The Vince Staples Show Finds Fear and Longing in Long Beach

A quixotic quest for fried chicken in a godawful theme park. A cat-and-mouse chase born from a high school vendetta, set to surf rock and punctuated by Kill Bill sirens. Welcome to The Vince Staples Show, a limited series that puts a fictionalized spin on its eponymous figure, following the Long Beach rapper (now actor and teleplay writer) through weird and sometimes violent dilemmas.

Early looks at The Vince Staples Show sparked comparisons to Atlanta, which felt a little ungenerous — perhaps any vaguely Afro-Surrealist dramedy with acidic barbs towards systemic anti-blackness is doomed to the same comparison. But they’re not without merit, even though Vince Staples doesn’t take the same sudden swerves, a la “Teddy Perkins” — though perhaps it might have, if it had a larger episode count. The limited format makes the show feel like a prelude to something larger; it hits its stride and simply ends.

The Vince Staples Show does often exist in the same tonal space as Glover’s critical hit, with an equally dark and often strange sense of humor revealed by director of photography Ayinde Anderson’s camera gliding over a relatively mundane neighborhood landscape as gunshots echo in the background. Or the wide-eyed intensity with which random people explain their backstories and ethos to Vince, whether he wants to hear them or not.

The marquee-style title of The Vince Staples Show holds an ironic quality, suggesting that such interactions represent normalcy for him. By the time the show reaches the point where Vince is embroiled in a hilariously cordial bank robbery by old friends, the name feels like even more of a wink. These episodes are only loosely connected; one of the main through lines is phone calls from an incarcerated friend only referred to as “The Homie” (Watts Homie Quan). The setting of each is similarly isolated, not so much creating a portrait of Long Beach as examining how Staples specifically relates to it.

Vince Staples the character is one of compelling overlap, his fame intersecting uncomfortably with the same prejudices he experiences as a Black man. Not long after he’s put in jail (for making a U-turn), one of the guards starts quoting lyrics back at him (with Killer Mike being arrested immediately following a win at the Grammys, the episode seems even less far-fetched). Some fans try to prove themselves to him by singing hooks, others simply want to stab him because he knows a guy who knows a guy who’s a snitch. But the show does carve out its own distinct identity by embodying an identity crisis. We see a different side of “Vince Staples” from episode to episode, sometimes from scene to scene. In one episode there might be a version of Vince that’s more earnest and maybe even slightly corny, in the next he’s barely suppressed rage.

Still, Staples has a reputation among his fans for being quick-witted and funny in all manner of appearances, even though his music is more dramatic. That dry wit shows in his writing for the series as much as in his laidback, naturalistic performance, which runs counter to the over-the-top weirdos or simply hostile strangers of each episode. Now and then we get to see him being goofy — burning chicken and triumphantly saying it “looks good” as he floats above the chaos of a party gone wrong, sort of how he does in the rest of the show.

There’s yet another Vince in Episode 3, “Brown Family,” one well versed enough in common squabbles that he knows when to keep his distance. He avoids the drama invited by his mother Anita (Vanessa Bell Calloway), who incites a fight after finding out about a group chat she’s not in, and learning someone else has brought the mac and cheese to a gathering. The episode highlights his family’s resentments along with the distance that his fame has created between them.

Something that comes across in one of the show’s more didactic moments — his uncle more or less lays out his relationship with the family in one monologue — is Vince’s fear that everyone wants something from him. That sense of alienation permeates the whole season, as the character of Vince doesn’t quite fit in, no matter what setting he’s thrown into next. (That restlessness at one point translates into a joke about him presenting himself to be a multi-hypenate artist, only to concede “…I’m a rapper.”) He can’t hang out with his family, he can’t inspire kids at a local school, he isn’t famous or wealthy enough to get a loan from a prestigious bank. Most places feel hostile or at least a little bit off.

At the show’s best, it can be laceratingly funny, pairing sharp insults with its strange circumstances (Vince derails an inspirational speech to a bank robber by reflecting “They may be rich, they may be powerful… but they ugly.”) The middle three episodes are the ones that show off this quality the best, starting with its second, “Black Business.” It starts as small as Vince applying for a business loan, as he pitches a condescending bank manager his plan for “Kapow!” cereal.

The two subsequent episodes further the show’s most interesting, implicit narrative thread. Everyone asks “who the f*ck is Vince Staples” whenever his name is dropped, but it feels like the show is searching for the answer as well. There’s a different Vince Staples in his pitch and at the bank. When he walks out the office in “Black Business” and bumps into Rick Ross, set up in the waiting area like he’s in a VIP booth, he code switches, then again when he sees the robbers, a hint at a survival instinct honed over time. Who’s to say which Vince is the most authentic; they could all be, or none of them might be. By the show’s end there’s a dark acknowledgement of how stardom obscures that truth, as an earnestly smiling Vince finally sells his cereal. The series has shown so many sides of him, but most people will only see one.

Kambole Campbell is a freelance writer for Empire Magazine, Little White Lies, Sight and Sound, Hyperallergic, and CartoonBrew. And here!