Bill Lawrence is back with another TV series for Apple TV+ called Bad Monkey. Lawrence is known for creating the smash-hit series Scrubs and co-creating the hit Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso and Shrinking. Bad Monkey is based on the 2013 novel of the same name, written by Carl Hiaasen. Lawrence, known for getting the big stars to work on his project, sees Vince Vaughn, Michelle Monaghan, and Jodie Turner-Smith star in the lead roles of the ten-episode series.
Bad Monkey Plot
Bad Monkey follows the story of former police detective Andrew Yancy, who has been demoted to a restaurant inspector in South Flordia. However, after a tourist finds a severed arm, it reels Yancy back into the world of corruption that has taken over the land in Florida and the Bahamas.
Bad Monkey Season 1 Review
In the modern age of television, it’s easy to identify whether a show should be dropped all at once or kept in a weekly format. Based on the best-selling novel by Carl Hiaasen, Bad Monkey develops relatively slowly and attempts to capture your attention with that weekly format in mind, but it never takes off because of the lack of a good script. I didn’t care about anything happening from the first episode to the last.
The bad script came as a complete shock because Bill Lawrence typically invests in the characters within his series to allow you to attach yourself to their journies. There were so many ancillary pieces that when it came time to tie them together, so much was happening in the finale that it became bloated. Speaking of tying it together, the fact they felt the need to tie everything together so perfectly at the end makes you feel like the ride wasn’t worth the time.
Set in the Flordia Keys, you expect an aesthetically pleasing series, but that was far from the case. I’m not going to say there weren’t any moments that caught your eye, but the team behind the camera didn’t elevate the Keys in a way that allowed it to become its own character as it should’ve been. Also, when the storms came in and out of the series, the VFX and/or CGI used was abysmal.
As a massive fan of Vince Vaughn, I found his schtick within Bad Monkey dull. The writing put Vaughn in a box, and within that box, it didn’t feel like they allowed him to flourish in the typical comedic way that we are used to seeing from him. Much of this had to do with the series being uncertain whether it wanted to be funny. That said, the series has some glimmers of hope when we see Vaughn and Ronald Peet on screen together. I would do anything to watch these two in a buddy cop movie.
Is Bad Monkey Season 1 worth watching?
Set in the Florida Keys, Bad Monkey has the premise, cast, and writers that could make it a good time. However, due to the lack of execution, development, and a paint-by-numbers story, the series fails to be anything more than a giant mess. If you intend to watch it, it may better be served as a one-time binge after all the episodes are released. This show is far from something worthy of watching on a week-to-week basis. It’s a rare swing-and-miss from Apple TV+, which typically hits homers with its TV shows.
Bad Monkey‘s first two episodes stream on Apple TV+ on August 14. All ten episodes were reviewed.
4/10
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