Starring: Don Cheadle, Regina Hall, Andrew Rannells, Paul Scheer, Melissa Rauch, Casey Wilson, Horatio Sanz, Bruce Dern, Kadeem Hardison
Black Monday is an erratic series which occasionally threatens to become something more, but it frustratingly never does. Sure, there are moments of heart and depth. These characters can't all just be money hungry. Some are hungry for love, which is made so obvious with Maurice Monroe (Cheadle), who leads the up-and-coming Wall Street firm The Jammer Group into increasingly risky financial ventures during the 365 days leading up to Black Monday in October 1987.
Maurice is not a million miles removed from Cheadle's Marty Kaan from his previous Showtime series House of Lies. It is practically a copy and paste performance from that series to this one. Maurice is fueled by bravado, greed, drugs, and ego, all underlined by his need for the love which eludes him, that of Dawn (Hall), who eventually becomes his partner in the firm. There are times in which we tire of Maurice's antics, as well as the occasional brief solemn glances which lets us know "Hey, I'm an okay guy underneath this insufferable exterior." Which isn't to say Cheadle doesn't infuse Maurice with energy and flash. He does indeed, and like Maurice, there are times he is nearly able to pull this off.
Dawn is the only woman in an all-male firm which has yet to be enlightened about sexual harassment in the workplace. She plays along like one of the guys, mostly because that is the only way she can survive. Hall provides the heart Black Monday searches for, and her rich performance anchors the show's best dramatic moments. Andrew Rannells (from Girls) is on-hand as novice broker Biff who falls under Maurice's tutelage. He is engaged to Tiff Georgina (Wilson), whose family is wealthy and runs a famed fashion company. She is slumming it with Biff to prove she can make it on her own without her parents' money, but she really, really wants Biff to land a high-paying job so the slumming can be a lot more tolerable.
Biff has a deer-in-the headlights look about him until he finds his footing at The Jammer Group, and his engagement to Tiff becomes an intense pressure cooker for reasons made clear later. He doesn't have the killer instinct to succeed on Wall Street at first, but predictably develops it as the show progresses. There isn't anything wrong with the Rannells performance, per se. He plays the role as written, which is mostly as a blank slate. Comedian Paul Scheer, with his Michael Strahan-like front tooth gap, is a macho asshole stockbroker with a wife, kids, and a male lover, which is inconvenient for a macho asshole stockbroker. This subplot only provides mild intrigue.
Each episode counts down to Black Monday, which was one of the worst stock market crashes in U.S. History. Maurice and The Jammer Group do their thing without an inkling, or even a care, that their world will come crashing down on October 19, 1987, nearly sixty years after the Stock Market Crash of 1929 which plunged the U.S. into a decade-long depression. In the ensuring years between the 1929 crash and the 1987 crash, it appears Wall Street learned absolutely nothing. The same with the 2008 economic crisis which screwed up the economy for years. Wall Street pretends it will clean up its act, like a reformed sinner, but after a while it falls back into the same behaviors. As long as there is the lure of get rich quick schemes, the questions isn't if a crash will happen again, but when.
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