Review: The Pole “Saint Dick” ; “The Woman” ; Ep 103

The challenging thing with being an animated comedy on a cable network, is that typically, the network wants to fit you in a box. On paper, and even in some respects execution The Pole feels like a streaming animated series, but being a quarter-hour, it’s not formatted as one. So, right off the bat, we have an identity crisis and these aren’t the only instances of this.

Set in the North Pole, The Pole follows jolly old St. Nick (voiced by Bobby Moynihan) during the holiday offseason, set away from his yearly activities of breaking into houses and delivering gifts all-the-while grabbing as many cookies as he can. It isn’t long before Nick is embroiled in a controversy that sees a crusty old dick pic sent from his phone to the mass media (reported on by Cocoa (Colin Jost), host of “Morning Cocoa,” the North Pole news program) that then begs the question, should St. Nick be replaced at the top? There are some who think so, including those closest to him.

Joining Nick at his Christmas enterprise is his wife Gretchen Claus (voiced by Jillian Bell). Gretchen is a far cry from the Mrs. Clauses that we’ve seen in prior depictions of Santa and is exquisitely portrayed more like one of those “housewives of NJ” rather than a wholesome symbol of the holidays. The couple have two children, the very fit Jack (portrayed by Timothy Simons) and Harry (voiced by Sungwon Cho) and a litany of elf employees including Nick’s head elf Matilda (Nicole Byer) and political activist Helenor (Sasheer Zamata). Jack is next in line for the Suit, but also looking to rebrand it, but isn’t exactly willing to work hard and be a good boy to get what he wants. His mother, more of the same.

Such is life in a North Pole setting. As animated comedy, The Pole doesn’t deliver the laughs all that well. It’s a lot of jokes with crass punch lines which, for me, I prefer with ginger seasoning rather than a smorgasbord that we’re presented with here. I’m actually much more impressed with the underlying Succession-like premise that features controversial headlines from a corrupt network, dirty behind-the-back deals, and conniving members of what’s usually perceived as a close-knit family at the center of it all.

The show looks cute, very much in vein of the Christmas books of our childhood. In terms of vocal performances, the only one worth really remarking about so far are those of Jillian Bell as Gretchen and Timothy Simons as Jack. For my money, they make the show almost by themselves. For Bobby’s delivery of Santa sounds very uneven in it’s delivery, devoid of effective direction. If I were scripting the show, I would have made Santa a bit more lovable and remitted of the crass humor of those around him, so as to truly embolden the separation between church and state that is working in the North Pole. Moreover, it would continue the potential viewer’s affinity for the wholesome symbol of Christmas while slowly being put through the ringer of the real bullshit Nick has to put up with at home.

If it weren’t for the aforementioned dramatic affairs, The Pole would suffer a lot of the same problems that plagued Showtime’s Our Cartoon President, a workplace comedy with not great comedy. But, the more sinister part of the series starts to show up in droves by the end of the show’s third episode and now I’m hooked to want to see how this one plays out.