Our heroes about to dosed in LSD and trip the fck out.
I don't know what I was expecting when I found this but I was browsing as one is want to do when one is entirely without TV to binge on and I came across a simple poster with two men and the word "Vice Principals" plastered above them in a very bluish blue. You know? That safe blue that companies like to use in their logos.
One of the men was Danny McBride and the other I came to realise shortly afterwards was Walton Goggins. I pretty much decided to give it a shot because of Danny alone but Goggins carries the show equally hard and is another actor to enter my "If you're in it, I'll give it a shot" list. Not like he wasn't already on it, I just didn't recognise him at first.
It was a rollercoaster of emotions and it was DARK. Like, really, ... dark... and cruel. I mean, don't get me wrong, I loved it. It's the kind of show that just does not give a shit for political correctness. It tries to amuse you by forcing you to look at some of the uglier aspects of life and laugh at them. It is not afraid at all to risk offending you and I think it's the better show for it. It's a true example of modern day American humour on the big screen and it is VERY welcomed by me personally.
Director David Gordon Green says “We try to tell the stories we want to tell, without compromising and we try not to follow market trends.” which pretty much sums up this show but if I were to try and sum it up, I would say... "It's the type of TV series Gilfoil from Silicon Valley would watch and laugh at."
All in all, it was a nice balance, a very carefully selected hue of just enough cringe and immorality to bring out the full intensity of the brand of comedy this show wants to deliver.
Real talk for a moment. I cringed harder than I'd ever cringed before in one of the scenes and that's actually a good thing. I couldn't even watch it, I covered my eyes and just kept screaming "OH MY GOD! NO! NO! That did not just happen". I also like and watch a fair amount of cringe comedy so this is saying a lot for me.
The basic premise is that a VERY controlling and intense vice-principal shares a blood feud of sorts with a co-vice principal, a heavily metrosexual and very morally bankrupt vulgar little man who takes way more pleasure than he should from spitting in people's beverages.
The principal at their school is retiring due to a family crisis and the two are ready to fight tooth and nail for his job.
And they do. Oh boy, do they. Both men are HORRIBLE human beings but the show is more than just a comedy, it's a drama and it challenges your empathy when you see the bully being bullied. It says that people are more than just bad or good but they're an ugly, chaotic mixture of both.
Now I wanna step away from words for a second here and talk about the soundtrack. The music felt very ... unique to me. I mean, it was weird, I don't even know if I have the intellectual capacity as a consumer to even comprehend the auditory experience I was given which makes things hard for me as a reviewer but I loved it. I fucking loved the music.
And I've read a few reviews of this show online and most of them were tepid, a word which here I use to mean that most of the reviews read as "Meh, it was okay" but not ONE of them mentioned the music and it shows just how little online critics know about watching television.
So I said the music was weird? Right? Well, yeah, it was all over the place but in a good way. It kept me guessing, it kept me engaged and it did for me what television is made to do; make me think life is more enjoyable than it really is.
It was basey, it was intense, epic, silly, funny all in one. For those of you who care to know, the composer's name was a one, Joseph Stephens, if my search-fu is to be relied upon.
To wrap this up I give it a solid 9/10. On IMBD it only manages to just miss the 8.0/10 mark with a slightly disappointing 7.9. However, some of the later episodes in the first season lay claim to individual scores of 8.9 to 9.1 out of 10 and I think that those scores almost represent the show as a whole and I'm pretty excited for season 2.
Definitely, something to check out for lovers of comedy.