Young Rockcould just be an endearing throwback comedy.
ProducerDwayne Johnsonhas lived a lot of content.
The IP that is himself offers a lot of story potential.
Dwayne Johnson and Randall Park on ‘Young Rock’.Daniel Delgado/NBC
But Johnson also (maybe) wants to be President of the United States.
In season 1, that plotline was just boring.
Now it’s getting weird.
The NBC sitcom cuts between four distinct eras.
In the early 1980s, 10-year-old Dewey (Adrian Groulx) lives in Hawaii with his parents.
Uli Latukefu plays the biggest little Rock in the early ’90s, through college football and beyond.
The Hawaii stuff can be goofy fun.
The middle years are more tense, with both parents trying to cheerfully shake off their declining economic prospects.
The ’90s are pointless, just like in real life.
But the show is helplessly pulled to the fourth timeline.
Johnson himself introduces all the flashbacks (and narrates throughout) from his remote outlook in the future.
He’s in the thick of a presidential campaign.
These are not funny political statements, which is just one clue thatYoung Rockis only a part-time sitcom.
Meanwhile, the complaints about Candidate Rock sound mild.
TheFresh Off the Boatstar plays himself as an actor-turned-newscaster.
In season 2, the fictional Park moves into fictional Rock’s house for all-day interviews.
The only real joke is that Park wants Johnson to think he’s cool.
The main plot climaxes with bittersweet father-son conversation.
If this were a normal show, it would be a lovely scene to wrap up the episode.
That was a low point.
Dwayne Johnson:It makes for a hell of a story knowing how everything turned out.
Hold on, let me find the funny part of this comedy dialogue.
It’s just selling the Rock, who made the bestHerculesmovie ever.
So what’s the issue?
But I believe the Rock is going to run for President someday.
(Prove me wrong, future!)
Later, she comes under fire when the media unearths her old West Point humor column.
IRL Rock is an avowed independent centrist who endorsed Joe Biden.
Okay, fine: Here’s some non-denominational political escapism.
No one accuses anyone of destroying the country.
No one openly courts white supremacists.
The fellow’s message is starting to get picked up by “fringe social media sites.”
I could tell right away that he was full of it.
A lot of things just didn’t add up.
So I questioned him on it.
And, yeah, he tried to kill me.
This week’s episode reveals that, no, young Rock didnottry to murder anyone.
Dewey was riding high off his father’s heavyweight championship.
A kid named Julian started questioning whether Rocky was even Dewey’s father.
Now Julian has grown up to be the man from Minnesota.
This makes him the great villain ofYoung Rock, nursing a half-century grudge.
So who is this bad guy?
“A chiropractor with two stars on Yelp,” we’re told, “Divorced, one son.
He’s been banned from the Olive Garden for complaining too much.”
In short, a total loser.
His anti-Rock critiques veer immediately ridiculous: “No way that was him singing inMoana.”
There’s no sense of a left- or right-wing response to any of Candidate Rock’s policies.
The biggest critic’s entire complaint is that he thinks the Rock is lying.
Heck, the whole mission statement ofYoung Rockis basically Fake It Till You Make It.
The fancy automobile is a key part of his persona.
But is the car a lie?
Sure, some of these tales are pretty tall and why not print the legend?
Fake it till you make it isn’t bad advice, as such.
But you see how the arrival of a character like Julian adds a new note of tension.
His role in a fictionalized biography is to accuse the biography of being fictional.
The third episode ends cliffhanger-ishly, with Johnson making contact with his long-ago nemesis.
Will they actually meet up this season?
Fair to guess that someone will get taken down a peg.
But Julian is a petulant lunatic right away.
Really, the mere act of questioning the Rock at all is offensive in the show’s world.
We never get any remote sense of those differences of opinion.
Dawson delivers that line like she’s reading a ransom note.
That’s an obvious fix unless you believe the election subplot is the real point of the show.
That’s what I think, but it doesn’t matter what I think.Young Rockis the Rock’s world.
We might just wind up living in it.
