A signature of Bill Lawrence’s 30 years producing TV comedies is that he’s adept at handling large casts, able to give characters personality quirks simply through dialogue. It’s rare when he has a side character that hasn’t been developed beyond the impression they give on first glance, and he often gives those characters their own chunk of story. Journalist and author Carl Hiaasen is also known for crafting stories with lots of quirky characters. So it’s interesting to see how Lawrence handles adapting one of Hiaasen’s novels for a TV series.
BAD MONKEY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: “So here’s the thing about fishing stories. They always start on a boat,” says a narrator. We then pan up to see a boat in the water; Tom Petty’s “American Girl” is playing.
The Gist: The narrator is Captain Fitzgerald (Tom Nowicki), who is the captain of a fishing boat that caters to tourists off the Florida Keys. While a man on his honeymoon is deep sea fishing, he pulls up what he thinks is a huge marlin, but it turns out to be a severed arm, with a wedding ring on and its middle finger raised.
Andrew Yancy (Vince Vaughn) is a man of simple needs, says the narrator. A good view, a drink, and, well, that’s about it. He’s a police detective in the Keys but is currently under suspension, so he’s hanging out at his waterfront home, bemoaning the huge ugly house being built next door. His former partner, Rogelio Burton (John Ortiz), finds him and tells him that the sheriff wants him to take the severed arm to Miami to see if it was from one of their cases. Rogelio thinks that any favor Andrew does will help him get back on the job.
Andrew brings the arm to the medical examiner’s office in Miami, where he also used to be a police detective. There, he meets Rosa Campesino (Natalie Martinez), a medical examiner that he vibes with and doesn’t mind grabbing a mango ice pop from the cooler that held the arm. The arm might have been torn off by a propeller or snapped off by a shark, but it’s not a match with anyone in her morgue.
Rogelio surprisingly encourages Andrew to dump the arm in the alligator-filled canal, but Andrew keeps the arm, because he has a feeling there’s more to this story. Bonnie Witt (Michelle Monaghan), whom Andrew is seeing despite the fact that she’s married, sees the arm and runs. When a woman reports that her husband has gone missing, Andrew is tasked with returning the arm to her. Instead of just giving the arm to Eve Stripling (Meredith Hagner), however, Andrew asks her a bunch of questions. That ticks off the sheriff, resulting in Andrew getting fired.
We also follow the plight of Neville Stafford (Ronald Peet), whose Bahamian fishing shack is being threatened by a resort developer. He goes to the Dragon Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith), a local woman who practices Obeah, to put a curse on the developer, even though he doesn’t necessarily believe in that stuff.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Bill Lawrence created Bad Monkey, based on the 2013 Carl Hiaasen novel of the same name; he wrote the teleplay for the first episode. Lawrence’s style, which we’ve seen for close to 30 years now in shows from Spin City to Scrubs to Ted Lasso to Shrinking, is in place here. But the setting of the show also reminds us of the Netflix series Florida Man, as well as Netflix’s earliest dramatic swings set in the Keys, Bloodline.
Our Take: There are a lot of layers to Bad Monkey that we didn’t discuss in “The Gist” section of the review. As with a lot of Hiaasen’s stories, the characters take precedence, and Bad Monkey has a lot of them. Caitlin (Charlotte Lawrence) is Eve’s stepdaughter and she’s convinced that Eve killed her father. Eve has a boyfriend named Christopher (Rob Delaney) who has connections to what’s going on in the Bahamas. While he investigates the arm, Andrew wages war with Evan Shook (Alex Moffat), the developer building the eyesore next to his house.
So there’s a whole lot going on, including people getting shot and other mysterious goings on. Yet, Lawrence and his writers make sure the viewer isn’t dropped in the middle of a malestorm of story. Using the narration device is something that Lawrence used to great effect on Scrubs, and having Captain Fitzgerald give his gruff observations of what’s going on helps in that regard. Usually, we’re not a fan of constant narration on a show. But with the story going on in two different locations, having Fitzgerald fill in and get us from one location to the other keeps things from getting too confusing.
Vaughn is a perfect fit for Andrew Yancey, and Lawrence and his writers lean into Vaughn’s offhanded acting style. Vaughn often sounds like he’s improvising when he acts in projects because of the casual but rapid tone he uses, which is a good match for Lawrence’s writing. The rest of the cast has to define itself a bit more, though we do enjoy watching Peet with Crystal, who plays Neville’s monkey Driggs.
Sex and Skin: Andrew and Bonnie have some shower sex, but there’s no real nudity.
Parting Shot: Fitzgerald, as the narrator, reveals that the stories he’s telling are actually related, as we see Christopher get off a seaplane with Neville watching. It’s a confusing ending, though, because this is the first time we’ve seen Christopher to this point and we have no idea how he’s connected to the Florida part of the story.
Sleeper Star: We always root for Natalie Martinez, whom we like as an actor but who seems to land in a lot of dud projects. She’s a lot of fun here as Rosa, who will likely be an investigative partner for Andrew as well as a possible love interest. Martinez has some pretty good chemistry with Vaughn. Also: This might be the first time Charlotte Lawrence is in one of her father’s shows, and we liked what we’ve seen so far.
Most Pilot-y Line: Andrew chips the ice off the arm, as it seems to have frozen to the floor of his freezer. You’d think he’d put it in a bag of some sort, but then the visual wouldn’t have been as funny.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Bad Monkey has a bit of a shaggy feel to it, with potential to fly off in a lot of different directions and a lot of characters to keep track of. But if anyone can keep a show like this on point, it’s Lawrence and his crew.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Bad Monkey’ On Apple TV+, Where Vince Vaughn Is An Ex-Police Detective Who Investigates A Murder In The Florida Keys appeared first on Decider.
