The Mayor (Tuesdays at 9:30 on ABC; Premieres October 3)
Raise your hand if you're in the mood to watch a show that fictionalizes and pokes fun at the very situation our country currently finds itself in. Yeah, me either. I was not looking forward to The Mayor based on its premise of a celebrity being shockingly voted into office without any clue how to handle his new position. I see that horrifying sitcom played out everyday. Thankfully, though, The Mayor is more than that, more hopeful than that at least.
In a very clear parallel to our 2016 presidential election, just on a much smaller scale, The Mayor recounts the story of Courtney Rose (Brandon Michael Hall), an unsuccessful rapper who's running for mayor of Fort Grey, California to increase his visibility and hopefully score a record deal. After a surprising showing at a debate against the race's frontrunner, Ed Gunt (David Spade), Courtney actually wins the position.
The beginning moments hit a little too close to home with the Trump/Clinton similarities: Gunt is working class, the son of a steel worker, with a real, accomplishable platform, who sees Courtney as a "funny distraction." Courtney is an opportunist, a silly manchild who has no idea how to govern (and who doesn't even really want the job) but can galvanize a crowd with his lofty ideas and surrounds himself with idiots (Bernard David Jones and Marcel Spears play the typical doofus sidekicks). The major difference is in Courtney's heart... as in, he has one. In the debate scene, when he's not shilling his album and website, Courtney actually takes a stand against Gunt and rattles the audience with his ideas about changing the neighborhood and rebuilding the community spaces, a talking point Gunt and others before him have made but never implemented. It's enough to win him the mayorship, but it's also his potential downfall if he can't figure out how to make it work.
Despite some groan-worthy moments throughout the pilot, and despite my reluctance to take on yet another form of entertainment that insists on rehashing or allegorically explaining "how we got here" (ahem, American Horror Story), The Mayor is actually a fun little half-hour. It's easy to see why Courtney would get elected, because Brandon Michael Hall plays him with charisma, charm, and an easy relatability. Lea Michele is just playing yet another Rachel Berry type as Valentina, Gunt's aid who switches sides when Courtney wins and she realizes how desperately he needs help. She's pointed and bitchy, but thankfully never in the over-the-top way her Glee character was. Yvette Nicole Brown (Community) makes the most lasting impression, though, as Courtney's concerned mother. She's warm but firm, and her reactions to her son are some of the funniest moments of the pilot.
Other than the performances, though, the show itself needs a little work. Jeremy Bronson's script tends toward stereotypes in the first episode, with Courtney coming across as a vain, attention-seeking narcissist ("Why does anyone in my generation do anything? Attention!") with no sense of personal responsibility, a hugely dated and ridiculous view of millennials. Spears and Jones, as I mentioned earlier, don't get much to play with as Courtney's friends; they're his hype men, and nothing more. Michele's Valentina is the typically cutthroat female, as all seem to be in the political sphere. There's room to grow, but they're all types. (There is a really interesting detail that plays against this, though, in our initial introduction to Courtney: a James Baldwin poster on his wall. Maybe the kid's more woke than we're led to believe.) The dialogue can also get a little awkward and expository, such as when Courtney first sees Valentina and says, "Ah, Valentina! My tenth grade lab partner and now my political adversary!" There's nothing natural about that, especially considering the two would have inevitably been running into each other frequently on the campaign trail.
Anyway, the pilot ends in a way that suggests Courtney is learning how to be a good mayor and, by extension, a good person. He learns a lesson in not being selfish and shoulders the responsibility for his actions which caused his mother to end up in jail and a fundraiser for a local park to be broken up by police. It probably won't entirely stick, because there's little comedy to be mined from a novice rapping mayor who suddenly knows all the right moves and does his job the way it's supposed to be done, but the idea that a figure like Courtney can learn from his mistakes and grow is something that I wish we were seeing more of in the real world. The Mayor is more feel-good than laugh-out-loud, and that's okay right now.
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