So when it comes to comedy shows about politics in the United States, it's not exactly a secret that things haven't been great. There haven't been that many - if any - 'political' comedy shows lately that have been relevant or funny in any meaningful way.
Indeed, with the exception of shows like 'Boston Legal' that ended more than 10 years ago or 'South Park', that is still going, otherwise there's really nothing to watch. The quality on those other shows has been genuinely that terrible ('Veep' was a great example of this).
Nevertheless, the latest attempt at making politics / policies funny comes in the form of NBC's sitcom called 'Mr. Mayor'. This is a comedy series created by Tina Fey & Robert Carlock that desperately tries to breath some new air to the political genre.
Having now seen the first two episodes of the show, I can safely say that 'Mr. Mayor', as unfortunate as it is, is not a show that makes you laugh. There isn't anything even remotely funny or relevant in this poorly constructed single camera comedy.
Premise-wise, what we're dealing with is basically a setup that tries to emulate Michael J. Fox's 'Spin City', a sitcom on ABC that ran in the late nineties / early 2000s. That one was a comedy about politics that managed to be pretty funny, despite its very lighthearted nature.
Series-wise, the reason that 'Spin City' managed to work rather well was that it had characters and storylines that managed to be relatively down to earth. Especially its main character (Fox as a Deputy mayor) was a 'straight man' that you were able to relate to.
Unfortunately, when it comes to 'Mr. Mayor', there aren't really any characters that you could take seriously. This is especially true about our main protagonist the Mayor (Ted Danson), who is supposed to be someone who is relatable and believable as a character.
Indeed, in the first two episodes that I saw, our main character simply does too many stupid things. He - among other things - gets high (ha-ha funny), in the pilot doesn't know his way around his office (!) and is just entirely too clueless about everything.
Story-wise, the really big problem with having characters that aren't believable in a show about politics is that it drastically limits what you're able to do. If your characters are complete air-heads that have no real problems, what is there to explore on the show?
Not that surprisingly, the first two episodes that I forced myself to watch had 'storylines' that consisted of juvenile penis memes, pee pee jokes and other incredibly pointless and superficial stuff. That most certainly didn't impress me in any way and was just embarrassing.
In that sense, when it comes to this series as a whole, I think it's safe to say that 'Mr. Mayor' isn't a series that is going to save the (political) sitcom genre. We're not dealing with a comedy series that has potential to be even remotely relevant.
After all, when you think of all the elements that you need to make click in a sitcom, pretty much nothing here worked on any level. The premise wasn't well thought out, the characters made very little sense and the storylines were genuinely lacking and awful.
In that sense, in the end, when it all is said and done, I just hope that sooner or later we're going to get some new shows that are going to make at least some sense. I hope that we're going to get new stuff that works and that might have some actual value in it.
After all, when you think that pretty much the only relevant comedy for the last ten or so years has been 'South Park', that's not a good thing. That's not good at all and shows that we desperately need some fresh new blood to be able to take chances in this genre.
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