Welcome to Chippendales
I don't know if people today realize how ubiquitous Chippendales was. Most people are probably more familiar with the SNL sketch with Patrick Swayze and Chris Farley that to this day I have issues with because of it's lack of body positivity and it's blanket statement that overweight people are there to be laughed at not applauded for. Or as Bob Odenkirk succinctly said "fuck that sketch." People who went to Chippendales would flash there keychains to everyone as a mark of pride. It was wholesome naughtiness that was coming to your town with a bus and billboards to match. Because Chippendales was such a big part of the eighties and in turn my growing up there's a nostalgia factor that this series plays into. This is about the excess and the success of the eighties, where a man could go from no one to someone based on a clever idea only to destroy it all because of his own insecurities. Welcome to Chippendales was near perfection with music, murder, true crime, and nostalgia all packed into a rather SWOL Kumail Nanjiani. All of this is captured perfectly at the very end of the opening credits when the music fades out and the video of the dancers is slowed down to a menacing level like they are hunting their prey. It shows how that which is fun can turn dangerous at any second, and that is a lesson that should have been heeded by many of the people involved in this real life story. But to be fair, you are tipped off to the train wreck that is to come when Dan Stevens, yes, Downton Abbey Dead Dan, is involved in a murder suicide at the end of the first episode. It's almost like this show knew what comforts me, and it's not a nice cup of hot cocoa and a fire, it's solving a good murder mystery while simultaneously being nostalgically drawn into my past. I'd get deaths and a slamming dance routine guaranteed! And let's not beat around the bush, Murray Bartlett is having a moment, between The White Lotus, Welcome to Chippendales, and The Last of Us, anything he touches is gold. His performance as Nick De Noia, the choreographer, partner and antagonist to Kumail's Steve Banerjee, the founder of Chippendales, was wonderful. The two of them are like lightning in a bottle, you can see how they each make the other better, not just as actors, but as their characters. They see a vision and they accomplish it and if Banerjee and been a little more humble or if Nick hadn't stolen the spotlight time and time again, who knows how this story could have gone? As it is it ends in murder. And here's the thing that amazes me, what magical and wonderful people did Chippendales have working for them that I had heard nothing about this growing up. There wasn't even a blip on my radar and yet there was so much going on. One could probably argue that in the eighties with the sex, drugs, and dancing, and the occasional arson, anything was possible, and for Steve Banerjee it was. Until it all came crashing down. The music faded out and the dancing stopped for him and Nick. But you can't deny that it's fabulous viewing. Turn the music up and let's dance!
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