Courtney Rose (Brandon Michael Hall) a 27-year-old rapper from
Northern California, runs for mayor of his hometown Fort Grey. His rival’s
campaign manager Valentina Barella (Lea Michele) says “[Courtney’s] entire
campaign is a stunt. Voters won’t fall for that. Not in America.” Sound
familiar...? After a rather inspiring debate with his opponent Ed Gunt (David
Spade), Courtney unexpectedly wins the election. He doesn’t believe it at
first, joking “Russia must have tampered with the voting machines, right?” Courtney’s
mother (Yvette Nicole Brown) slaps him around with some hard but necessary
truth that feels all too timely, “You put your name on a ballot in this
country, that means something. It carries consequences.”
The next morning, Valentina come to Courtney offering to become his
chief of staff and the team organizes a party and citywide clean-up event of
the City Commons, which over the years has gone from a community space to a
trash dump. When a local club offers Courtney a time slot to perform now that
he’s ‘the kid mayor’, he leaves his event early. The party takes a turn for the
worse when police arrive about noise complaints, seeking a permit, which
Courtney has. After a fired-up exchange, Courtney’s mother is arrested and he
shows up just after she’s bailed out. Some more tough love is spewed out and
Courtney realizes he has a long road ahead of him and starts to take his new
job seriously.
Brandon Michael Hall in The Mayor
You’ll notice that my plot summary of the show is much shorter than
they usually are, as it was a 30-minute comedy, rather than an hour. One-hour
comedies are rather rare, if not pretty much non-existent. Though the writing
and performances were heartfelt and funny, the pilot episode felt very rushed.
A LOT happened within the first ten minutes and I feel that an entire episode
could have been dedicated, or at least a bit more time, to Courtney’s
campaigning. Instead, it was shown in a ninety second news segment the morning
of the debate. All of that aside, the content of the show was certainly timely
with some not-so-subtle but amusing parallels to our current political
situation.
Creator Jeremy Bronson (Speechless,
The Mindy Project) also serves as the show’s executive producer, along with
Daveed Diggs (Wonder, Broadway’s Hamilton) who is also the composer of
the sitcom’s score. Bronson also wrote the pilot episode, and James Griffiths (Wrecked, Black-ish) served as director.
Brandon Michael Hall (Search
Party) does a great job playing the eager young man looking to make a name
for himself, who finds himself in a precarious, 4-year-long office term. You
can see glimpses of Glee’s Rachel
Barry in Lea Michele’s performance of Courtney’s rather uptight but helpful
chief of staff. The best performance, however, comes from sitcom veteran Yvette
Nicole Brown (Drake & Josh, Community)
as of Courtney’s mother Dina Rose. The writing gives her some great comedic
moments we all expect from the experienced sitcom actress, but her tough love
speeches to Courtney are some that many of us have probably heard time and time
again, from childhood through young adulthood.
Despite it’s pacing, The Mayor shows
some real promise for the near future, with plenty of laughs laced throughout
the all too familiar social commentary and political parallels.
The Mayor airs Tuesdays
at 9:30 pm on ABC.
Did you see the premiere of The Mayor? What did you think? Let's talk! Leave your thoughts in the comments below!