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Postmodern black comedy is thriving and Vince Staples is the latest addition to the canon. Following in the footsteps of programs like Atlanta, The Eric Andre Show, Random Acts of Flight, and I am Virgo, Netflix The Vince Staples Show is an equally amazing auteur side show built around dramatizing the craziness of life in general, and Vince’s life as a moderately successful rapper in particular.
It’s funny, quite often; is Lynchian™️, whatever that means. It’s almost a great show, but what keeps it from getting there is all the conceit. Vince Staples is one of the funniest figures in rap, funnier than most comedians and much more charismatic. He’s so good at interviews and appearances that I’d honestly rather watch him do that than listen to his music most of the time. It is a surprise and an unforced error that The Vince Staples Show I wouldn’t go out of my way to highlight that.
But instead, the show turns Vince into a more or less straight man and tasks him with reacting to the surreality of his hometown of Long Beach. I’m sure this is probably how Vince would characterize himself, as a product of his environment who is simply reacting to the madness around him. It’s not a bad idea for a show either, as evidenced by the way atlantaThe trio seems to be reacting to the madness with normal eyes (except Darius). But Vince is much more Martin Lawrence than Paper Boi, and this format downplays how funny the guy actually is. Polish his energy and personality for television.
It’s no surprise that the best parts of this show are usually when Vince is allowed to be as over-the-top as the situations and circumstances around him. His intimate knowledge of the robbers who robbed his bank in “Black Business”, or burned chicken and blew up cousins he doesn’t know in “Brown Family”, or the entire episode of “Red Door” are great, and a great advertisement for the show that could have been, yeah The Vince Staples Show committed to being a little more of a Vince Staples show. I also enjoyed the supporting cast, particularly Vanessa Bell Calloway as Vince’s mother. But the show’s best moments simply highlight how much it still feels like it’s missing. At times, the five-episode season feels like a refresher before the series really begins.
The Vince Staples Show was produced by Kenya Barris, who has built an empire simply by reinventing better black sitcoms. Even he can see that he doesn’t need to micromanage Vince, who can handle almost anything on his own, but he doesn’t really have the chance. If I come off so harshly on the show, it’s because I feel like I think much higher of Staples than the people behind this show seem to think, and because I think he deserves much better than to be stuck in a rut, “black people they make art films, too” attempt at avant-garde situation comedy.
The thing about David Lynch was that what people saw as random extravagance was actually a commitment to an identity and a worldview, often reaching the point of absurdity. You can’t really recreate that by just doing weird for the sake of being weird. My many problems with Donald Glover on the side, atlanta was the culmination of years of his style and worldview, and he got it right because it was the right thing at the right time. The Vince Staples Show It feels like the first real post-atlanta show, for better or worse. I’m sure there will be many more, but the seams of the imitation are already visible.