A Review of the New Russian Sitcom About Joe Biden
It's really as bad as you think
If you’re relatively new to the issues related to Kremlin propaganda and how it’s affecting other countries (including the United States), I recommend reading some background posts I wrote that explains things in more detail along with links to other sites where you can read more to educate yourself.
Last year I wrote about a new Russian sitcom about US President Joe Biden that was going to air on Russian television. This sitcom, called Goodbye, has the premise where Joe Biden decides to secretly travel to Russia in order to find out why US sanctions against that country aren't working. In the process he manages to lose his passport. He also has no money because his credit and debit cards don't work due to the fact that Russia was removed from the SWIFT banking system. In order to raise much-needed money so he can get a new passport that would enable him to return to the United States, he gets a job as an English teacher.
Basically the premise of Goodbye is the reverse of the Ukrainian sitcom Servant of the People, which featured a high school teacher (played by Volodymyr Zelenskyy) who becomes the president of Ukraine after he appeared in a viral video. Zelenskyy later ran for president of Ukraine in real life and he won. In contrast, Goodbye took a real life president (played by Dmitry Dyuzhev), moved him to Russia, and turned him into a teacher.
There were a couple of challenges with Goodbye. The show was announced shortly after Joe Biden announced that he wasn't going to run for reelection, which meant that the sitcom was going to be dated by the time it aired in Russia. Another challenge is that I had read an English translation of the script for the pilot episode and I didn't find it very promising at all. The script was simply not funny, which is bad for a show that is supposed to be a comedy.
Roman from the NFKRZ YouTube channel had managed to watch all eight episodes of the first (and probably only) season of Goodbye and he gave a snarky negative review that basically confirmed my misgivings about that pilot episode script. This show features unfunny jokes about trans people and anal rape along with Russian propaganda aimed at the Russian people. Here's the video review of Goodbye, which includes brief excerpts from all eight episodes so you can see for yourself how bad it really is.
Servant of the People was such a hit that it was aired for three seasons and it also led to a full length feature theatrical film. It's highly doubtful that there will ever be a second season of Goodbye. The very end of the last episode shows Joe Biden, who had just returned to the White House after his misadventures in Russia, deciding that his heart is just not into being president anymore, he has become enamored with the Russian way of life, and he basically wants out of the White House. He then leaves the room. That scene sounds like something that was added at the last minute in order to at least make the series reflect real life events.
To be honest, you'd probably be better off watching old episodes of Servant of the People.
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