In Foul Play With Anthony Davis on TBS, the ten-time NBA all-star executes elaborate hidden-camera pranks on fellow superstar athletes. For every prank, Davis has an accomplice, usually another mega-star athlete who knows Davis, the prankee, or both.
FOUL PLAY WITH ANTHONY DAVIS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: NBA superstar Anthony Davis sits in a chair, puts on some shades, and says, “You may not know this about me, but I love pranking people.”
The Gist: The first episode starts huge: The “victim” is Draymond Green, power forward for the Golden State Warriors and a four-time NBA champion. Assisting Davis in the prank is none other than Davis’ former Lakers teammate, LeBron James (heard of him?).
In that prank, Green and his agent sit in on a business meeting with a company that invests in luxury shopping malls. One of the people in the meeting can’t help but spill that the last star they met with was Taylor Swift. Then they bring in a “mall psychic,” who, with the help of Davis, provides Green information about his life that very few people would know. Then, the competitive Green is purposely riled up when the investment they’re looking for is revealed to be $100 million — in cash.
In the second prank, Davis and Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles are out to prank WNBA superstar Rickea Jackson. She’s in an SUV with her agent that gets stuck behind a parking garage liftgate. The anxiety factor is ramped up by a parking attendant that takes his job too seriously and a driver behind the SUV that constantly honks for them to move, causing Jackson’s driver to essentially turn into Joe Pesci from Goodfellas.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Foul Play With Anthony Davis is produced by the guys from Impractical Jokers, though the show has a similar feel to Punk’d and Howie Mandel’s prank series Deal With It. Speaking of Howie, he’s one of the accomplices this season.
Our Take: We’ve all seen enough prank shows to know how Foul Play is going to go: The mark is placed in a room (or in Jackson’s prank, a parking garage) with actors wearing earpieces. Davis and his accomplices are in a production room, and Davis can direct the actors by talking to them through those earpieces. As the situation gets to its peak silliness (or the victim is about to have a meltdown), the prankers walk into the room and we see the victim react to the fact that this is all a put-on.
We’re not sure if Davis and the various accomplices are in on the planning of the prank. We suspect that they are, but the Impractical Jokers guys know how to shape and structure the prank for maximum believability. But we do see Davis talking to the actors, so there’s quite a bit of involvement there. At this point, the accomplices seem to be there for mostly moral support and to see them laughing their asses off at their friend being in a sticky situation.
Because the episodes are only 24 minutes without commercials, and time is taken to set up the situation and introduce the victim, the pranks don’t go on very long before Davis and accomplice step in for the reveal. We kind of wish the hype portion would be scaled back by 30 seconds or a minute just to get a little bit more of a build before the escape valve of the reveal is opened. We also don’t love the idea that, because it’s superstar-on-superstar pranking, the things that are being pranked about live in a stratosphere of life that most people can’t relate to. Still, there are funny moments during the pranks, so they work on some level.
Performance Worth Watching: During the Draymond Green prank, LeBron James was really happy to joke around, curse and trash-talk his rival and friend. He was so laid back that we almost forgot that we were watching LeBron James.
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Like at the end of every prank, Jackson states to the camera that “I got played.”
Sleeper Star: Among the superstar victims in the first season are: Tara Lipinski, Robert Griffin III and Lian Bischel,
Most Pilot-y Line: Jackson’s driver went into beast mode so fast that we were surprised the WNBA star didn’t question what was going on right there and then.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Foul Play With Anthony Davis is pretty much what you’d expect from a star-studded prank show, but the pranks seem to be good-natured and at times generate some truly funny moments.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
