Reasons To Watch Deli Boys, Ranked

The second season of Deli Boys dropped on Hulu this past weekend. I like the show a lot. I think more people should watch it. Like you. I think you should watch it. Here are some reasons why, ranked, by me. 

TEN: The premise alone is a winner. Two brothers, Mir and Raj (played by Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh, respectively), inherit their father’s chain of corner stores after he dies in a hilarious and bloody golf-related accident. All but one of the stores is promptly seized by the FBI because their father had secretly been running a massive drug operation out of them. The brothers are huge bozos, in opposite ways, with Mir always touting his business degree from Drexel and Raj charming his way through life between orgies. So right away, literally within minutes, you’ve got two mismatched idiots in over their heads in the criminal underworld with the federal government on their backs. There is comedy to be found here. The show does not disappoint. 

NINE: There are 16 episodes available right now (10 in season one and 6 in season two), all of which clock in between 20 and 25 minutes. Lord, in an era of bloated episodes, is this ever refreshing. You can rip through both seasons in a single weekend if you want. You can spend a week or so watching a couple episodes before bed. You can probably even squeeze in a full episode in the waiting room of the doctor’s office, as long as you put your headphones in and don’t be a weirdo. I love a show with lil episodes. This sucker and my beloved Shoresy are trying to correct a couple decades of bloat. Please support their efforts. 

EIGHT: The supporting cast is just great. Kevin Corrigan plays a mob boss who has a bronze bust of Frank Rizzo. Tan France from Queer Eye shows up as a fancy British gangster. The new season has Kumail Nanjiani as a bumbling lawyer and Fred Armisen as a crooked casino magnate named “Max Sugar” and Andrew Rannells as an ambitious but sleazy prosecutor who is running for mayor. All of their characters are terrible at their jobs, in their own special ways. It’s great. 

SEVEN: My one complaint about the casting is that Tim Baltz — BJ from The Righteous Gemstones — has an arc in the first season as an FBI agent who loves going undercover and they didn’t get him back in there for season two. But that’s a bummer only because he was so freaking funny in the first season. There’s a scene where he tries to infiltrate an underground meeting in character as an Italian mobster and you really need to hear Tim Baltz do that. I suppose this is a "be happy it existed, don't be sad it's over" situation.

SIX: The show’s creator, Abdullah Saaed, is a graduate of Temple University, which I note here for two reasons:

• I also graduated from Temple and love to see my fellow Owls thrive
• It is nice to have another Temple grad succeed in the television industry after, you know… the other guy 

I appreciate this.

FIVE: Look, I know, I’m a sicko homer with this stuff but I do enjoy the amount of Philly and Philly-adjacent humor going on in this one. Kevin Corrigan gives a great monologue about cheesesteaks. His character’s daughter is a chaotic brat who spends a whole episode wreaking havoc at a party in an Eagles jersey, reenacting the role of “every girl I dated in college.” Raj drops a “trust the process” in there. There’s a chance none of this matters to any of you but IT MATTERS TO ME, OKAY?!

FOUR: At one point in the first season, Poorna Jagannathan, who plays a character named Lucky Auntie that helps guide our doofus protagonists through the workings of the drug operation, says this, which will make for useful screencaps to share with Cowboys fans after a home win…

THREE: Just in general, it’s always cool for me to watch a comedy that deploys jokes based on a culture that’s not my own. I love that. I feel like it makes me smarter and better-rounded as a person, which is a nice little trick on a show where sometimes the characters do a lot of cocaine and lose their minds a little. It's something that the stars touched on in a great interview with PhillyMag, which I posted last week but am posting again because it's so good.

As an Italian American from New Jersey, I’m glad somebody else is playing gangsters.
Shaikh: We said, “Take a back seat for a second.”

With pleasure.
Shaikh: You guys can be terrorists for a few years.

[We all laugh]

I love to see fictional depictions of crime bring people together.

TWO: Speaking of all of that and also the thing about useful screencaps the show has given me, this is almost exactly how I feel every time I get a notification that I have a new paid subscriber to this newsletter.

ONE: I mean, it’s just a really funny, fun show where all the characters are kind of morons who are trying to ruin each other a little bit. You love a show like that. And I know you have time this weekend. Don’t lie to me. 

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STUFF I CLICKED ON

— great profile of Jimmy Kimmel by Kathryn VanArendonk

— Tara Ariano and I agree, you should watch Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed

— really interesting (and funny) piece about the weird AI actress Tilly Norwood, written by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, one of the only writers I would trust to handle material this dumb (complimentary)

— Conan can give a speech

— couple Philly sports homer things: great blog on Phillies ace Cristopher Sanchez and a great blog about the Sixers that helped me put some things in perspective 

— Nic Cage made Spider-noir, in part, because he finally watched Breaking Bad (imagine watching Breaking Bad with Nic Cage btw)

— Keanu seems like a good dude

— I am ready for a reboot of The Critic 

— Tom Hardy was either fired from MobLand or not fired from MobLand

— lol imagine being Pixar and Taylor Swift is like “hey guys i wrote a song for Toy Story 5, do u want it?”

— protein shortage coming

— Ronny Chieng gives a good speech, too 

— panda cam

— “After mystery men emerge from NYC manholes, officials warn of ‘extremely dangerous’ sewers”

— buffet saved (also home run)

Okay, that's it for this week. Please subscribe and share and watch the shows I tell you to watch.