Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Killing It’ On Peacock, Where Craig Robinson Achieves The American Dream By Killing Snakes

We’ve been fans of Craig Robinson ever since his breakout role as Darryl Philbin on The Office, mainly because his brand of funny is simultaneously low-key and uproarious. How he manages to get belly laughs out of his grumbling reactions to things is anyone’s guess, but he does. In a new Peacock series, Robinson takes the lead, showing the comedy chops that he showed in Hot Tub Time Machine, Mr. Robinson, and elsewhere.

KILLING IT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man looks out over a beautiful beach vista, then turns and says to the camera, “I know what you’re thinking. This fucking guy, right? That rich prick.”

The Gist: Craig (Craig Robinson) talks about how he worked hard to achieve the American dream. We see that he’s not talking to the camera but a maid cleaning up his penthouse hotel room. So he tells her to sit down and listen to his story.

It begins in 1988, when Craig and his younger brother Isaiah are told by their dad, who has nothing, to work hard and you’ll get anything you want. He then gets shot and killed when he goes back into the bodega they’re at to return stuff the kids stole.

In 2016, Craig is perfecting the pitch he’s going to give the loan officer at the bank where he works as a guard; he wants to grow saw palmetto. He thinks it’s the best idea he’s had, though his ex-wife Camille (Stephanie Nogueras) thinks it’s the latest of his many schemes. But he’s denied the loan because Black borrowers are a risk, and he gets fired when he lets the bank get robbed — by Isaiah (Rell Battle), his “self-employed” brother who encouraged him to go back to work and make the loan officer listen to him.

After repeated pitches, a loan officer asks to see the land. Craig gets in a rickety Uber driven by an Aussie woman named Jillian (Claudia O’Doherty), who lives inside a billboard she tows with her. During the nightmare ride, Jillian stops to kill a Burmese python, which she does to get $100 from the state of Florida. Unfortunately, the reptile-averse Craig has to violently re-kill it with the power window when it turns out to not be dead. After a disaster of a meeting with a loan officer, Craig finds out that there’s a python-killing contest, with the prize being the money he needs to start his saw palmetto farm.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Killing It has the continuing-story of another recent Peacock series, Rutherford Falls. This one has a lot more snakes, though.

Our Take: One thing you’ll notice when you watch the first, very eventful episode of Killing It, which is produced by Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s Luke Del Tredici and Dan Goor: Even with an extended scene where Craig has to contend with a snake sharing the back seat with him, and a gag where every white loan officer talks about their favorite Jamie Foxx film, the laughs took a back seat to the weird beginnings of Craig’s success story. And Robinson’s performance goes a long way to making us want to follow Craig as he kills his way to riches.

In reality, the first episode tried a bit too hard. We had Craig with doing his “It’s 4 AM. The rest of Miami is sleeping” sales pitch over and over, constantly thwarted by clueless white loan officers. There was Isaiah, who basically takes advantage of his brother’s honesty and uses it to rob the bank where Craig works. Then there’s the fact that Craig has a running insult-fest with Marco (Auturo del Puerto), Camille’s new husband. There’s a lot going on, and the effort to make it all funny felt a bit strained.

But in the second episode, where Craig solidifies his partnership with Jillian — whom O’Doherty gives equally funny dollops of optimism and insanity — and we see that his biggest rival is going to be “mid-level influencer” Brock (Scott MacArthur), we see where Goor and Del Tredici are going. The more they keep the show on Craig’s quest, and having him and Jillian interact with people along the way, the better the show will be. Then meta gags will slow down a bit and not feel nearly as forced.

Sex and Skin: Craig rents out his apartment and decides to live in his car, which catches on fire when he forgets to unplug his George Forman Grill. He thinks the guy he is renting to is a nice dude, but he and Camille walk in to the place in the middle of him shooting a porn scene.

Parting Shot: When Craig finds out about the contest from an arrogant Brock, he tells his brother, whose on the phone, “Zay, I gotta go.” He was about to work for Isaiah on one of his very illegal schemes.

Sleeper Star: Rell Battle is pretty funny as Zay; he’s a lowlife and he has no problem with it, but at least he won’t go so far as to wear yellow contact lenses, like his partner in crime does.

Most Pilot-y Line: Craig’s boss Mr. Franks (Tim Bagley) thinks Craig wants to talk to him about his Halloween Shaq costume, “Someone wrote a letter to corporate saying they were offended, and I assumed it was you, because you were the only… person I hadn’t asked about it yet.” We almost expected him to whisper the word “Black.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Killing It gets off to a rough but promising start, thanks to a fun performance from Robinson, with an assist from O’Doherty. We hope that as the story gets more personal, the characters will outshine the gags.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.