Even Ted Danson can't rescue NBC's half-hearted and half-baked Mr. Mayor

TVLine

"At the movies, January is the traditional dumping ground for box office bombs that the studios are eager to bury and forget," says Dave Nemetz. "Unfortunately, NBC’s new sitcom Mr. Mayor ... feels like the TV equivalent of that. It’s a real shame, because the combination of Ted Danson in a starring role and Tina Fey behind the scenes should be an easy slam dunk. But instead, the whole endeavor feels half-hearted and half-baked, with a thin concept and a glaring lack of laughs. It explains a lot that Mr. Mayor was originally conceived as a 30 Rock spinoff starring Alec Baldwin’s Jack Donaghy; as a result, the show plays like a rushed rewrite that doesn’t quite fit. (It acts like we should know who Danson’s retired business tycoon Neil Bremer is, even though we don’t.) To be sure, Danson has been a reliably charming TV presence for nearly forty years now, going back to his days tending bar as Sam Malone on Cheers. (His gleefully kooky turn on HBO’s Bored to Death deserves a second look, by the way.) But even he can’t rescue this." Nemetz adds: "The show itself seems as aimless and befuddled as Neil does, searching in vain for a strong narrative hook for us to care about. He’s the mayor, and… yep, that’s about all there is to it. Of course, the premise wouldn’t matter as much if the show had laughs, but Mr. Mayor comes up short there as well. Fey and fellow 30 Rock/Kimmy Schmidt alum Robert Carlock serve as co-creators and executive producers, and Mr. Mayor delivers that same relentless pace of punchlines, with jokes coming fast and furious. Most, though, land with a thud, with lots of tired jabs at familiar targets (Los Angeles, millennials, social media) and few of them eliciting even a light chuckle. The tone is muddy, too, seemingly undecided between Veep‘s pitch-black cynicism and Parks and Recreation‘s earnest grassroots optimism — so it tries to do both, and neither feels genuine. (Plus, after the bruising election year we all just survived, do we even need any more political comedy at this point? Give us a year off, at least.)"

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• Mr. Mayor is an unpleasant hang that looks worse in the wake of Peacock's successful Saved by the Bell reboot: "Late last year, a potential heir to 30 Rock debuted on a largely unheralded streaming service," says Daniel D'Addario. "Saved by the Bell, Peacock’s reboot of the 1989-93 teen staple, traded its forerunner’s clunkiness for a fleet and jazzy willingness to push past absurdity. From its breezy relationship with reality to its rich and deep bench of characters, it was no surprise that this series came from the mind of a key force behind 30 Rock — Tracey Wigfield, who shared an Emmy win with Tina Fey for writing that series’s finale. Wigfield’s impish, hyperverbal humor both recalled her past creative home at its best and suggested that it might have a future. The resounding creative success of Bell has one downside: It serves to emphasize that which does not work about Mr. Mayor, NBC’s new sitcom co-created by Fey and Robert Carlock. The two driving forces behind 30 Rock have taken a potentially intriguing premise and a setting rich with possibility and made a dour, halfhearted wince of a sitcom, a show that at a network-ready 22 minutes still seems to drag itself over the finish line. Mr. Mayor is disappointing — but disappointments happen. The great surprise of the show, given the talent involved, is the degree to which it’s an unpleasant hang."
• Mr. Mayor looks and feels shockingly generic: "NBC only sent two episodes for review, so it’s difficult to make pronouncements on such a small sampling," says Inkoo Kang. "But whereas Kimmy Schmidt sprung confidently out of the gate, Mr. Mayor wobbles and sways in these earlier chapters, despite terrific sparring partners in Danson and Holly Hunter. Fey and Carlock may see their new show as a homecoming of sorts, but it’s just as easy to view the duo as leaning away from their strengths and toward impulses that have recently left a sour taste in even some of their biggest fans’ mouths. Especially on the heels of Kimmy Schmidt (which concluded with a thoughtful interactive special just last May), Mr. Mayor looks and feels shockingly generic. (Danson’s styling even resembles that of Barry Bostwick’s WASPy mayor in the 1996-2002 series Spin City.) The creators’ trademark joke density, in which gags are piled on top of another with thrillingly Jenga-esque precarity, is evident in the pilot, which I needed to watch twice to catch all the quips (a 30 Rock habit I'm happy to continue). But even Carlock and Fey’s frenzied comic pacing disappeared by the deflatingly plotted second installment, in which Neil vexes his handlers (Bobby Moynihan and Mike Cabellon) by insisting on completing a day of photo-ops after getting accidentally high."
• Mr. Mayor feels both too timely and yet a little out of time: "It’s difficult to gauge just how good a comedy—especially a network sitcom airing every week instead of the now-popular binge model—is in its initial episodes," says Saloni Gajjar. "Previous NBC successes like Parks And Recreation and The Office are prime examples of how workplace humor can evolve over time and flesh out character arcs. Unfortunately, this practice of patience might not favor Mr. Mayor. Besides a formulaic start, the timing is excruciating. The country is already facing real-world consequences of what happens when someone inexperienced unexpectedly takes office and becomes a political leader. Mr. Mayor tries to pass this concept off for laughs and cutesy moments. Besides a scene with Mikaela freaking out over Neil’s unexpected rise, there are no self-aware jokes about how a wealthy white man elected to a position of power does not deserve or know what to do with it. The show feels both too timely and yet a little out of time, like it belonged in the Thursday night lineup in the late 2000s, with Fey’s 30 Rock. In the era of Peak TV, it’s entirely possible that a subpar network comedy like this one—with its reliable heroes and predictable, sappy narratives—is exactly what audiences need. It’s an escape from the incorporation of the pandemic to which other shows have resorted. No one in Mr. Mayor wears a mask or dwells on the months spent in quarantine."
• Mr. Mayor is a curious case, because it’s essentially the 30 Rock creative team interpolating the premise of Parks and Rec: "Like its contributors, Mr. Mayor itself turns out to be an intriguing mix of old and new," says Alison Herman, adding: "In the grand sweep of TV history, 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation are far more similar than different. Two single-camera sitcoms with female leads that aired on NBC from the late aughts to the mid-2010s, both contributed to a Thursday night lineup that may not have matched Must-See TV in reach, but rivals it in cultural impact. Not only were stars Tina Fey and Amy Poehler SNL alumnae entering middle age—they were also friends and frequent collaborators. And years later, both enjoy a second life on streaming services. Yet precisely because they’re so similar, the series are also perfect foils. 30 Rock’s title workplace was a TV network staffed by cynics, narcissists, and greedy executives; Parks and Rec’s was a city government run by public servants. A simple pessimist-optimist divide flows from these settings, but also the respective sensibilities of creators Fey and Michael Schur....Which makes Mr. Mayor a curious case, because it’s essentially the 30 Rock creative team interpolating the premise of Parks and Rec."
• The first two episodes are a jarringly flat 42 minutes of television: "So far, the show is full of lines that are meant to be funny, in a joke-adjacent kind of way, but don’t quite hit — they have the shape of humor but not the force," says Mike Hale. "Most of these are predicated on a continual but uneasy satire of the current climate of political correctness; Mr. Mayor takes on cancel culture as one of its main subjects, and perhaps it does it as directly as you can on prime-time network TV, but the overall effect is of writers boldly tiptoeing. It starts to feel like a receiving line: We meet the pronoun joke ('The look in his eyes — their eyes — a lot of different eyes'); the me-too joke ('If you believe in something, don’t give up, don’t take no for answer, except for with sex, that’s different'); the cleverly inverted race joke ('You need to learn how to listen, whitey.' 'Whitey?' 'Your hair')."
• Mr. Mayor recalls some of the worst aspects of 30 Rock: "If the writing were funnier, maybe its muddled tone would be easier to forgive," says Kelly Connolly. "There's a touch of 30 Rock's off-the-wall weirdness in some of its best jokes, but Mr. Mayor — which was originally intended to be a New York-set spin-off for Alec Baldwin's Jack Donaghy — feels most like 30 Rock when it aims its sense of humor at the wrong targets. The pilot takes on cancel culture with all the nuance of Mr. Bean weighing in on cancel culture. Everything is problematic now! it shrugs, and stops there. 'Did you post the black square on Instagram?' Holly Hunter's Arpi Meskimen asks Neil. 'Either way, how dare you.' As Arpi, a self-righteous, granola-crunching city councilwoman, Hunter is trapped in a horrible wig and saddled with a thankless role as Mr. Mayor's activist punching bag. Whether Mr. Mayor eventually gets kinder or more caustic, it's not going to figure itself out until it figures out Arpi."
• Danson is delightful, but Mr. Mayor's timing is poor: Mr. Mayor is very much a work in progress, especially since it was originally envisioned as starring Alec Baldwin and set in New York City: "The creators are on foreign turf, with very little in the early stories that feels specific to Los Angeles," says Alan Sepinwall. "(Even the dispensary plot could be happening in any of the major cities that have legalized weed in the last few years.) And a reportedly prolonged negotiation with Baldwin, followed by the time it took to retool and relocate the show for Danson, pushed back its premiere to a moment where the idea of a comedy about an unqualified guy taking political office for reasons of vanity plays differently. The pilot explicitly sets the show in a post-pandemic world, though it’s debuting at a real-life moment when Los Angeles’ hospitals are drowning in Covid patients due to systemic failures across multiple levels of government. And now here’s Neil Bremer, clueless about what he should be doing, much less how to get anything done, and mainly wanting to look cool. The timing is poor, to say the least."
• Mr. Mayor is mostly a testament to Danson, the towering talent at the helm: "Yes, the dialogue is filled with quippy pop culture jokes and the story structure is clear, clean, and inviting," says Ben Travers. "Yes, the rest of the cast is strong, and Bobby Moynihan may have finally found the right supporting role for his particular talents. But Danson remains the draw among a show filled with draws. He earns your attention by adding a twist on a routine line or a fresh reaction to predictable events. Even after four decades of close weekly scrutiny, he’s literally always worth watching. And thus, so is Mr. Mayor — at least, for now. The pilot and subsequent episode, airing together on premiere night, are broad entertainment."
• Danson has a way of classing up even a so-so premise: "Like 30 Rock, the jokes come fast and furious, and there's a special L.A.-centric vibe to them, made a little less novel by their familiarity," Brian Lowry. "(For starters, distinguishing between second wives and daughters can be a real challenge.) Thankfully, Danson elevates even the more banal gags, and remains good company if nothing else. There's also something vaguely reassuring about having him back Thursdays on NBC, which has been his periodic home since Cheers opened its doors in 1982."
• Based on the first two episodes, Mr. Mayor is fine: "Given the talent on both sides of the camera, I expect it to get better. It’s a high bar the creators have set, to be sure," says Robert Lloyd, who adds that the show benefits from starring Ted Danson. "Danson, a boyish 73, and having, as he seems always to have, the time of his life," says Lloyd. "If there were a Mt. Rushmore of Television Comedians, his face could be carved on it four times. (Obviously, we would need a bigger Mt. Rushmore.) Coming almost straight out of The Good Place, he is on similar ground as a decent sort finding his footing in a new job and a little slow about some of what he finds there. ('He thinks Santa Monica is part of Los Angeles,' Mikaela sniffs). But Danson has found his light and is waiting comfortably in it for the rest of the show to catch up. I can wait too."
• With Danson and Fey, Mr. Mayor feels less like a clash of styles than a case of opposites attracting: "While jaunty affability is Danson’s trademark, Fey is a withering social critic whose deeply pessimistic outlook on race, gender and other social-justice issues has been known to incite controversy," says Judy Berman. "Happily, the long-awaited result of their collaboration—Mr. Mayor, premiering Thursday, Jan. 7—feels less like a clash of styles than a case of opposites attracting."
• Danson is essentially playing a nicer Donald Trump: Mayor Neil Brener is "not Trump, per se," says Kevin Fallon. "He’s a nice guy! He’s played by American Treasure Ted Danson! But he is a Trump 'character' in the way that we’ve become used to seeing on TV series over the years: an inept aspiring politico who galvanizes support as a supposed 'outsider' and ends up in a position of power; he then becomes a foil for how those who should know better respond to him being there. It’s interesting that Fey and Carlock are opting to glance at the horrors of the past few years at all. They are staging a series about politics, set in a happily ever after to our current nightmare where everything works out OK. Is there something fresh and layered about a satire that imagines what suffering the foolishness of an inexperienced politician might be like in a post-Trump, post-pandemic world? There may have been at one point. Yet here I am writing this review while watching the surreal footage of a pro-Trump mob attempting a coup and violently storming the U.S. Capitol, an unshakable and unspeakable reality that makes it a bit hard to suspend disbelief in the Mr. Mayor premiere. It’s an unfortunately big ask to find the humor in a near-future where yet another ill-equipped businessman bungles governance but it’s OK because it’s Ted Danson."
• There's lots of low-hanging fruit in the first few episodes: "The first couple of episodes pick at most of the low-hanging fruit, or the obvious, easy targets — jokes about Los Angeles, mayoral proclamations, preening millennials, the unicyclist community and murder hornets," says Verne Gay. "There's a long-running gag about a certain type of porn (doesn't work), another about pot edibles (better, but only a bit). None comes even marginally close to the best work of Carlock/Fey. Blame COVID? (And like everything else, production was saddled with onerous if essential protocols that are not exactly conducive to comedy.) Or the fact that Carlock/Fey are out of their element, or chosen city (New York) here? Or The Mayor itself — that largely unfunny construct? In fact, it's probably advisable to give this one some time."
• In Mr. Mayor, Danson takes the spotlight and shines once again: "To start 2021 on a very good note, NBC has done it again," David Bianculli says of Danson returning to NBC's Thursday night lineup. "And so has Ted Danson."
• Los Angeles has had mayors of Mexican descent since 2005, so why isn't there more Latino representation on Mr. Mayor?: "Someone please tell (Tina Fey) we exist. We're right outside the studio walls," says Dennis Romero. "L.A. is nearly half Latino. Latinos account for about 1 in 4 movie tickets. This, like Community, is a classic example of Latino erasure. It was an opportunity to make it right. Six years ago Chris Rock famously wrote, 'You're in L.A, you've got to try not to hire Mexicans.' And here we see Hollywood, recipient of billions of dollars in tax breaks from a plurality-Latino state, giving us their best try again. I've been writing about Hollywood's brownout since '04. It's quite bold, in 2021, to present a show about L.A. City Hall without a single top-billed Latino. It's just beyond comprehension, particularly after 6 years of minority protests about Hollywood exclusion."
• Ted Danson says the jump from The Good Place to Mr. Mayor didn't feel rushed: "The Good Place ended and then months later I started shooting Mr. Mayor," he says. "Then you throw in the pandemic — we had a nine-month hiatus. It doesn't seem like I'm leaping quickly into something else. I am blessed to be able to go from one thing to another. That is an amazing luxury as an actor, but it doesn't feel too quick."
• Holly Hunter on working with Danson: “Ted has the most sophisticated instincts and intuitions for comedy,” she says. “So when Ted ever speaks up, about blocking, about the words, about when sentences are being spoken, props, where we are in the room, all that stuff, I listen. Because his intuitions are unerring. I’ve never done a sitcom. It is a different thing. So it was scary. Now it’s no longer scary. And I just continue to watch and listen to what Ted’s instincts are.”
• Danson emphasizes Mr. Mayor isn't a political comedy: "It's a family comedy that takes place in the workplace and in my home with my daughter, who's 15, 16," he says. "Robert Carlock and Tina Fey are so bright and so good at this — the fast comedy where they gallop through the story line and you don't even notice that they pulled out their guns and are taking pot shots at genuine political, social things that should have pot shots taken at them. But it's not like that is the focus of the show. But oh my goodness! I have to read the scripts two or three times before I go, 'Oh, dear Lord. I didn't even see that!' They're so fast."