This Diplo TV show is the last thing we need right now, but it's happening anyway

By Isha Aran  |  January 4, 2017 | 10:06pm
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We need a lot of things right now. We need to slow down climate change. We need to clip our toenails. We need puffy cheese balls and Chewing Gum. We need to make sure gender and racial minorities and women who stand to lose a lot under Donald Trump’s presidency and a Republican Congress are protected. We need to remember to wash behind our ears. Hell, we probably need a drink and to bingewatch some fucking Animaniacs or something. What we do not need at all is a TV show about the life of Diplo (aka Wesley Pentz), the party boy EDM DJ and producer. And yet we’re getting one, starring not Diplo, but James Van Der Beek. I hate 2017 already.

According to Deadline, Viceland has ordered six episodes of the scripted comedy series, based on a video from last year in which Van Der Beek appeared as Diplo, promoting the annual Mad Decent Block Party.

Van Der Beek told Deadline that the show would be “Louie meets WorldStar HipHop crossed with This Is Spinal Tap,” which is a lot and kind of sounds like nobody has any idea what they’re doing. I mean it’s probably a bit more like Isaiah Mustafa’s Old Spice commercial but with Harold and Kumar-version Neil Patrick Harris (or: a great TV ad, and probably an awful TV show!). Either way, it does sound like the kind of self-indulgent goofy-white-dude-who-isn’t-actually-racist-because-it’s-a-joke trainwreck you can fairly easily look away from.

I get that Diplo is a cultural icon, a talented artist, a platinum card-carrying bro (who takes art, doesn’t credit the artist, and tweets out dumb misogynist shit when he gets called out), and a bit of an enigma, but the dude basically just Columbused dancehall and other music from around the world, so unless the show literally features him taking music from brown and black people and branding it his own (the video did feature a couple hilariously disgruntled black people!), I can’t say I have the time or energy for this.

 
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