You wanted anarchy, and you got a bromance
I struggled withVice Principals, but I did love it.
Throw everything at the wall, see what sticks; surprise, its a sticky grenade, kaboom!
The show conjured up three characters Ill never forget.
Fred Norris/HBO
Co-creator Danny McBride was Neal Gamby, a wannabe authoritarian with a lonely heart.
Their world crashed inward with the arrival of Unforgettable Character No.
3: new principal Dr. Belinda Brown, played by Kimberly Hebert Gregory.
They wanted to badly to be principal, and so they would take her down.
Russell took orgasmic pleasure in the destruction.
In season 2, Brown was mostly absent, a plot-essential development that nevertheless left a void.
Now Russell was principal, and Gamby was trapped in a spiral that was also an ascension.
Shot by a mysterious assailant, he saw enemies everywhere, became a paranoid wreck.
(Get this man behind a camera again!)
Sundays series finale matched the theatrics, but I worry that the show wimped out a bit.
The finale began with Gamby as principal, taking over from the deposed Russell.
He was preparing for a graduation ceremony that would end a very strange year for North Jackson.
Things had turned out okay.
He was in charge, and he was happily together with longtime crush Amanda Snodgrass (Georgia King).
But even Abbotts mania was just a warm-up act.
There was an actual living tiger in the school for graduation, and Abbott set it free.
Russell tried to tame it, and almost lost a limb.
Gamby yelled the beast down with a primal scream, and walked away standing tall.
This show was funny, man!
The magic ofVice Principalswas how you could never really track their relationship from one episode to the next.
Few comedy subgenres so quickly descended into trope-y pointlessness.
It didnt start out terrible.
But the context mattered: They were teenagers cusping on a decisive moment of evolution.
But Ilikedit, he insisted.
This final summation was his best moment on the show.
Doesnt that sound a little bit like Walter Whites final confession?
(I liked it.
Not to say thatVice Principalsshouldve ended likeBreaking Bad.
(Hey, I didnt likethatfinale either.)
(Seriously, the tiger was Russells idea!)
There were happy endings for all.
Gamby and Russell had new jobs.
Notable that the vice principals didnt get to be principal, in the end.
He saluted the new principal, former second-in-command and real-tough-broad Nash (Dale Dickey.)
Nash was flanked by two new vice principals, also women.
The daughter, the woman authority figure, her lady lieutenants: North Jacksons future is female.
They cant do worse.
SERIES GRADE: B+
FINALE GRADE: B-
