‘Comrade Detective’ Is An Odd Satirical Novelty About Communist Propaganda [Bingeworthy™ Breakdown]

It starts with Nick Offerman, continues with the likes of Jake Johnson and Jason “Hey Nong Man” Mantzoukas, and expands to include Jenny Slate, Fred Armisen, Bobby Cannavale, Beck Bennett, Chloë Sevigny, and maybe by now you get the idea. “Comrade Detective” doesn’t pass the authenticity smell test, but that’s because it isn’t meant to. It wants you to laugh at the stark contrast of contemporary American actors lending their dulcet tones to a living, anachronistic curio. If I’m being honest I appreciate that the show is courteous enough to be upfront about its comic mechanics, but whether you end up bother with it at all will hinge on whether you find that driving joke funny at the outset.

Did you find it funny, though, either at the outset or as you dug into the series?
Yes, but also no. Look, I said I appreciated the show’s upfront courtesy, but that isn’t to say that I think it works as humor. There’s no better way to suck all the air out a joke than by explaining its punchline to your audience, and if “Comrade Detective” goes out of its way to earnestly sell its promotional angle, the hamfisted qualities of the dialogue and the story itself lay that punchline bare.

 For me, that undermines the punchline entirely, or at least muddies it. What are we supposed to be laughing at? Where does the joke find its meaning? Is the broad Euro-parody meant to tickle us, or should we be laughing at the repeated mockery of American popular and political culture? The show commences when Tatum’s tough guy cop, Gregor, leads his partner, Nikita (voiced by Bennett), into an ambush that leaves Nikita dead and his killer, identifiable only by the Ronald Reagan mask he wears, at large; Gregor’s captain, voiced by Offerman, assigns him a brand new partner, Gordon-Levitt’s less brutish, more brainy detective, Iosif. They chafe against each other to start, but eventually grow friendly in their pursuit of the killer. And the truth. And also justice. It’s fairly typical cop show stuff, apart from, y’know, none of the dialogue matching up with any of the acting, right up to the point where Gregor and Iosif uncover a massive conspiracy to usher capitalism into Romania by smuggling board games and blue jeans over its borders.

The moments where “Comrade Detective” works are the moments where it identifies as a Tatum vehicle, ala “21 Jump Street,” a nakedly silly story designed to poke fun at the tropes, genres, and ideas it’s built on. The moments where it doesn’t work are the moments where that identity isn’t pronounced enough, or maybe when that identity is too pronounced, and the fun it’s having at the expense of American pop culture turns into a series of digs at European stereotypes. Look, I’m not trying to be a spoilsport or anything, but there’s only so much value you get from leaning on the anti-materialism, anti-consumerism, anti-American Euro-zealot when all you really want to do is point out just how absurd American genre film is, was, and can be. “Lethal Weapon” is a whole lot of fun, and so are the films of Walter Hill, at least pre-“The Assignment” (and also pre-“Bullet to the Head”). But these movies, and every movie like them spawned in the 1980s, are often patently ridiculous at best and gross at worst, depending on your perspective on them and your distance from them.

I’m not sure “Comrade Detective” quite nails that down. It makes the subtext of ridiculousness into straight-up text, and more often than not the Romanians feel like the butt of jokes designed to skewer American ideals and fixations; we’re laughing at Gregor and Iosif for their alternating disgust, contempt, and fear of every facet of American culture rather than the culture itself. It’s possible I have Tatum and Gatewood wrong, but I’m pretty sure their big idea is to get us to have a giggle at ourselves and not at their European heroes. If so, they didn’t quite hit the mark.

Where’d they go wrong, do you think?
Frankly, I think making a comedy like “Comrade Detective” with such an overt emphasis on its premise is a mistake. I’m there for anything that wants to make fun of America, American life, and American pop culture; I’m not there for content that invests its effect into its basic conceit, and that presents rather than explores. Much as I admire the effort “Comrade Detective” put into assembling a massive troupe of Romanian talent for sake of, I don’t know, verisimilitude, or perhaps simply effect, I kinda think just casting Tatum and Gordon-Levitt as their characters would have been a more effective approach to the material, alongside literally everyone in the supporting cast. If nothing else, that helps alleviate problems with jokes falling on the wrong targets, because even if they’re all play-acting as Romanians, they’re still American, if that makes sense to you.

But more than that, letting Tatum and Gordon-Levitt physically be in the show means having Tatum and Gordon-Levitt physically in your show. Tatum has decent voice acting chops, but he’s a great screen presence, and I feel like the series does him a major disservice by putting him in a recording booth while Piersic does all the legwork. (Admittedly, Piersic has presence as well, but let’s face it: He’s no Tatum. Who is?) And at the end of it all, “Comrade Detective” gets zero mileage out of the juxtaposition of Tatum and Gordon-Levitt and their Romanian counterparts. In fact, I’d argue that the joke stops working as soon as you’re aware of the relationship between the vocal stars and the screen stars, and once that happens all we’re left with is questions. I don’t at all understand what “Comrade Detective” gets out of performing European-ness, or ’80s-ness, aside from filtering clichés of standard issue cop fare through another nation’s lens; there’s next to no comment offered on what those clichés mean, and when there is comment, it backfires.

I’m torn! Do I watch it, or do I do better things with my life?
There’s a novelty factor to “Comrade Detective” that nearly has me heartily recommending it, if only because there’s literally nothing like it on television at the moment. That said, after you get over that novelty, there’s really not much to hold onto. Not even Tatum’s abs. [C+]