Culture
In 'The Mayor,' Populism Goes to City Hall
The new ABC comedy about a rapper turned mayor flips the mirror back on coastal America in the Trump era.
Two years ago, a TV show about a rapper becoming mayor of a mid-sized Northern California city would have been salacious stuff. But today, when it happens on ABC’s new sitcom “The Mayor,” we see a squeaky clean, idealistic counterpoint to the daily circus of national politics.
The show, which premiered Tuesday, is in fact a surprisingly complex response to the Trump era. The protagonist, Courtney Rose (Brandon Michael Hall), mounts his campaign for mayor of the fictional Fort Grey, California, as a thinly veiled publicity stunt for his stagnating rap career. But during the mayoral debate, interspersed between jokes, he makes some resonant statements about the shoddy state of the roads and a trash-filled park.