In a nondescript house on a nondescript block in Burbank, California, a “pathologically honest” man named Clark (Ben Falcone) feeds his cats dinner. One won’t come inside, so he heads to his backyard to retrieve it. Instead of finding his cat, he’s struck by lightning from what appears to be a magic cloud. Little does he know that the cloud was sent directly from Heaven and that he has been chosen as a messenger for God. Thus begins Falcone’s new Netflix sitcom, “God’s Favorite Idiot.”
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Much of the show’s action takes place inside Clark’s house or in his place of employment, a nondescript IT firm filled with a staff full of loveable quirks. Among them is the sassy, impeccably dressed Amily (Melissa McCarthy), who spends most of her work day nipping at her co-workers or nipping some booze from a flask. After Amily discovers Clark alone at his desk, literally glowing one night, she rushes into the office the next morning to tell her co-workers Mohsin (Usman Ally), Wendy (Ana Scotney), and Tom (Chris Sandiford) about what she’s seen. Soon all four, along with their HR-obsessed boss Frisbee (Steve Mallory), get swept up in Clark’s mission to spread God’s message to the world.
Despite their call to action, much of the show plays out like your average workplace sitcom. Everyone ribs Frisbee for trying to keep the office HR compliant, Tom often plays the fool, and several workplace romances blossom. The cast is genial enough, with a nice, easy chemistry. Unfortunately, none of the characters beyond Clark are given much character development or backstory, buoyed only by the strength of the actors doing their best with the weak material.
McCarthy and Falcone, who are married, have had a long creative partnership, with McCarthy starring in all five of Falcone’s feature films, including most recently the Netflix superhero comedy “Thunder Force.” While Falcone certainly understands how to amplify McCarthy’s sharp comedic timing, these projects are, for the most part, under-baked and underwhelming outside of her dynamic screen presence. Acting opposite each other here, it’s easy to see the love and admiration they have for each other. Clark may artificially glow with God’s light, but the actors glow for real when sharing the screen together.
If “God’s Favorite Idiot” had been a straight-up rom-com with these characters, it might have worked better given how well they play off each other. But this is also a meditation on the growing lack of faith in God around the world and the continuous fighting about what is the one true religion. Unfortunately, ‘Idiot’ is about as simplistic in its approach as you would expect from a show where an average white man who is as “sweet and simple as pecan pie” is chosen to be God’s latest prophet. Yes, pretty much all religions boil down to “lead with love and do no harm,” but where the world is with organized religion is far too intertwined with centuries of socio, political, geographical, and monetary strife for such easy platitudes to be the answer that fixes everything.
Aside from its simplistic comprehension of comparative world religion, Falcone steals from several (and much better) religious-themed projects. Often the show feels like Kevin Smith’s “Dogma” warmed-over, except that Clark is a fallen-away Episcopalian rather than Linda Fiorentino’s lapsed Catholic Bethany. It was fun to see McCarthy’s old co-star Yanic Truesdale as Clark’s angel Chamuel, but he’s not given much screen time and mostly plays the character with the same sarcastic notes he used playing the grumpy concierge Michel on “Gilmore Girls.”
Falcone seems to think it’s transgressive to have both Satan (Leslie Bibb) and God (Magda Szubanski) played by women, but again Smith did it better twenty-plus years ago. Bibb, in particular, tries her best to liven things up, going full camp as a power-hungry Satan stuck doing all the work for Lucifer while her co-worker Beelzebub gets all the glory. Somewhere in here is a commentary about sexist work culture, but it’s yet another thread left woefully underdeveloped.
Other aspects of the show borrow from Nora Ephron’s “Michael,” the 1996 road movie in which John Travolta stars as a man who claims to be the titular archangel, fallen from battle to Earth. Wherever Michael goes, he smells like everyone’s favorite scent. Similarly, in one episode, possible holy man Clark smells like everyone’s favorite scent. Like “Dogma,” “Michael” did an excellent job interrogating what it means to live with faith and love in your heart, despite all the terrible things that happen in the world. Falcone doesn’t seem as invested in actually exploring the complexities of faith. Instead, he is stuck operating at a surface-level understanding with less depth or nuance than a five-year-old in Sunday school.
Mostly, “God’s Favorite Idiot” feels like a first draft that needed to be workshopped a little bit longer before going into production. There is a sweetness here and naiveté. Falcone’s heart is clearly in the right place, but all his goodwill is undone by a narrative that is both too simple and overly convoluted, underdeveloped characters, and chintzy production design (I couldn’t help but wonder how much of the production budget went into licensing Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times” for the soundtrack).
If, as the final episode of the season implies, in the end, love is the answer to how the world can be saved from destruction by a great evil, I guess that’s why McCarthy keeps making these projects with her husband. Maybe if we all loved someone as much as McCarthy seems to love Falcone, things really would start to get better. [C]