The Black Donnellys: Mob Drama for Dummies
With
The Sopranos bowing out this spring, TV no doubt is in search of the next great family crime drama. After seeing five hours of
The Black Donnellys (Mondays, 10 pm/ET, NBC), a feeble urban fable of doltish brotherhood in which blood runs thicker than brains, I imagine TV will have to keep looking.
The Donnellys are four Irish-American street punks dragging each other down as they recklessly stir up violent clashes with the Irish and Italian mobs in New York City. To say these guys are stereotypes does insult to the clichés they clumsily represent.
The centerpiece of this heavily serialized (uh-oh) story is Tommy (Jonathan Tucker, all dewy-eyed Tobey Maguire boyishness). He's the sensitive one, an art student whose ambitions are stalled because he has to keep cleaning up his brothers' messes. Making most of the messes is eldest bro Jimmy (Thomas Guiry), a hotheaded junkie who limps from a childhood accident. Kevin (Billy Lush) is an inept gambler. Sean (Michael Stahl-David), the youngest, is a pretty-boy stud. Their behavior tends to be as abhorrent as it is ridiculous. I lost count of the number of times I heard the word "stupid" — as in, "Did you go to school to get that stupid?" — or maybe that was just me thinking aloud.
The Black Donnellys has a lighter touch than expected, thanks to the absolutely unreliable narration of Joey Ice Cream (Keith Nobbs), a pathetic neighborhood con who idolizes the brothers and who tells their story from behind bars with an all-seeing omniscience that Desperate Housewives' Mary Alice Young would envy.
What Joey sees in these guys is beyond me. So far, there's little reason to think that these brothers are keepers.
Models Inc.
How appropriate for the CW's America's Next Top Model (Wednesdays, 8 pm/ET) to kick off what looks like a promising eighth go-round with a "Top Model boot camp." If these girls think this competition is tough, wait until they see what the real world has in store for them. They should all be required to watch VH1's new docu-reality series The Agency (Tuesdays, 10/ 9c), which goes inside the brutal world of the high-profile Wilhelmina modeling agency, for a true reality check. The taunts of Miss J and Mr. Jay are like the buzzing of gnats compared with the cruel rejections they're likely to face on the job.
The flashy, fast-paced Agency has about a hundred times the substance of VH1's usual sublebrity crud. We watch in appalled fascination as overheated, stressed-out agents harshly chide their gorgeous clients for being too skinny, too fat, too lazy. It soon becomes clear that a model's skin must be as thick as it is beautiful.
