Three underappreciated comedies on streaming

It’s a myth that writers don’t watch television.

We do.

I personally stream plenty of television shows and movies. For the most part, I believe we have much more engaging entertainment than we’ve ever had in my lifetime. I lament the loss of shared cultural moments - watching something as frivolous as Disney’s Duck Tales, for example, or tuning in to watch the World Series - but I feel that there is plenty of quality entertainment if you know how to find it.

In this post, I want to highlight three comedies that challenged me and made me laugh: The Resort, Mo, and Killing It. All three shows feature original, richly imagined characters where quirky, unique people can find common ground while navigating very different cultural traditions. These are for the most part “dark” comedies with laugh-out-loud moments and plenty of awkwardness.

The Resort

The Resort depicts a young couple vacationing on the coast of Mexico. But the set-up of a screwball vacation comedy is quickly subverted. Emma, played by Cristin Milioti, and Noah, played by William Jackson Harper, are facing marital difficulties - Emma is distant and withdrawn, and Noah is overbearing in his desire to rekindle romance in their marriage. Emma is pulled towards the inner workings of the resort, seeking meaning in the behaviors of the staff, which are plenty weird. After being tossed from a four-wheel ATV on a jungle tour, she discovers an old cell phone that intrigues her. She manages to resurrect the phone and finds that it contains the last text messages of a young man who went missing at the resort during a hurricane many years before. For some reason, Emma can’t let the young man’s disappearance go. And she becomes even more intrigued when she finds that the boy went missing with a young woman his age.

William Jackson Harper proved his comedic timing on the Michael Schur comedy The Good Place, so it’s no surprise he plays for most of the laughs in this series. Milioti, instead, maintains a serious, unwavering focus on solving the mystery of the young couple’s disappearance. We later learn that there is a deeper reason for Emma’s pain that is unraveling their marriage - but I won’t spoil the reason here.

The series switches between flashbacks of the last days of the disappeared young couple and present day Mexico. And the story goes in a completely unexpected direction - it taps into the spirit of Roberto Bolano and becomes a philosophical vision quest, brilliantly played by Luis Gerardo Mendez as the tailoring scion Balthazar Frias. I loved the playfulness of the story, its fantastical elements, and its whimsical dalliances with time travel. There is a lively cast of walk-on characters who pepper the series with memorable moments. While I would have welcomed a second season, because the ending felt rushed, I adored this strange, captivating series.

Mo

Created by Ramy Youssef and Mohammed Amer, Mo is a bold, witty comedy that could only be made in America. Mohammed Amer plays a stateless Palestinian refugee who grew up in Houston after his family fled Kuwait during the invasion by Iraq. He is above all a Houstonian, embodying a polyglot mix of cultures and influences from Garth Brooks to Kanye West. The story begins when Mo loses his job as a phone repair specialist. Forced to make ends meet, he hawks fake designer shoes and trinkets out of the trunk of his car while living in the family home with his widowed mother Yusra (Farah Bsieso) and his brother Sameer (Omar Elba). His feisty girlfriend Maria (Teresa Ruiz) puts up with Mo’s spirited attempts to blunder his way out of looming poverty.

As the title of the show suggests, the actor Mohammed Amer is the main attraction - he is charismatic, silly, and gifted with strong comedic timing. Mo draws on his character’s heritage to weasel out of dangerous situations - from negotiating with bloodthirsty hoodlums to slinging Yeezy shoes to cowboys. His friends (Toby Nwigwe and Moayad Alnefaie) lighten the series with buddy-comedy moments as they offer terrible advice about how to find a life partner or make it in business.

Ultimately, the series comments on the difficulty of realizing the American Dream when the odds are stacked against you. Mo and his family are stateless, leaving them in fear of deportation. In the midst of these struggles, Mo’s own pride - and frustration - leads to his own self-destruction. Like Killing It (see below), the rich are portrayed as shallow, exploitative, and vainglorious. In Season 2, Mo tackles both immigration at the Texas border and the Israel-Palestine conflict. These political flashpoints - indelibly linked to American “culture wars” - are complex enough to fill entire movies and documentaries. So it’s no surprise they aren’t fully explored. Yet in Mohammed Amer (and his creative team), you sense that you are witnessing the emergence of a remarkable talent.

Killing It

Killing It is in many ways a mirror image of Mo, offering a biting critique of the American Dream in an absurd, often raunchy format. Estranged from his family for failing at his get-rich-quick schemes, Craig (Craig Robinson) dreams of growing saw palmetto berries to tap into the lucrative craze of herbal supplements. But first he needs a farm to grow the berries. He tries to earn cash by entering a contest for killing invasive Burmese pythons in the Everglades wetlands. While hunting his first snake, he befriends Jillian (Claudia O’Doherty), a happy-go-lucky woman who lives inside a billboard sign she tows behind her car.

The setup is bizarre, but somehow it works. Craig and Jillian compete with Brock (Scott Macarthur) to kill the most pythons and win the $20,000 prize money. Along the way, they meet millionaire Rodney Lamonca, a flashy huckster played by Tim Heidecker who is so self-absorbed he worries more about how the death of his stepson will affect his sex life than showing any real remorse. Meanwhile, Craig’s brother Isaiah torments him as a sort of trickster figure who prevents every plotline from neatly resolving. There are too many walk-on characters in Killing It to cite here, and they are mostly simultaneously humorous and terrifying.

Craig Robinson is a lot like the comedian Will Ferrell - you are either enamored by his charisma and humor or you or not. I happen to fall in the first camp. I think he’s funny, bold, and charming. And Claudia O’Doherty delivers utterly ridiculous lines with comedic timing that left me laughing out loud many times throughout the series. I also enjoyed that Craig’s ex-wife Camille (Stephanie Nogueras) is deaf, meaning that they talk (and argue - a lot) with American Sign Language - something I have not seen before in a comedy.

Killing It is not a lighthearted show. The language is foul, the violence is trivialized, and the greed is often rewarded. Like Mo, the rich are portrayed as avaricious and self-absorbed. Rodney Lamonca is a narcissistic gangster. Every encounter with the wealthy 1% of Florida depicts them as utterly lacking in empathy and devoid of compassion. They steal because it’s expected. A mother treats her surrogate like a toy. The series writers cleverly blunt the edges of this social critique by giving hard-hearted insurance collectors debts of their own.

Everyone in Killing It has a dream, but the dreams collect interest that can never be repaid.

At the time of this writing, two of the shows (The Resort and Killing It) are streaming on Peacock, while Mo streams on Netflix.