‘Vice Principals’ Is TV’s Only Show About Villains

If you’re a morally conflicted man, there’s a place for you on television. From classics like Mad Men’s Don Draper to newbies like Ozark’s Marty Byrd, modern TV is filled with leading men doing bad things, but they’re so human and insanely cutthroat as they prance from crime to crime, they’re forgivable. They are TV’s antiheroes, and they embody everything HBO’s Vice Principals skewers.

When Danny McBride’s latest show about a terrible school official first premiered, it was met with understandably mixed reviews. Cringe and insult comedy are delicate art forms, and McBride has always been a creator of extremes. Watching McBride and Walton Goggins scream some of the most vile insults on cable at each other for five hours isn’t for everyone. However, it was the duo’s treatment of Dr. Belinda Brown (played wonderfully by Kimberly Hebert Gregory) that really put most critics on edge.

From the first time Dr. Brown appeared on screen, she was at a disadvantage. She was a woman of color, a single mother, and new to a tight-knit school, though she was drastically over qualified for her job. On top of all of that, she had unknowingly become the enemy of two horrible teachers who would use all of those elements against her while smiling at her face. Vice Principals made it known from Episode 1 that it was a show about privilege, and it’s never let up from this focus.

 

Television has always had an interesting relationship with its antiheroes. Though we all know that Walter White is a bad person for the hell he forced upon his family for no other reason than to appease his own ego, we followed five nail-biting seasons hoping he would get away with everything. Those are television’s antiheroes — monsters wearing human skin who are just charming enough you can justify the people they hurt or the sinister ways they benefit from their place of privilege. Vice Principals presents the same characters stripped of the charm that makes them so delicious to watch and fighting for one of the most boring goals on TV. The resulting show watches as a horrifying reflection of what an abuse of power and an unearned sense of superiority looks like. It can be haunting.

Neil Gamby (McBride) and Lee Russell (Goggins) are clearly the villains of this story. Over the course of 12 episodes now, they manipulated and sabotaged a woman over a job they had no actual qualifications for, set her house on fire, conspired to have her kids taken away, lied to her face, gossiped behind her back, and lured her into making a drunken fool of herself, which they then taped and used for blackmail. What has Dr. Brown done to retaliate all of this abuse? She’s yelled at them a few times and made a few firing threats, but on the whole nothing. Dr. Brown was terrorized all because she had something that two white men felt like they deserved, and though Gamby and Russell are our protagonists, the show never makes any apologies for them.

That’s what makes Vice Principals such a smart and borderline necessary watch in 2017. Lots of comedies focus on terrible people doing terrible things, but the necessary ingredient in all of these comedies is failure. Though they never learn their lesson, the gang in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is routinely punished for their selfishness every episode. It’s fun to watch Difficult People’s Billy and Julie insult the world, but their relentless negativity force them to be continuously unsuccessful. Arguably the most morally despicable character in television history, South Park’s Cartman, has likewise seen his own form of comeuppance, though it’s never as horrible as Cartman deserves. We tolerate or even perversely love these bad people partially because they’re never rewarded for their terrible behavior. In their own ways, they’re always the underdogs as they reinforce our most basic beliefs — good people are rewarded, and bad people are punished. Vice Principals pulls the rug out of this well-worn formula and as a result asks us to reconsider our TV, and possibly our real life, idols.

 

Watched another way, Vice Principals is almost a horror movie. The worst people you’ve ever met in your life are allowed to do whatever they want to get whatever they want. When — and it’s always when — they cross the lines of decency, they’re never punished. In fact, they’re rewarded despite how much the hurt the innocent people around them. It’s a nightmare of a show about unchecked privilege candy-coated with dick jokes and hilariously unnecessary cursing.

There are glimmers of hope scattered throughout the series. Though Gamby’s gunshot wound didn’t make him reconsider his actions and motivations in any meaningful way, it was certainly a consequence of his misdeeds. It’s also a crime that’s likely linked to the only other character on this show that’s shown any semblance of hyper-violent behavior — his friend / frenemy / ally Lee Russell. Despite his increased vulgarity and paranoia, the incident has left a slightly more compassionate Gamby and well as man more skeptical of Russell than in episodes past. After all, Gamby almost refused to make his coworkers turn over their badges and already he’s seemed a bit more compassionate and calm this season.

However, as long as Russell is standing beside him, Gamby will firmly remain the villain of this story. As a result, Vice Principals will remain an unwavering look at the dark side of the antiheroes we love.

New episodes of Vice Principals premiere on HBO Sundays at 11 p.m. ET.

Stream Vice Principals on HBO