Hulu’s The Mob fails to whack—or nail—The Traitors

The first two episodes of Hulu’s The Mob made me think of one of the most scenes in The Sopranos, when Christopher and Paulie wander through New Jersey’s snowy Pine Barrens, searching for a man they thought they killed. The Russian gets away; Christopher and Paulie end up lost.

That is The Mob: thinking it’s nailed The Traitors, and realizing that The Traitors has outsmarted it. That The Mob comes from Studio Lambert, producers of Peacock and BBC’s versions of The Traitors, demonstrates how hard it is to create a new format—and how much a strong format matters.

I also thought about The Sopranos because 1) one of its stars, Aida Turturro, is one of the players and 2) I was increasingly bored, and dreaming of better entertainment. And that’s stunning because a show from The Traitors’ producers starring Parker Posey should be my thing!

The Mob takes eight D-list reality TV stars to Italy to play a game alongside two recognizable actors (Debi Mazar and Aida Turturro), one musician (Romeo Miller), and one Dancing with the Stars judge (Bruno Tonioli). There’s some inspired casting, especially for a mafia-themed game, with Mazar and Turturro alone.

The problem is there is not enough game, and the players have nothing interesting to do.

The Traitors benefited from borrowing the structure of a 40-year-old party game, Mafia/Werewolf, and making it bigger. (And it actually needs to borrow a lot more to strengthen its game.)

The Mob borrows ideas from the mafia—not the party game, but pop culture depictions of the mafia. So we have challenges for earning envelopes of cash, and one player designated the don who wears a ring everyone has to (pretend to) kiss constantly, and whacking, and that’s about it.

Some of the reality TV elements have potential. The don player 1) distributes the challenge winnings as they see fit, perhaps to buy loyalty in the game, 2) chooses one player to eliminate every day, and 3) can be overthrown by a majority vote of the other players, but only if they don’t whack the person who’s been chosen to overthrow them.

You can see the Xerox machine turning: the whacking scene is supposed to play like The Traitors’ breakfast, with each player entering the room until just two remain. The Tuscan villa substitutes for the Scottish castle. Parker Posey is our new Alan Cumming.

Yet all of these just fall flat. Tuscany leaves the cast in streaks of blinding light, not the shadows of fire at night. Parker Posey is bizarrely underused—she’s barely in the first episode, while the player in the don role gets way too much screen time to playact.

I think that’s the real problem: The Mob turns its game over to a single player, and the rest of the players don’t have enough to do. The game allows them to overthrow that person, but the incentive to do that is low, especially in the first days of a game whose rules are being unveiled slowly.

That is the design. The format is credited to Primal Media’s Adam Wood and Mat Steiner, who said in a press release:

“We love reality TV and the whole mafia genre. With The Mob we wanted to create an addictive format centred around the most powerful contestant in reality TV history. A world where charm, strategy, and survival instincts all collide.”

However, the first don is also chosen without giving the players any indication of the wildly disproportionate power that person will have. And then they impede this power in a way that seems transparently about creating drama and encouraging lying.

The don is not allowed to watch the second challenge, despite making decisions allegedly based on players’ performance in it. That’s obviously to create imbalance of knowledge in the game, as players can lie to the don. Harry Jowsey observes, “He doesn’t know what’s going on. He only knows what we tell him.” (Harry must have a really good agent because they’re really, really trying to make him happen.)

But giving players in a game the ability to lie to one person isn’t the same as a format structured around lying or protecting a secret. There just isn’t much of a game here.

So the first two episodes, now on Hulu, spend way too much time with the players talking to us about how they really understand the mob. Yet Romeo Miller, formerly Lil’ Romeo, says,”Being the son of one of the biggest rap moguls, my family dynasty is kind of build off of that mob mentality where everything is for the family, so I feel like I’m right at home.” Huh?

The mob seriousness is broken up by moments of levity, like when Willam tells the first don, Joe Gorga, “I’m a good right hand. But I can also use my left, and I can reach around and help, too.” This joke either goes over Joe’s head or Joe—never mind, it obviously went over his head. Joe just grunts.

During the second episode’s challenge, Willam loses a fingernail in the wine they’re pressing, and Willam hands Parker Posey a glass. “Would you like some of our house blend? There’s a bit of toenail in it,” Willam says. Parker Posey does a stage sip and says “It adds flavor.” So maybe it’s just Willam.

The Mob’s opening episodes lack the humor and playfulness of Hulu’s wacky Got to Get Out; the atmosphere and intrigue of Netflix’s Secret Millionaire; and the camp and clarity of The Traitors. That leaves a few intriguing game elements wandering in the woods, looking for something they may never find.

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