Everyone on The Mob Is Having Fun, and So Am I

Remember the I Think You Should Leave baby-shower sketch, where Tim Robinson’s character is trying to unload a cache of plastic meatballs, “Stanzo brand fedoras,” and “50 black slicked-back-hair wigs” after his mob movie “fell apart ’cause it fucking sucked”? If a group of high-school theater kids obsessed with that sketch were given the power to create a reality show, I imagine they’d dream up something like The Mob. The new Hulu reality competition series — in which contestants pretend they’re in the Italian Mafia, dress the part, and compete in challenges that demonstrate the most basic understanding of Italian culture — is similarly full of gallingly stereotypical clichés, although I’m not sure everyone involved in the show shares Robinson’s winking self-awareness.

Parker Posey certainly does, having seemingly taken notes from her Josie and the Pussycats co-star Alan Cumming on how to tailor her host character to the game’s dramatic conceit. She amps up her kooky-aunt persona to caftan-and-turban extremes as she slices garlic with a razor blade, à la GoodFellas, and tells contestants to “take the whole cannoli,” as in The Godfather. But it’s all in service of a competition where the level of strategy is minuscule: It’s basically just a popularity contest, without the direct accusations of The Traitors (despite sharing two EPs with that series) or the more challenging against-the-elements aspects of Survivor. Although the costuming department appears to have bought out every pinstripe rayon fabric available in a 50-mile radius of the Italian villa where the series is filmed, The Mob is remarkably unsophisticated. There’s such a commitment to goofiness, though, that I couldn’t help but be swept up in the silly spectacle. I can’t be certain whether the series is intentionally aiming for camp, or if it’s simply a natural by-product of filming your contestants walking in slow motion while a very CGI explosion goes off behind them, or Posey saying things like, “I have a hot date with a pint of gelato.” Nevertheless, I’m having a great time.

Currently airing two episodes weekly on Hulu through November 16, The Mob brings together a combination of reality-TV personalities and somewhat-recognizable celebrities, including Bachelor Nation members Maria Georgas and Shane Parton, actress Aida Turturro, Dancing With the Stars judge Bruno Tonioli, RuPaul’s Drag Race season-four alum Willam Belli, and Real Housewives of New Jersey husband Joe Gorga. I screamed at the reveal of Empire Records, Batman Forever, and Younger icon Debi Mazar, and then again when most of the other contestants didn’t seem to know who she was. But in fairness to them, The Mob’s first episode doesn’t put too much energy toward establishing who any of these people are or why they would agree to be on this series. (Aside from the obvious, the $100,000 prize.) People who are Italian amp up being Italian; Mazar and Turturro mention that they’ve been in projects like GoodFellas and The Sopranos. Yet other contestants’ connections to this premise are either stretched quite thin (rapper Romeo, whose father is hip-hop legend Master P, says his family has always had a “mob mentality”), or pushed to the side to focus on some nebulous, unnamed beef between Demi Engemann from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and reality-TV journeyman Harry Jowsey, who showed up on a recent season of that show. Maybe The Mob assumes that someone tuning in to this show is also a loyal viewer of all other reality shows and are aware of whatever drama Demi and Harry are carrying into this setting. But the cynic in me can’t help but notice that these two are also some of the youngest, most conventionally attractive people on The Mob, and this vague disagreement doesn’t matter as much as their hotness or their cross-promotion potential with another Hulu reality series. Still, starting the series with a focus on them feels somewhat manufactured.

Maybe that’s an absurd quibble, though, for a series that is proudly manufactured from the very beginning. In premiere “Kiss the Ring,” The Mob immediately launches us into a challenge that establishes the layers of sustained-disbelief fantasy in which we’re going to engage. The series kicks off at a faux construction site where Posey spins a yarn: Two cars here contain evidence “that the Feds are after,” and the group needs to divide into “two crews” who will solve a series of puzzles and eventually blow up the cars. The contestants have to find envelopes of cash, and the Don who the group votes on to lead their “family” then gets to hand out money as they please and eliminate players who they consider disloyal. The final Don gets final control of the winnings and can keep it all for themselves if they choose. The challenge for the Don is to keep their family happy and for the other players to accumulate enough goodwill to keep receiving a portion of the prize.

The structure holds throughout the four episodes provided to critics, with challenges like the contestants making wine by stomping on grapes and stealing goods from the back of a truck. (I cannot help but think that The Mob’s writers spent a lot of time studying The Simpsons’ Fat Tony.) Other enduring components include little customs like everyone kissing the Don’s ring, the eliminated contestants getting mini-movies that show us how they “died,” and the Don, once they’re elevated into their position, getting outfitted in amusingly trite genre flair. (One Don later in the season looks like a canapé waiter in a porno, with a black turtleneck, white dinner jacket, gold chain, and gel-heavy hair.) Otherwise, though, the series is fairly loose, allowing the contestants a lot of time to swan around the villa and divide into a collection of cliques. Harry and Selling Sunset’s Chelsea Lazkani immediately start plotting on how to make him Don. Mazar and Willam vow loyalty to whoever is in charge, seeming to have internalized that The Mob is less a competition show than it is a sustained bit of theater, and it works best when everyone plays along; the latter is a recurring scene-stealer, with standout moments including a tossed-off “That’s Chianti, you animal,” when Georgas mistakes a bottle of red wine for Champagne, and licking the Don’s ring instead of kissing it.

Most bizarre, though, is the bond between Engemann and Gorga, each of whom is clearly ambitious but only one of whom is really vibing on the series’ wavelength. It’s unclear whether Gorga is being fed lines by producers or if he’s simply saying “yes, and” to the series’ gabagool-izing, but the joy of watching him onscreen lies in the realization that this man is living his dream. His time on RHONJ, far and away the most Italian American coded iteration of Housewives, has made him uniquely prepared to perform in this milieu. He simply loves doing these little scenes and peppering in “Mamma mia!” whenever he can, and The Mob treats him like another bit of set dressing. Gorga ends up the series’ first Don, and it’s serendipitous when he describes himself as “the Italian stallion,” says “When I sweat, I sweat olive oil,” and laments that “Whacking people, it’s really hard.” He’s tacky but so is this show, and they’re a perfect match.