Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Our Cartoon President’ On Showtime, Where Stephen Colbert’s Cartoon Trump Gets His Own Series

If you’re a fan of Stephen Colbert‘s evil, somewhat dim President Trump on The Late Show, you might like Our Cartoon President, which Colbert produced with his EP, Chris Licht, along with Matt Lapin, Tim Luecke, and R.J. Fried. Can they pull off a half-hour show about Trump?

OUR CARTOON PRESIDENT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: President Trump (Jeff Bergman) gives an address from the Oval Office, talking about the stock market’s big losses and the Devin Nunes memo. Just in case you don’t think that a topical cartoon can stay up to date.

The Gist: Not much to explain; it’s all the main players of the Trump administration, plus some of the main names in Congress, all rendered in cartoon form. In the first episode, Chief of Staff John Kelly (William Sadler) is pushing the president to complete his first State of the Union address, and all Trump wants to do is grab the nuclear football from the Joint Chiefs.

Meanwhile, Eric and Don Jr. (Emily Lynne and Gabriel Gundacker), desperate for their father’s approval, go on Hannity, a supposed safe space, to talk about the SOTU and the Russian allegations. Eric, though, cracks under the relentless gushing from Sean Hannity. Other stuff goes on, like Melania going on a “girls’ night” with Karen Pence — an anniversary gift from her husband — and Ted Cruz surprising the president in the bathroom. But what actually happens isn’t that important, and we’ll say why in the next section.

Our Take: We give the team credit for spinning a series out of the Trump cartoons Colbert’s show has been airing since the campaign. But, here’s the problem: Trump is a very, very hard man to parody. Love him or hate him, it’s not hard to see that President Trump is a walking, talking self-parody. Nothing a comedy writer can come up with will outdo what the man himself tweets during his morning constitutional.

Bergman’s Trump impression is so close to the real thing — when Cartoon Trump watches Real Trump on TV, the voices are nearly indistinguishable — that all we could think of during most of the first episode is “this could really be happening in the West Wing right now.” There was nothing about Cartoon Trump that seemed like exaggerated truth, which is what one needs for great satire.

There are parts of the show that are funny. We laughed any time the Trump boys were onscreen, because they’re portrayed as too stupid and immature to get out of their own way. Eric can’t even figure out how to close his mouth. Jared Kushner trying to figure out how he got himself ensnared in this family and this job was funny. And Cruz being a stalker was funny, though potentially could get old over time. But there’s more room to work with those characters, parody-wise; we don’t know as much about them as we do about Trump (remember, this is a guy who liked to be called “The Donald”).

Sex and Skin: Besides Melania getting Karen Pence’s hairstyle, there’s not much.

Parting Shot: Trump finally gets the nuclear football, a truly scary scene.

Sleeper Star: Lynne does a good job as Eric, Melania, and “Mother” Pence.

Most Pilot-y Line: Showing Real Trump clips was a mistake; it just shows how close Real and Cartoon Trump really are.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Over the course of a series, the thought of watching a Cartoon Trump perhaps be slightly more restrained and in control than the Real Trump sounds like an exercise in masochism.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Where to stream Our Cartoon President.