I’d wager you’ll like “Vice Principals” if you liked “Eastbound and Down”; like that earlier Danny McBride-created HBO sitcom, the new one depicts at least one grown man behaving like a foul-mouthed 11-year-old in virtually every scene.
McBride and Walton Goggins (“Justified”) play the title characters, bitter dimwits who vie for the top job at their high school after its principal suddenly retires to care for his ailing wife.
The pair, who sport drawls worthy of any “Walking Dead” character, are appalled when their superintendent fails to promote either of them and instead installs as principal an outsider -- Dr. Belinda Brown, a heavyset, northern-educated woman of color unwilling to indulge their idiocy.
For those tuning in to see Bill Murray as the outgoing principal, know that – much as he did for Amazon’s “Alpha House” – he appears in just two scenes in the first episode before disappearing thereafter. (He may not have any dialogue in the second of those scenes.)
... an occasionally funny but most often bludgeoning comedy. …
... Like its predecessor, “Vice Principals” goes all in for profanity and the trading of childish insults (“Keep walkin’, sassypants” is one I can quote), and there is a certain melodic delight in hearing Goggins pronounce the multisyllabic bad words the basic-cable rules kept from him saying on “Justified.” But the comic returns do diminish. …
If you can get through the first two puerile episodes — and that’s a big if — of Danny McBride and Jody Hill’s mean-spirited school comedy “Vice Principals,” you’ll probably notice a much better and possibly smarter work of satire lurking just out of reach. ...
The San Francisco Chronicle says:
... The first episode doesn’t begin to suggest how far “Vice Principals” will go and how funny it will become. However, you can readily appreciate the chemistry between McBride and Goggins. …
... enjoyable if you don’t expect too much from it. …
... bewilderingly awful …
... an unwelcome insight into the mind of small-minded assholes; a farcical love letter to insensitive pricks. In that way, it follows in the footsteps of “Eastbound & Down,” the last collaboration between McBride and executive producer Jody Hill. … It feels often as if the show cannot contain the anger and resentment it is trying to tap into, and instead of doing the work of converting it into comedy, it has just unleashed unpleasantness into the ether. …
10:30 p.m. Sunday. HBO.
