Sunnyside follows disgraced New York City councilman Garrett Modi (Kal Penn) and a group of immigrants who need his help studying for the citizenship test. For most of the pilot, Garret plots his return to his former position. However, due to his previous drug charges, it’s quite clear that Garret’s plan would fail if launched anytime soon. Garret’s sister, Mallory (Kiran Deol), finally gets through to him and gets her brother to help the immigrants seeking his help.
The pilot does a good job establishing the characters. Griselda (Diana-Maria Riva) is a Dominican immigrant with an absurd number of jobs who just wants to make an honest living and become an American citizen. In contrast, Jun Ho and his sister Mei Lin are the children of a wealthy father – described in series as a legit super villain – who think nothing about discarding crisp stacks of $100 bills worth nearly $15,000 because they’ve been “used.” Hakim, an Ethiopian cardio-thoracic surgeon, gave up his career and money to barely make ends meet as a cab driver because he believes in the America.
Rounding out the group are Stansilav (Nick Gracer), who is taken by ICE in the first episode, and Brady (Moses Storm). Both men are Moldovian immigrants, but are very different people. Brady didn’t realize until he was an adult that he was an illegal immigrant, while it’s suggested that Stansilav knows he isn’t legal and tries to convince Brady they are the same, despite Brady’s protests that Brady is an American.
Now that the characters are fully established, the series needs to demonstrate that Garrett is serious about helping this group of immigrants. He makes a huge step toward this by bursting into Diana Barea’s (Ana Villafane) office, who is his successor as a councilman, and asking her to assist the group. Because this is done in a “let’s get the gang back together” way, it’s not convincing that this will last past the second episode.
Overall, Sunnyside is the best new show this season. On the flip side, that’s a low bar to clear. The highlight of the pilot is a brief appearance form Bill Nye as the group’s replacement teacher. It’s generally not a good sign when a celebrity appearance overtakes the rest of your show, but Nye manages to convincingly pretend he doesn’t know squat about the electoral college that it’s only a momentary distraction in a show that’s well thought out.
Rating: 5 out of 10
Sunnyside airs Thursday nights on 9:30pm on NBC. The premiere episode can be found on NBC’s website.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3q56hWlvVw
