[Nerdspresso] Bad Monkey's Good, Actually!

I fell down the AppleTV+ rabbit hole recently, streamer binging during the final days of my holiday vacation. I voraciously consumed movies (George Clooney and Brad PItt in Wolfs and Matt Damon and Casey Affleck in the The Instigators), series (Jason Segal and Harrison Ford in Shrinking and Vince Vaughn in Bad Monkey) and A Charlie Brown Christmas (because tradition). What’s up with AppleTV+? 

It’s the home of some really awesome programming, but I don’t hear people hooked on it like other platforms. “Peeling AppleTV” hasn’t caught on like “Netflix and Chill.” Does no one say that anymore? Did they ever? Anyway…I got AppleTV+ a couple years ago for a free trial when I upgraded my phone. It was the close of the pandemic and the relentless positivity coming off Jason Sedeikis during the first season of Ted Lasso reeled me in. 

While the subsequent seasons of that show haven’t lived up to that sterling freshman year, I held onto my subscription and wander back every now and then. I’m always impressed and usually get sucked in to watching their latest offers for about a week before I get lured away by something shiny. AppleTV+ seems to be reinventing the sitcom with Ted Lasso, Shrinking, Platonic (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne’s hilarious antics as 40-something best friends) and Mythic Quest (Rob McElhenney plays the obnoxious visionary behind a popular video game). Every show I watch is funny, fresh and honest. 

They’ve also got some really cool sci-fi with Dark Matter (Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly exploring the multiverse), Severance (Adam Scott has the weirdest workplace ever), For All Mankind (writer/producer Ronald D. Moore envisions a future where America continued the space race after landing on the moon) and Foundation (I don’t fully understand it, but all my friends tell me it’s awesome so I just shut up and watch). My latest AppleTV+ obsession is Bad Monkey. This series adapts a Carl Hiaasen novel and stars Vince Vaughn as a  motormouthed detective in Key West. 

Produced by Bill Lawrence, the same guy behind Ted Lasso and Shrinking, this crime-flavored comedy pulsates with Hiaasen’s Weird Florida vibe. I’ve been a fan of his work for decades. I even read his books to my son at bedtime. Calm down, he also writes stuff for kids. Wow, people can be so judgmental. It’s not like I read my toddler The Hunger Games. Okay, I did. Three times. Looking back, I think that explains a lot. But back to Carl Hiaasen. This guy is a personal fave. I have a bit of a bro crush on him. Surprising, I know. 

A dogged investigative journalist for The Miami Herald (he retired in 2021), Hiaasen is a Florida native and has been pumping out funny, fascinating novels about the seedier side of the Sunshine State since I was in high school. Like Elmore Leonard and Gregory McDonald, his wheelhouse is smartass heroes sucked into outrageous scenarios populated by oddball characters. All three writers have a penchant for Florida settings, but being a hometown boy, Hiaasen’s stuff always hits a little harder for me. 

I met him a couple times at book signings in the early 90’s and he’s the real deal. Personable, funny, and extremely passionate about all things Florida. I started reading his stuff before all that news broke about his novel Striptease being turned into a Demi Moore movie. In my opinion, it got buzz for the all the wrong reasons. A greater focus on an A-list star getting paid a gazillion dollars to play a stripper than the movie itself. 

Striptease the movie is more about Demi’s skincare regimen than his story, but the novel itself is vintage Hiaasen: sarcastic heroes, comically creepy villains, and storylines just strange enough to feel like they could have happened. Now I haven’t read Bad Monkey yet because it came out in 2013 and I’ve been really busy, but the show feels legit. I can’t confirm how faithful this show is to the source material, but it pulses with Hiaasen’s DNA. Vince Vaughn is perfectly cast as Andrew Yancy, a former Miami police detective recently demoted to “food cop” with the Key West PD. 

He’s been slaving away on “roach patrol” at the local haunts when he’s given an assignment that can get him back in the force’s good graces. Yancy takes a severed arm found during a recent fishing charter to Miami for forensic testing. While there, he encounters coroner Dr. Rosa Campesino (played by Natalie Martinez from Jason Statham’s Death Race movie and a bunch of TV shows, including CSI: NY). They hit it off and discover that this was no boating accident. It might be murder. 

Yancy’s superiors back in the Keys don’t want the trouble of a big investigation, but he is not the kind of guy to just let this stuff go. He and Rosa start digging around, which leads to some shady real estate developers in the Bahamas, scary voodoo queens, and the titular bad monkey. This show is overflowing with attitude and boasts an awesome tropical vibe. I’m always swayed by a movie, TV show or book that spends some time on world building and Bad Monkey really transports you. The locations feel like an actual character. 

This series is elevated by an incredible soundtrack brimming with covers of Tom Petty classics from artists like Eddie Vedder, Sharon Van Etten, Nathaniel Rateliff, and Weezer. Petty’s another Florida boy so it’s a really nice homage. The songs complement the personalities of the characters and resonate with the tone of the show. Every artist gives their version a personal touch. When you hear “You Don’t Know How It Feels” in a reggae style by Stephen Marley, it plays like a musical Easter egg for all the Petty nerds in the audience.

Vaughn’s chatterbox persona works with this character and he is expertly supported by a superb cast that includes newcomers Natalie Martinez, Meredith Hagner, and Ronald Peet. He hasn’t been this good in years. Vaughn is always best when he plays to his strengths like in Swingers and Wedding Crashers. The few times he’s strayed have been either hit (Brawl in Cell Block 99 and Hacksaw Ridge) or an extreme miss (I’m still trying to forget The Cell. It haunts me). He scores with Bad Monkey, wearing this role like a comfortable pair of boat shoes. 

Martinez and Hagner colorfully bring Hiaasen’s ladies to life while holding their own against the veterans in the cast. Fresh from Disney+’s The Acolyte, Jodie Turner-Smith is striking in another witchy role as the Dragon Queen, while Michelle Monaghan delivers a career best as Yancy’s eccentric ex-girlfriend. She caught my eye back in 2005 as Robert Downey Jr. ’s sparky gal pal in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but lately has been mired in mediocre parts. Monaghan is on fire in Bad Monkey, playing sexy, weird and wistful - sometimes all at once in the same scene. 

Not to be outdone, the dudes crush it as well. Big shoutouts to two seasoned pros who have been grinding it out for years and are just now getting their shot. Rob Delaney is known in the UK as the co-creator, writer, and star of Catastrophe. Catch all three seasons of this funny and emotionally raw sitcom about life, love, and parenthood now on Amazon Prime. Stateside, you’ll recognize Delaney as Wade Wilson’s beloved Sugar Bear in the Deadpool movies. It’s great to see him strut his stuff here. Even when Delaney is being despicable, you feel for the guy. He makes you want to grab a beer with him. 

I was also thrilled to see Tom Nowicki featured prominently here as Captain Fitzpatrick, Yancy’s fisherman friend and the show’s gruff narrator. Nowicki is a Central Florida legend, a journeyman actor who has played bit parts in films shot in the Sunshine state since the late 80’s. Blink and you’ll miss him in Ernest Saves Christmas, Passenger 57, The Waterboy, and Dolphin Tale among others. I cheer every time Nowicki pops up somewhere because he always makes the home team proud. 

He’s a scene stealer in Bad Monkey, riffing with Vaughn and providing snarky voiceover exposition every episode. I saw him play Aslan in a community theater production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe about 20 years ago and been rooting for him ever since. I am psyched that he’s getting his moment now. It’s also great to see Scott Glenn back in the limelight. I haven’t noticed him since he played Jack Crawford in Silence of the Lambs, but he’s spectacular here as Yancy’s sly, wise tree-hugging dad. I hope we see more of him in the future. 

There’s a good chance that we’ll meet most of these folks again because Bad Monkey has been renewed for a second season. The Yancy character also appears in Hiaasen’s novel, Razor Girl, so it’s very likely that book will be adapted in the next installment. They may also just start doing original stories, building on the foundation they’ve created with the first season. I’m good either way. These folks are too much fun to not visit again. 

Bad Monkey is loose and enjoyable like a weekend getaway to the Keys. Grab your shades and a Margarita and punch it up on AppleTV+ now. You won’t regret it. 

Catch up on past Nerdspresso columns and check out the Nerdspresso podcast on Spotify!