV’s Justified — plays the Southern suck-up better than anyone, even as he plots to stick a knife in the back of rival Gamby. But first order of business is new career obstacle Principal Brown.
Those who miss Danny McBride’s un-PC romp as Kenny Powers in HBO’s Eastbound & Down (or recall him playing himself, or a cannibalistic version of himself at least, in This Is The End) know what a force of nature he can be. Gamby is the kind of rules-and-regulations school administrator that kids fear and fellow teachers loathe; their expressions literally sink when he enters a room. Watch Gamby try to get the support of school cafeteria worker Dayshawn (Sheaun McKinney), telling him that, if he backs him in his principal bid, he’ll work to get “lower class workers like you” more respect. “You gonna get us a raise?” Dayshawn asks eagerly. “No, I’m just gonna make sure that people don’t look down on you, like they do now,” says Gamby. “You know how the students look at you guys, like ‘I would never want to do that job.’” A real team-builder, that Gamby.
The fun actually begins once the two VPs realize they have a common foe. Principal Brown turns out to be the proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove, dispatching a thug-like assistant (named “Ceson”) to keep constant tabs on Gamby and Russell. Watch her turn from peaches-‘n’-cream smile to “Drag your face across the parking lot” snarl in a heartbeat. Things start to heat up by the third episode when Principal Brown’s house is mysteriously set ablaze — but that’s probably enough spoilers for now.
McBride works with writing partner Jody Hill to capture the zeitgeist of yet another outpost for losers and no-hopers in America — McBride’s people, in other words. Expect tons of foul language; four letter words and phrases are applied liberally here, like Baco Bits on a bland salad. Also in the house is HBO regular Shea Wigham (Boardwalk Empire) as a more-popular stepdad to Gamby’s daughter; Busy Phillips (Freaks and Geeks) as his ex-wife; and Georgia King as cheery young schoolteacher Amanda Snodgrass.
Intentionally or not, it’s a show that’s tailor-fit to America’s current political landscape. Neither vice principal deserves the top job, yet they immediately try to tear down the minority — Principal Brown — who is hired instead. A sense of white self-entitlement pervades, which may or may not remind you of certain real-life politicians.
Of course, the advantage of McBride’s earlier HBO series, Eastbound & Down, was that you actually had some sympathy for Kenny Powers, the once-talented baseball player forced to survive by playing for Mexican minor leagues. His dream, as maniacally unfocused as it was, was kind of America’s dream. Here, the two knuckleheads, escalating their schemes to dangerous levels, sort of cancel each other out. They’re not simply morons, like the lovable duo in Dumb and Dumber; they’re spiteful, conniving and grasping. Which makes them very dangerous — perhaps to themselves most of all.
There’s always a certain level of anarchy in the McBride/Hill comedy playbook. Stakes get raised: school fountains get defecated into, teachers get stalked via personal dossiers, and liquid LSD somehow gets absorbed by the pranksters planning to dose others. You never know where the unraveling thread will lead — hopefully to enlightenment, maybe even to redemption. Can they sustain the pain for two seasons, the announced arc of this HBO series? We can hope so.
You sort of look to McBride’s comedy as a pulse read on how much abuse people are willing to put up with in today’s America. There are homophobic, semi-racist and openly sexist riffs aplenty in Vice Principals. (Viewers are invited to reflect that the vilest things are being uttered by the biggest idiots.) But there’s also, arguably, a kind of giddy freedom in hearing people say the foulest things imaginable. And with a presidential race that now features one of the biggest blowhards in US history — seemingly immune to whom he torches on the road to November 8 — that’s a pretty high level of abuse.
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Vice Principals airs on HBO Mondays, 10:30 a.m. with repeats the same evening.
