When Kobe Bryant returned to Philadelphia for his final game, one of the reporters at his press conference was Evan Monsky, Bryant’s former high school basketball teammate at Lower Merion. During the Q&A, Monsky asked Bryant to name the best point guard he ever played with, and Bryant unhesitatingly recognized “Evan Monsky” as the best passer before listing off the Hall of Famers and All-Stars from his various NBA teams.
It was a good moment because it captured something very satisfying in dramatic fashion: Every NBA superstar — every superstar in every sport — has at some point in their life been on a roster with someone who didn’t become a superstar themselves. Someone who maybe didn’t even play college or high school football. That person lived a normal life full of normal ups and downs and probably heard the mention of the superstar several times a year and couldn’t resist saying, “Yo, when we were 12, we were on the same team and I was better.”
Fame is a good platform for storytelling, but proximity to fame is perhaps even better, as it combines both realized and unfulfilled dreams.
I can’t say for sure if the viral moment between Bryant and Monsky was a direct inspiration for Peacock’s new comedy Mr Throwbackbut I suppose it was. With Steph Curry playing himself as a superstar and Adam Pally not playing himself, as a premature washout, Mr Throwback has the same energy and the same relatable virtues, but is somewhat poorly distributed over six half-hour episodes.
The mockumentary has one fatal flaw that at least starts from an admirable position. Creators Pally, David Caspe, Matthew Libman and Daniel Libman decided they wanted to have real emotional stakes in the series, go beyond the easy laughs of dreams fulfilled/denied and make a show about intergenerational cycles of addiction and trauma. That’s not a bad goal in any way, but Mr Throwback ends with not taking yourself too seriously.
A better version of the show would either be 25 percent less serious, allowing the opportunity to refine a sense of humor that is too often marred by poorly made references. Or it would be 25 percent more serious, actually taking the time to appreciate the melancholy undertones rather than having to fight for airtime with superficial punchlines.
I liked elements of Mr Throwback And, it has to be said, Steph Curry is pretty good. But the material doesn’t make for a good show.
Pally plays Danny Grossman, a Charlotte middle school basketball phenom who was initially hailed as “Jewish Jordan” – Tamir Goodman is not mentioned – but then made national headlines when it was revealed that his dominance was due to him playing with kids two years younger than him. As a result of the scandal, Danny became estranged from his father/coach Mitch (Tracy Letts) and was ostracized by his former backup, Steph Curry, and her former best friend, Kimberly (Ego Nwodim).
25 years later, Steph Curry is still Steph Curry, NBA legend and Hall of Fame Sweetie Boy, and Kim is the CEO of Steph’s hugely successful branding/production company, Curry Up and Wait (not to be confused with Curry’s real-life Unanimous Media banner).
Danny, meanwhile, runs a failing gift shop, which, as another character explicitly notes, indicates his desire to live in the past. And why wouldn’t he want to? In the present, Danny is mourning his ex-wife Samantha (Ayden Mayeri), trying to maintain his relationship with his daughter Charlie (Layla Scalisi), and is $90,000 in debt to the Polish mafia.
This debt leads Danny to arrange a reunion with Steph and Kim, staging a farce in which Steph becomes convinced that Charlie is terminally ill and Danny becomes part of Steph Curry’s bubble of fame.
These debts are also Mr Throwbacks sound issues have their origins. If you want me to believe that a 12-year-old boy had his picture on a Wheaties box and was the focus of national media attention because of his basketball skills, then I accept the breadth and fleeting nature of this joke. It needs no further explanation.
But if you’re making a show that deals with the consequences of addiction, you can’t have a man in his 30s get into life-threatening debt to organized crime in the first 10 minutes of the show and then basically never mention that or the circumstances after that. At that point you say, “We want the show to be about something, but not this missions”, so why bother?
Pally doesn’t really know either. Danny is such a crude caricature for much of the series that it would take an enormous amount of tact to make him even fleetingly believable as a tragic figure, and Pally just can’t manage to hit both extremes. That’s all the more evident when you consider how well Letts manages to ground his own, similarly divided character. Letts has silly scenes as part of an improv group promoting abstinence, and he has sad scenes as a man desperately clinging to any hope of redemption, but he feels like a real person. Danny doesn’t.
It’s possible that Pally simply enjoys the challenge. Happy endings The last series of Star was, as you may have forgotten, the Sonic the Hedgehog spin off anklea strangely similar and strangely funnier series in which Pally also stars as a former aspiring athlete plagued by daddy issues who shares scenes with an inanimate object.
Of course, that’s not fair to either Knuckles (the red CG character) or Steph Curry, whose approach to portraying himself is almost entirely bare-bones. He likes to laugh about the privilege of being an NBA Nepo baby. But otherwise, this is a job interview-like string of major failings, including “I work too hard and am too generous to my friends,” with endearing if predictable quips that ensue. The show puts him in some funny situations and he comes across as a good sport with really good comedic timing, entering an NBA pantheon where he absolutely outdoes Michael Jordan and Lebron James.
Nwodim, who has long been considered the most underrated Saturday Night Live Cast member, has a much better rapport with Curry than Pally. When her character’s description is accurate – a monologue explaining “Stephenomics” is probably my favorite part of the entire series – she’s excellent. Too often her character’s description isn’t so accurate – a runner on Michael B. Jordan is particularly poor – but it’s accurate across the board.
The show tends to have forgettable jokes about its mockumentary format, very superficial basketball references – I found myself laughing every time guest star Steve Kerr delivered his recurring punchlines – and even more desperate attempts to assert itself. I think a credit to Mr Throwback for the first reference to the “Hawk Tuah Girl” I’ve seen in a scripted series, but this really is a recipe for instant obsolescence.
To his honor, Mr Throwback may have instantly stale jokes, but it’s sparing with instantly stale cameos. The few cameos on basketball shows mostly add to the reality of the NBA studio show scenes, while the “as themselves” appearances are more engaging and oddball, like pasta impresario Evan Funk. Extended “guest” appearances, like Letts and Rich Sommer as Dr. Josh – “I’ve been one of the leading thought leaders in preventative health care for over six months” – are more successful.
The series generally fizzles out trying to resolve the basic farce – one person at a time learns the truth individually and it loses any tension or humor – and then sets up a second season in the finale that doesn’t feel necessary at all. Maybe if the first season had been closer to “excellent” instead of just occasionally “excellently bordering.”
