Bad Monkey is the best use of Vince Vaughn in a long time
Is there enough stuff on Apple TV+ to be worth your money? Probably?


Apple TV+’s Bad Monkey wasn’t written for Vince Vaughn but it might as well have been. It’s quite simply the best use of him in a very long time. Based on the Carl Hiassen book of the same name, they took a 400 page breezy beach mystery and turned it into 10 hour long episodes. That didn’t seem like a good idea, but it turns out I’d watch 20 episodes of this if they’d make it.1
Vaughn plays Andrew Yancy, a former Miami detective who got suspended and reassigned to Key West and then got suspended and demoted to food inspector, but when a severed arm showed up hooked to a sport fisherman’s line and then the kid who “caught” the arm ends up shot to death, Yancy realizes there’s a lot more to all of this.
Vaughn is given a lot of funny lines and clearly the freedom to add to them whenever he wants. Is part of the appeal that he’s basically playing a south Florida version of Irwin M. Fletcher? Well, for me, yes. But it’s more than that. Vaughn isn’t just at his smart assed funny best, he’s also asked to do a lot of stupid physical comedy and he’s very adept at it. In the first episode you see him adroitly ride his bike down some long docks at the marina, only to hop off, put down the kickstand and watch the bike fall into the water. The site of him stripping down to retrieve it is hilarious.
But Vaughn isn’t alone. The entire cast is great. Natalie Rodriguez plays the Miami coroner who is so bored with her job that she helps Yancy investigate a case neither of them is supposed to be working on. The criminally underused Michelle Mongahan finally gets put to good use as Yancy’s married girlfriend/ex-girlfriend and both of her backstories turn out to be great. The first involves why Yancy got suspended this time and the second involves how she literally isn’t who she says he is.
Rob Delaney lends a hand as a crooked land developer/con man, Zach Braff plays Delaney’s shady co-conspirator and Meredith Hagner is delightfully evil in her role as a grieving widow. John Diaz is Yancy’s ex-partner and Alex Moffatt is basically playing his SNL “guy who just bought a boat” character as a smarmy real estate agent trying to sell a monstrosity of a new house right next to Yancy’s.
There’s an entire second plot that is slowly intersecting with the main plot, and actually involves the titular bad monkey, and Jodie Turner Smith’s Dragon Lady. Scott Glenn even shows up as Yancy’s dad, though he appears to be playing the same role he played on The Leftovers as Justin Theroux’s dad.
There are a lot of nice touches, especially the “previously on” narration by Tom Nowicki who is constantly mocking us for needing to be caught up on a show with such a straight forward plot.
The big mystery at the beginning of the show is mostly resolved by the halfway point, but there’s still plenty of plot left.
The highlights in every episode tend to be Vaughn’s character being put in a demeaning situation and smart assing his way through it. It’s not unlike Freddy Funkhouser fighting Larry David with compliments.
Well, I like it anyway. Of course it was basically created as though I was the one man focus group they needed to sell it to.
Did I mention Michelle Mongahan is in it?

Oh, I did? Good.
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And maybe they will. Hiassen wrote another book with the same lead character titled Razor Girl, so they could bring most of the characters back for a second season. I’d be for it. But nobody ever asks me this stuff. ↩