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Mindy Kaling has had a busy year: She wrapped up her long-running Fox/Hulu show The Mindy Project, starred with Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon in Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle In Time, and became a mother for the first time. Oh, and she had time to co-create a new sitcom for NBC. But Champions will be less Mindy-centric than her previous series. Can a Mindy show work when she’s mainly behind the scenes?
CHAMPIONS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A boxing gym, where Vince (Anders Holm) tries to convince his brother Matthew (Andy Favreau) to get a dog by telling him a story about a heroic pup. Then a man comes in, holds up a gun and accuses Vince of sleeping with his wife.
The Gist: This opening bit is a way to explain how Vince had hopes and dreams at one time, but not the drive or ambition to follow through, which is why he’s running the Champions boxing gym in Brooklyn, a business he took over from their dad. Demonstrating that he tends to run from life and long-term commitments, we see Vince signing documents to sell the gym so he can move to Florida.
At the same time, a 15-year-old show kid named Michael Patel (J.J. Totah) finds out he has to re-apply to the performing arts school in New York he thought he had already gotten into. His mother Priya (Mindy Kaling) has to get back to her job in Cleveland, so she brings Michael to stay at the only place she can think of: His father’s boxing gym.
Yes, that’s Vince; the two hooked up in high school, and Michael is the result. Priya has always convinced Michael to be who he is, so the kid has been out and proud for his entire life. Vince doesn’t really know how to handle Michael’s huge personality, but Matthew connects with the kid right away, showing him how he uses protein powder canisters as decor. It’s such a stressful situation, Michael runs away, just in time for his mom to come back and say she made a mistake leaving him with Vince.
However, Vince comes through, helps Michael through his audition — even though they’re late — and Michael gets in. Where is going to live? You’ve got it: Over the Champions gym with his dad and Uncle Matthew.
Our Take: Champions is the creation of Kaling and Charlie Grandy, who wrote with her on The Office and for her on The Mindy Project. Like Mindy, it feels like the pilot of Champions is a series of clever lines in search of a laugh. There’s an occasionally funny line, most of which come from Michael (who seems to be the zinger-tossing, pop culture-loving Mindy Lahiri of this show).
His character is an interesting concept, representative of a generation that doesn’t feel the pressure to be someone they are not, especially in the LGBTQ community. Michael is gay, his mother has sacrificed a lot to encourage his gifts and interests, and he wants to make sure he’s in a nurturing environment. Vincent, on the other hand, is written like a one-dimensional manchild who runs from responsibility. How he fights against that to take care of Michael will definitely be the driver of the show’s comedy. We just wonder how long Kaling and Grandy are going to take to find that.
By the way, it’s refreshing to see Kaling playing a more down-to-earth character in Priya. Even though she’s only a guest star on this series, we hope to see more of her as things go along.
Sex and Skin: Nothing.
Parting Shot: After complaining to Vince that his sweater was wrinkled for his first day of school, Vince asks the school’s dean for the address of the wealthy family who could take his son in … just in case.
Sleeper Star: Fortune Fiemster plays Ruby, a Champions employee who speaks her mind and uses the brothers’ shower. The character right now is pretty standard sidekick stuff, but Fiemster can take it a lot farther with her super-confident persona.
Most Pilot-y Line: After Michael sees Vince’s current squeeze Brittany (Mouzam Makkar), he asks “How many Indian women have you dated?” Vince retorts, “How many white women has Leonardo DiCaprio dated? No one’s asking that!”
Our Call: SKIP IT. We’re hoping Kaling and Grandy get things together faster than they did on The Mindy Project. We don’t think NBC is going to give them the same amount of time to figure out what the show is that Fox gave to Mindy.
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.
