‘Mr. Throwback Review: Stephen Curry’s latest headline is an actor

Stephen Curry, the basketball player, is all over television this week — or, more specifically, all over the Peacock. There’s the Olympics, which you may be aware of (and which are well served by Peacock’s a la carte approach), but there’s also “Mr. Throwback,” a new sitcom premiering Thursday that is probably a bit lower on the radar, especially if you’re not Googling “Stephen Curry” this week. I can’t swear he wasn’t asked a question about it in Paris by some sports reporter, but he seems too classy a guy to say it himself.

Curry is a version of himself, though aside from the currency and cachet he brings to the production, the story could just as well be told with an entirely fictional athlete. Still, with all due respect to Adam Pally, the real star of the show and co-creator along with Daniel Libman, David Caspe and Matthew Libman, this would be a tougher sell without him. And whether it’s a random rag or Curry settling into his post-basketball career, the main takeaway from this six-episode series is that while he’s not asked to do any dramatic heavy lifting, he’s a charming, genuine, and there is a life in pictures waiting if it wants one. Curry wouldn’t be the first athlete to make this transition, but he’s probably the first you’d cast as the lead in a romantic comedy.

As is often the case, the preview episodes sent to reporters and critics come with a list of “spoilers,” which are often quite sensitive and, even when not, easy enough to adapt. “Mr. Throwback” comes with a not-so-sensible one, given that it’s essentially the show’s premise, the event that drives most of what’s to come. I’ll tell you it has something in common with Carole Lombard’s 1937 comedy Nothing Sacred” and its 1954 remake by Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis “Living It Up” and the 1951 Bob Hope film “The Lemon Drop Kid.” If you take those ingredients, you throw in some childhood trauma “Curb Your Enthusiasm” prevarications — Steph is the only completely honest major character — and you end up with a lot of feelings, you might end up with something along the lines of “Mr. Comeback.”

Pally plays Danny, who showed great promise as a basketball player as a child but now runs a sports memorabilia store in Chicago, notable for such offerings as a bent golf club “used by … Tiger Woods’ wife when he wrecked his Escalade. .” For reasons that aren’t discussed, he owes $90,000 to the Polish mob, and with a day to deliver, he thinks about putting a touch on his childhood friend Curry, who happens to be in town for a game.

Ego Nwodim plays Kimberly, who runs Stephen Curry’s media company, in ‘Mr. Return.”

(Peacock/David Moir/Peacock)

They haven’t seen each other for 25 years. (They were estranged after an … incident, a scandal, also marked as a spoiler by the producers.) Also present is their old friend Kimberly (Ego Nwodim), who now runs Steph’s media company, Curry Up and Wait — one of their projects. is a sitcom ‘Teen Steph’, written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge – and whose friendship with Danny also ended in middle school.

Getting closer to Steph, Danny also stumbles upon the fake documentary that frames the series, directed by Lucy (Tien Tran) and financed by Curry, for no other reason than “I do cool stuff all the time”, but which eventually becomes about Danny . As Kimberly will say at the end of the first episode, describing the series she’s a part of, “People like a redemption story. But you know what people love even more than a redemption story? A train wreck.”

Danny is a slob, an immature man-child with a brainy ex-wife, Samantha (Ayden Mayeri), and a teenage daughter, Charlie (Layla Scalisi). We’re supposed to think he’s a good guy deep down, but the evidence is slow to come, even though Sam says he is, Charlie’s affection for him and his professed love for her, which he also uses as an excuse for bad actions. (“I’ve done everything for Charlie,” he’ll say. “I’d do anything for my daughter”). Avoiding the (un-)solicited spoiler, I’ll just say that he’s playing a trick, I guess you could call it, on Curry, that makes him enough money to briefly lose the Polish mob storyline in the show. But the sympathetic nature of Danny’s cheating also rekindles his friendship with Curry—though Kimberly is less trusting.

He also stars in “Mr. Throwback,” from left, are Ayden Mayeri as Samantha, Danny’s ex-wife; and Layla Scalisi as Charlie, Danny’s daughter.

(George Burns Jr./Peacock)

Here are some random lines I liked. Samantha: “I thought it would be a little weird to date a 58-year-old, but he looks great and I don’t mind an early dinner.” Steph, describing a crisis: “I started looking into grad school.” Samantha, from a successful bar-turned-gym: “It seems like most people in Chicago work out drunk and it’s the same music.” Kimberley: “We weren’t going to screw up a beloved class pet.” There’s something funny about Steph not being able to “understand failure – literally.” Things just slide out of that part of his brain, says his “longevity coach,” Dr. Josh (Rich Sommer), self-described as “one of the top thought leaders in the preventive health space as of six months ago.” which has steph. drink “placentaritas”.

“Mr. Throwback” tries on a lot of different stylistic hats, from absurd to sentimental, from low farce to something akin to straight-up drama, especially in Danny’s scenes with his father, Mitch (Tracy Letts), who was also the coach. of Steph’s childhood Mitch is a seriously troubled man, and in some ways Letts, the Tony-winning straight actor in the mix, is working on a completely different show.

Pally works hard as Danny, switching between all those stylistic hats. Yet we’re meant, on some level, to feel for him—in a way, say, we’re not meant to feel for Larry David’s characters—he’s so disappointing that the minutes are counting until the show decides that it is time for a change. In the final period, it’s moving hard towards a happy ending – or endings – that you might find contrived or emotional. Or even both.