Peacock's "Killing It" Asks: What is the American Dream These Days? And How Much Are You Willing to Pay For It?

I really had no idea what this series on Peacock was for a while.  Was it a reality show or an actual show?  It's an actual TV series--so probably more real than reality TV--starring Craig Robinson of The Office and those Pizza Hut ads.  Using the Tony Danza/Charlie Sheen method of character naming, he plays Craig, who wants to be an entrepreneur and has what he thinks is a great idea to grow saw palmetto berries to "cure" ED.  The problem is he needs $20,000 and no one will give him a loan.  Then he loses his job when his brother robs the bank he works at and loses his home when he unwittingly sublets it to someone making a porno.

It's not really until the end of the first episode that he finds the solution to his problems:  snake hunting!  Hunting Burmese pythons is a real thing in Florida because they've become an invasive species killing pretty much anything, including alligators.  There's a contest for whoever gets the most and longest pythons.  Top prize:  $20,000.  He sees this as a sign and soon teams up with an Australian Uber driver named Jillian Gloop who lives in a billboard she tows with her car.  

This show is a little weird and it definitely falls into the "black comedy" category--and not because it stars Craig Robinson.  A lot of it is like if they tried to make Breaking Bad or Ozark funny and only about half an hour.  Like Walter White, Craig and Jillian are way out of their element and get more so when they inadvertently burn down a miniature golf course and have to dispose of a dead body.

Beneath the comic veneer of idiots trying to catch snakes is a serious question:  what is the American Dream anymore?  Especially in the episode where Craig goes to "Dominine" (so named because they went past domin-eight all the way to nine!) to pitch his business to his idol, he plays by the rules but constantly gets screwed while his brother cheats and scams and makes a huge profit--at least temporarily.  

Besides Craig, the other characters all have different ways of trying to achieve their American Dream.  Jillian does a ton of "side hustles" that end up not even paying the bills, so she has to live in a billboard and shower at a Starbucks.  A rival snake hunter named Brock makes videos in a vain attempt to become a YouTube star.  And of course Craig's brother robs a bank and pulls off other scams.

In the old days, the "American Dream" was you go to college, get a job, get married, buy a house, have kids, work hard, move up, and then retire.  But really that was just a dream for most.  The more realistic version is go to college, rack up debt, get married, buy a house, rack up more debt, have kids, rack up more debt, work hard, maybe move up just slightly...and then get laid off when your company outsources your job or replaces you with a machine or merges with another company to make you redundant.  And then struggle in your late 30s or 40s to find a new job while facing all of that crushing debt.  A lot of us, like Craig, still tried to make it work as best we could only to find ourselves stuck in a dead-end job, miserable, and massively in debt.  And when you can't find a decent job, the people who smugly told you in your teens to go to college now smugly tell you that you should have learned a trade instead.  I really empathize with Craig at "Dominine" and later on when he realizes that he's just been a sucker trying to do everything honestly while cheaters and scammers keep getting ahead.  

It's no wonder that so many people are looking for shortcuts like starting a business or side hustling or becoming a star or doing crimes.  We've all been told from practically birth that this is America and we can get to the top if we just try hard enough and so on.  It's not even, as some will smugly say, that we think we're special; we've all been sold this bill of goods about "The American Dream" and "Land of Opportunity" and so on.  And we all see movie stars, athletes, businesspeople, reality stars, "influencers," lottery winners, and even criminals getting ahead and have to wonder, "Why not me?"

As this song says:

And, really, the writing world is no exception to that for sure.  I mean, I've read plenty of bestselling books and thought, "Geez, that was terrible.  I could do better than that!"  But as anyone who's really tried to make it in writing can tell you, it's an uphill battle to actually get as famous as a Stephen King or JK Rowling or James Patterson.  Or to have a huge hit that spawns movies and such like Twilight or The Hunger Games.  For every one who makes it, literally millions fail.  Which is true about pretty much any way to get rich.

The issue for Craig throughout the first season is trying to achieve his American Dream in a moral way, without cheating or lying or screwing people over.  But in the end he realizes playing by "the rules" has left him with nothing:  no money, no home, and soon not even his ex-wife and daughter as they're going to move to Oakland.  And so he makes a choice to quit playing by "the rules" just as in Breaking Bad and Ozark (and whatever other shows) they make a choice to quit playing nice and break bad.

So season 1 ends on a little bit of a downer but it was mostly a fun show.  Not as good as most Carl Hiaasen novels, but still worth watching (3/5) (Fun Fact:  the keynote of "Dominine" is a rich asshole played by Tim Heidecker, who was the Tim of Adult Swim's Tim & Eric duo and also starred in the Adult Swim series Decker that co-starred MST3K/Rifftrax favorite Joe Estevez, the brother of Martin Sheen.)

I don't really like the second season as much.  It seems mostly like complications for the sake of complications, sort of like the final act of Rogue One.  Craig and Jillian's berry farm is quarantined because of giant snails and some redneck neighbors want him to give them health care and an annoying employee screws up their plan to sneak berries through a roadblock.  Jillian's car is stolen and she struggles between being a boss or being a friend to her employees.  Craig's ex-wife is making extra money by being a surrogate to someone's baby.  So on and so on.

We get a whole episode about Craig's brother who moved to Arizona.  Jackie Earle Haley plays a debt collector and there's a comparison of debt collectors to vampires.  Which like that Buffaloed movie I talked about in a "Stuff I Watched" entry Phantom Readers didn't read, the show's "insights" into debt collection are pretty laughable--as in laughably misguided.  I mean maybe some companies do employ scumbags to go around stalking you but really that doesn't make much sense.  I mean you can pay some dude (or give them commission) to harass someone to collect a debt but there are so many legal means and it really doesn't cost that much to hire some cut-rate firm like the one I work for to file a default judgment and then get a wage garnishment, tax garnishment, or bank garnishment or get them on a payment plan or maybe to settle for a decent amount.  That's a lot more efficient than stalking individual debtors in the hope they'll get tired of it and pay.  End of rant.

Anyway, the Dominine guy returns with Craig's brother to buy the farm.  Craig quits in protest only to find his ex-wife's surrogate backers are rich jerks who get busted like the Bluths or Schitts. During a trip to San Diego for the Dominine guy, Craig again has to decide whether to cheat or not when a Pitbull imitator goes missing; in the end, Craig lies to an audience by telling them his father died of cancer and that's why he made the saw palmetto stuff.

The rest of the season introduces more complications as Craig tries to save Jillian from the Boones and get his farm back.  In the end, Craig is again faced with the choice whether to break bad and get it all or be good and get nothing.  Guess what he decides?  And in a way I don't really disagree.  The last episode does feel a little rushed to wrap a lot up.  Maybe it's due to shrinking the second season to 8 episodes from the first season's 10.  It kind of goes into an epilogue that is kind of a depressing ending in some ways. A true ending, but sad.  The moral of the story:  nice people finish last.  And again I don't really disagree.  (2/5)

So there you go.  What are you willing to do for your American Dream?  Not comment on this blog, lol.