Vince Staples gets lost in his own show

Black comedy is thriving in the post-modern era, and Vince Staples is the latest addition to the list. Follow the steps of offers such as atlanta, the eric andre show, random acts of flight, And i'm a virgo, Netflix The Vince Staples Show It's a weird writer's sideshow centered around dramatizing the craziness of life in general, and Vince's life as a fairly successful rapper in particular.

It's often funny. that it Linchian™️, whatever that means anymore. It's almost a great show, but what's holding it back from getting there is kind of the whole conceit. Vince Staples is one of the funniest characters in rap, funnier than most comedians and far more charismatic. He's so good at interviews and appearances that I'd rather watch him do it than listen to his music a lot of the time. It's a surprise, an unforced error, that The Vince Staples Show He won't go out of his way to highlight that.

But instead, the series makes Vince the straight man, more or less, and tasks him with reacting to the surreality of his hometown of Long Beach. I'm sure this is how Vince describes himself, as a product of his environment simply reacting to the madness around him. It's not a bad idea for the show either, as shown by the way AtlantaThe trio seem to react to the madness with normal eyes (except for Darius). But Vince looks a lot more like Martin Lawrence than he does Paper Boi, and that look diminishes how funny the man himself is. He tempers his energy and personality for television.

Not surprisingly, the best parts of this show are usually when Vince is allowed to be as over-the-top as the situations and circumstances surrounding him. His intimate knowledge of the robbers robbing his bank in “Black Business,” or the burning of chickens and blowing up cousins ​​he doesn't know in “Brown Family,” or the entire episode of “Red Door,” are all great, and a great ad for the show that could have been The Vince Staples Show Committed to being little more than The Vince Staples Show. I also enjoyed the supporting cast, especially Vanessa Bell Calloway as Vince's mother. But the show's best moments only highlight how much of it is still missing. Sometimes, a five-episode season feels like a whirlwind tour before the series really gets going.

The Vince Staples Show It is executive produced by Kenya Barris, who has built an empire on reinventing the best black sitcoms. He can even see that he doesn't need to micromanage Vince, who can carry most anything on his own, but doesn't really get the chance. If I'm being harsh on the show, it's because I feel like I think Staples is a lot better than the people behind this show seem to be, and because I think he deserves a lot better than getting bogged down in the routine, “Blacks make art films too” attempt at an avant-garde comedy series.

What's so special about David Lynch is that what people saw as random oddity was actually a commitment to identity and worldview, to the point of absurdity and often beyond. You can't really recreate that by just doing weird stuff for weird stuff's sake. for me many problems With Donald Glover aside, Atlanta He was Peak Years of his style and worldview, and it worked because it was the right thing at the right time. The Vince Staples Show Seems like my first real postAtlanta It appears for better and for worse. I'm sure there will be many more, but the layers of imitation are already starting to show.