NBC's Mr. Mayor, which reworks 30 Rock as a cluster bomb directed against politics instead of TV itself, is gourmet recycling.

While the two episodes I previewed aren’t stellar (comedy pilots rarely are), they do offer a rare glimpse of hope for the endangered species that is the network sitcom.

It’s neither risqué nor hugely original, but as lockdown hits have shown us, sometimes people want the pixelated equivalent of a warm blanket and a glass of milk.

It attempts to find comedy in our frustration—something Veep did better—but lacks the edge it needs to really bolster its take on wokeness. It rarely digs deeper than: Isn’t it fun to see Ted Danson driven to his wit’s end over these things?

Danson does a bit of the goofiness we saw to better effect in “The Good Place” and Hunter is so stern it’s surprising someone didn’t pull her aside and point out this is a comedy. Stray bits of information (like a straw ban in Los Angeles) bring a smile; direct steals (how to spell “syzygy” was a plot point in “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”) suggest someone didn’t do due diligence.

There’s little here we haven’t seen Danson do before and there’s more fun to be had from watching an unusually playful Hunter, a perfect match for the Fey/Carlock style of joke delivery, and Moynihan, who lands some of the biggest laughs. But the biggest laughs aren’t quite big enough, and while the watered-down 30 Rock formula might be preferable to some of the other heinously unfunny network sitcoms out there, it mostly serves as a depressing reminder of what came before.

A dour, halfhearted wince of a sitcom, a show that at a network-ready 22 minutes still seems to drag itself over the finish line. ... Danson in particular seems lost; it’s a relief that he doesn’t play up his character’s Trumpish aspects, but the mischief and waggishness so familiar to TV fans is gone, too.