TV Show review
July 17, 2016 · TV-MA
Woke Score
Lower is better
Review
Vice Principals is a 2016-2017 HBO dark comedy about two rival vice principals at a South Carolina high school who team up to sabotage their new principal, Dr. Belinda Brown, a strict and qualified Black woman, through crude schemes and personal attacks. The series uses mean-spirited humor to show their incompetence, jealousy, and desperate power grabs. There are no lectures on social justice, identity politics, or systemic issues; any racial or gender elements mainly highlight the vice principals' petty bigotry as part of their ridiculous behavior.
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Vice Principals.
Woke representation / casting
The Black female principal is central and visible as the target of sabotage, but the choice fits the rivalry story and serves to expose the leads' prejudice rather than signal diversity or push representation.
Woke political dialogue
Some lines show the protagonists' bigoted assumptions, but these depict their flaws and receive no narrative support or activist response.
Identity-driven story themes
The story is a personal vendetta over power at a school; identity aspects are minor and used to mock the antagonists' small-mindedness.
Western institutional / cultural critique
It satirizes petty school bureaucracy and insecure male posturing through over-the-top schemes, but without modern activist framing of patriarchy, systemic bias, or cultural institutions.
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Some critics raised sensitivity concerns about white men targeting a Black woman boss in 2016, but no significant claims that the show promotes woke ideas; creators consistently described it as a power story.
Creator track record context
Danny McBride, Jody Hill, and core team built careers on crude, boundary-pushing comedies about flawed people with no history of activist or identity-driven work.
Production
