The Song of Neil Gamby
Sing Goddess!
Of the trials of North Jackson High vice principal Neil Gamby, who
Shot by a masked foe in the school parking lot must,
Uncover his nemesis by means of swords, sleeve guns, and stand offs in Chinese restaurant bathrooms.
Tell us Muse!
Of how Gamby, tossed from his wheelchair by friend Lee Russell,
Kicked and called a “pussy,”
By miracle regained use of the legs he claimed felt not a thing since the shooting,
Tho the bullet, in verity, penetrated but his shoulder, missing all vital organs.
We finally got around to starting on Season 2 of Vice Principals last weekend. To recap, Season 1 ended with Gamby (McBride) lying, shot, in the school parking lot, his assailant’s identity hidden behind a mask showing a pale white Indian shedding tears of blood.
There’s probably a metaphor for America somewhere in there. And we have been known to read far more into McBride’s work than is strictly necessary. The reason, we suspect, is that McBride’s melodramas of mundanity…his picaresques of pettiness, as we have previously called them…manage to accomplish more emotional pull with their half-hour comedy format than most dramas do with a full hour. Each episode, coming in just shy of 30 minutes, plays out like a 3 hour spaghetti western, but with the fistful of dollars swapped out for social standing that wouldn’t mean a damn thing 30 miles north of wherever in the Carolinas the show is supposed to take place.
As we have noted before, to called McBride’s work comedy is rather misleading. There are no set-ups or punchlines here. Rather, the comedy is found in watching how far past the ordinary bounds of self-seriousness McBride is willing to take his characters. He turns a case of simple low self-esteem into an epic tableau of assassination plots, revenge fantasies, men brought low rising from the ashes of their former selves, slow motion, and even what sounded like a track by Chariots of Fire composer, Vangelis. The result is gleeful, over the top, and utterly enjoyable for anyone willing to see a bit of themselves in the resulting saga.